CEO of affordable housing nonprofit cherishes beating the odds

EAH Housing CEO Mary Murtagh

In an industry in which five out of every six projects never get off the ground, Mary Murtagh still loves her job and can laugh about it.

“Affordable housing is Murphy’s Law incarnate,” says Ms. Murtagh, who has been with the affordable housing organization EAH Housing for over twenty five years. “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

Mary Murtagh on the balcony of one of EAH’s affordable apartments.

 

As its president and CEO, Ms. Murtagh is the force behind EAH, which has built or renovated nearly 1,400 units of housing in the North Bay, and over 5,000 total in 12 counties and two states- California and Hawaii during her tenure with the San Rafael-based nonprofit. The agency is Marin County’s largest affordable builder, and second-largest in the North Bay to Burbank Housing.

The nonprofit EAH used to be known as Ecumenical Association for Housing, owing to its faith-based roots. The company employs about 350 people, the majority of whom work in Marin County.

Ms. Murtagh grew up in rural New Hampshire, near Dartmouth College. She’s a self-described former hippie, who now loves to build infill developments that are good for the environment. She has an undergraduate degree in art history and philosophy from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and a master’s in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Those degrees, she said, did not prepare her for what she would encounter at a job with the Los Angeles Redevelopment Agency where she grew interested in real estate development – specifically finance.

“Up until then you can kind of picture me as a totally naive rube wandering around with my mouth open,” she said. “The first time I went to New York though, I thought the whole thing was a terrible mistake and a terrible thing to do to the planet. And when I finally started studying real estate finance, it suddenly all became clear … I started to understand the city and urban economics.”

In Los Angeles, Ms. Murtagh became what she says was the translator between the real estate office at the Redevelopment Agency and the Office of Housing and Urban Development in Washington. And when the first grant she ever wrote – to expand a Pep Boys in inner city Los Angeles – was funded, Ms. Murtagh said she felt like she was empowered to effect change.

Ms. Murtagh moved to San Francisco in 1984 and worked for a political consulting and market research company. While there she helped orchestrate the approvals for the renovation of the Arlington Hotel, a residence for recovering alcoholics still viewed as a model development in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

In 1986, she was hired to direct EAH, an affordable housing organization that at that time was licking its wounds from two money-losing projects and considering getting out of the building business altogether.

EAH Housing CEO Mary Murtagh celebrates the opening of the largest affordable housing solar installation in the nation.

“Obviously, that was a serious issue but I said to them, ‘If you don’t want to build anything, don’t hire me. That would be a mistake for both of us because I love to build things,'” she said. “The smell of sawdust is what makes my day. That and curing concrete.”

Ms. Murtagh set out to make her first big project at the head of the organization a success. She negotiated for two acres on Corte Madera Creek and you can hear the pride in her voice today when she talks about it.

She said 760 people applied for residency in the 28-unit development that turned out “beautifully.”

“Opponents compared it to the Exxon Valdez during the hearings,” she laughs. “And I was getting my feet wet and finding out what opposition meant in Marin County.”

Setbacks are a fact of life when it comes to building almost any kind of housing, including affordable units.

“You have five deals fall through for every one that ever sticks. Maybe more,” she says. “I don’t try and think about that ratio. It’s too discouraging.”

She said in her over 20 years with EAH, affordable housing hasn’t gotten any easier. Getting the approvals is still just as difficult. Opposition is as vocal, if not more. Funding is hard to coordinate and unexpected things change.

CEO Mary Murtagh accepts an award on behalf of EAH Housing.

And just when she says she feels like she’s “trying to sweep the ocean back with a broom,” something encouraging will happen, like the passage Proposition 1C, which opened up $2.9 billion for affordable housing.

Ms. Murtagh said her future attention will be on continuing to strive for a permanent state funding source and more partnerships with private developers.