The HouseKeys Story and its Team Members
we owe our history to two important housing agencies
The HouseKeys team is made up of experienced and deeply committed members who’ve spent the majority of their careers in the affordable housing sector and who were employed by two major Bay Area housing nonprofits, South County Housing (SCH) and Neighborhood Housing Services Silicon Valley (NHS Silicon Valley).
Between 1980 and 2014, SCH developed 3,009 housing units in the Greater Bay Area, including 1,220 single-family homeownership units in 36 subdivisions. A partnership with NHS Silicon Valley was formed in 2013 to help administer SCH’s large affordable home ownership portfolio and assist buyers with new construction projects.
NHS Silicon Valley was created in 1995 as part of a partnership between the City of San Jose and the congressionally-chartered Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation (“NeighborWorks America”). As a NeighborWorks Home Ownership Center, HUD-Approved Counseling Agency, and Treasury-Certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), NHS Silicon Valley had departments specializing in real estate sales, distressed property acquisition, housing counseling, community development, and first mortgage lending. In 2013, the organization created a department that formalized the Below Market Rate (BMR) Program Administration it had been doing for Bay Area municipalities over the previous decade. By 2014, it was recognized by Fannie Mae as one of the nation’s leading first mortgage lenders for its MyCommunityMortgage product that provided flexible options for low-to-moderate income first-time home buyers.
The Founding HouseKeys Team and Founding Partner, City of Morgan Hill.
From Left to Right: Mandy Israde, Kathie Wells, Julius Nyanda, Leslie Little, Rebecca Garcia, and Christina Enriquez.
a new beginning: housekeys
When SCH and NHS Silicon Valley began to wind down operations in 2015, HouseKeys was created by its founding team with help from the City of Morgan Hill to retain staff, continue the work of creating a sustainable approach to program administration, and to develop specialized software to streamline and automate program workflows. HouseKeys has administered home ownership, rental, and financing programs for California municipalities, including the cities of Morgan Hill, Campbell, San Francisco (2017), Burlingame, Gilroy, San Ramon, Santa Clara, and Hayward.