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Home Forward’s CEO, Ivory N. Mathews, has been elected senior vice president of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO) Board of Governors. Her two-year term will extend into 2027.

The principal activities of the NAHRO board include establishing policy, setting goals and objectives, approving annual and long-term financial and work plans, providing leadership and support for association programs and policies, and acting on recommendations from the regions, chapters, national committees, and advisory committees, according to the group’s website.

Mathews will maintain her Home Forward roles and responsibilities while serving in the unpaid board position. As CEO of Oregon’s largest affordable housing provider, Mathews leads a team of nearly 400 employees who provide affordable housing for more than 18,000 households throughout Multnomah County.

Mathews has been involved in NAHRO, the member organization for affordable housing development agencies, for many years, Home Forward spokesperson Ariane Le Chevallier stated in an email. Her new role will give Home Forward and Oregon a bigger seat at the national/federal affordable housing policy table, although she will be advocating on behalf of member organizations nationwide, Le Chevallier stated.

NAHRO represents the 26,000 housing and community development professionals who administer more than 3 million homes for more than 8 million people across the U.S., a press release states.

Also, Home Forward received two NAHRO merit awards during a national conference last month. The agency received one for administrative innovation for its work to build a proactively anti-racist, trauma-informed culture that centers humanity in the workplace and another for its partnership with the Urban League of Portland on the Hattie Redmond Apartments, a 60-unit development serving chronically homeless Blacks/African Americans in the historic Albina neighborhood.