Leadership
- Lissette Castañeda
- Commissioner
Lissette Castañeda comes to the role of DOH commissioner with two decades of experience in affordable housing development, housing services, and organizational leadership. Castañeda is tasked with streamlining the affordable housing development process as per Mayor Brandon Johnson’s recent executive order and expanding homeownership to Chicagoans in historically disinvested communities.
Castañeda has served as the Executive Director for LUCHA, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-approved housing counseling agency as well as a Community Housing Development Organization since 2019, overseeing its affordable real estate portfolio and leading implementation of its strategic plan.
Prior to serving at LUCHA, Castañeda served as the Interim Executive Director and the Director of Community Engagement for the Center for Changing Lives, where she worked to expand economic opportunities and revitalize neighborhoods across Chicago.
Castañeda has served on a number of boards including Palenque LSNA, Chicago Housing Trust, Illinois Housing Council and the Chicago Rehab Network.
For Castañeda, stable, affordable housing is a cornerstone of community safety, economic development and mental health. She is honored to serve in this role where she can spearhead new housing developments while ensuring Chicagoans have the services they need to stay in their homes for the long term.
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Tamra Collins |
Tamra Collins serves as Managing Deputy Commissioner for DOH, overseeing the Department’s bureaus of Construction and Compliance; Multi-Family Finance; Homeownership; Community Engagement and Racial Equity; Policy; and Housing Preservation. Prior to her current role, Collins served as the Deputy Commissioner of the Housing Development Bureau for DOH. The Bureau includes the Housing Finance Division (Multifamily Finance and Asset Management) and the Neighborhood Development and Housing Preservation Division, including the Troubled Buildings Initiative, Micro-Market Recovery Program, Community Receiver, Chicago Neighborhood Rebuild pilot program, and Tax Increment Financing Purchase Rehab. Collins has nearly two decades of experience includes as Project Coordinator and Financial Planning Analyst (FPA) with both DOH and the Department of Planning and Development, where together with local elected officials, developers, nonprofits, and community organizations she worked to bring safe, decent and affordable housing and economic development to the residents of Chicago. Collins has expertise in the financial analysis and underwriting of multi-family financing projects utilizing private and public resources including land, Tax-Increment Financing, Low Income Housing Tax Credits, Tax-Exempt Bonds, Community Development Block Grants, and HOME Investments Partnership Programs. In addition to her duties as an FPA, Collins served as team lead in technical assistance and departmental liaison to All Chicago’s Continuum of Care, which works to prevent and end homelessness throughout all 77 communities. Collins is a graduate of Southern University and A&M College, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Baton Rouge, LA. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Marketing.
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Irma L. Morales is Deputy Commissioner for DOH’s Bureau of Homeownership Programs. Her experience includes over 25 years working with single family housing and residential lending and has served with the department since 2006. Morales directly oversees Housing Delegate Agency Contracts, home repair grants for owner-occupants, Purchase Price Assistance, compliance of resale and subordinations of existing affordable homes, and Single-Family Development - City Lots for Working Families. Prior to joining DOH, Morales served as the Director of New Lending Partnerships and Alliances for Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS). During her tenure at NHS, she maintained public and private partnerships for the Home Ownership Program Initiative, a national laboratory in which non-profits, lenders, and government entities collaborated in innovative solutions for the then-ensuing foreclosure crisis.
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Matt Stern is the inaugural Assistant Commissioner of Implementation & Inauguration at the City of Chicago's Department of Housing. In this role, he leads a bureau responsible for agency-wide change management, administering new programs and special projects, and developing a culture of outcomes-based program design and continuous quality improvement. Matt also leads the department’s work on sustainability and green building standards, and was previously responsible for the department’s implementation of the Chicago Recovery Plan, a one-time COVID-era infusion of $200M+ into over a dozen housing programs. Prior to working at the City, Matt worked on community development and tax policy at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, led the design and construction of residential solar projects for a renewable energy startup in New England, and worked on development equity and land rights in western India. He is published in the Journal of the American Planning Association and the Carolina Planning Journal.
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Irma L. Morales
Matt Stern
