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AINGER TO HEAD RCAC’S DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS
April 3, 2013
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West Sacramento, Calif.—Rural Community Assistance
Corporation (RCAC) recently hired Paul Ainger to manage Development Solutions,
a new initiative that supports nonprofit organizations and tribes to build and rehabilitate
affordable rental housing across the rural West.
Ainger brings more than 30 years’ experience as an
affordable housing developer and consultant. He has produced more than 1,800
units of multifamily affordable housing, and more than 110 single family homes.
This includes a mix of new construction, acquisition, rehabilitation of
substandard units, special needs and family housing.
In 1994, Ainger took the Deputy Director post at
Visionary Home Builders in Stockton, beginning his career as a non-profit
developer. Then, in Davis, he was Community Housing Opportunities Corporation’s
real estate development director from 1999 to 2007. At Mercy Housing California
he was a senior project developer through 2010, and served in the same capacity
at Mutual Housing California until returning to RCAC in February. He holds an
MBA with an emphasis in accounting and finance from University of California
Davis.
This is Ainger’s second time working for RCAC. From
1989 to 1993, he was an RCAC housing specialist assisting nonprofit
organizations with self-help housing and other programs in Arizona, California,
Oregon and Hawaii.
He returns to a larger organization facing a
changing housing landscape, where increasing rents, stagnant wages and a
housing shortage forces many low-wage workers to forgo other necessities to pay
rent. A new National Low Income Housing Coalition report estimates the gap
between affordable housing supply and demand at 4.5 million units. The report
also estimates that to keep rent from eating up more than 30 percent of income,
workers need to earn $18.79 an hour—the average renter now earns $14.32.
Development Solutions work has already begun. On
Oahu, 110 families of working and retired farmworkers living at Kunia
Plantation Village thought they would lose their homes when Del Monte,
then-owner of the property, shut down its pineapple operation in 2006. In
partnership with the new property owner, RCAC is putting together a $30 million
comprehensive financing strategy that will rehabilitate 46 homes, demolish and
construct 36 new units, and rebuild infrastructure to ensure the community’s
long-term viability.
Ainger sees Development Solutions as a next-step in
RCAC’s mission. “Many rural nonprofits look for help in developing new rental
housing; now we can be that partner. “
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