Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez names Michael Liu Director of Miami-Dade Public Housing and Community Development
Liu brings over 25 years of experience including service as the Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
(MIAMI, August 20, 2014) – Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez has named Michael Liu as the Director of the Miami-Dade County Public Housing and Community Development Department. The agency is the nation’s sixth largest and administers housing for more than 30,000 residents, provides for Section 8 subsidized payments for 16,000 families and oversees an array of specialized housing opportunities for County residents and the homeless. Mr. Liu will assume this role starting on September 2, 2014.
“Michael Liu brings a wealth of experience to the position of Director with more than 25 years of being actively engaged in transforming communities at the local, state and national levels,” Mayor Gimenez said. “He will continue to focus on providing affordable housing options for Miami-Dade County.”
As Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing from 2001 to 2005, in the Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD), Liu was responsible for the largest division within the department with annual appropriations of more than $25 billion, encompassing all public housing in the United States and territories; Section 8 vouchers; and housing programs for Native Americans, Alaskan Natives and Native Hawaiians.
Liu’s signature achievements included revamping an outdated approach to assessing operating costs for public housing and replacing it with a market driven asset-based model; taking the Capital Fund Financing Program and leveraging public housing subsidies for capital improvements to attract over $2 billion in private sector investment commitment in less than 2 years without having to provide government guarantees; and increasing financing for housing and infrastructure in Indian Country by a factor of 10. Upon leaving HUD, National Mortgage News lauded Liu for a “job done well and fairly.”
Liu has also worked as a consultant pioneering the opening of new venues for community development financing by utilizing Federal Home Loan Bank, USDA Rural Development, and private foundation resources. He successfully managed the formal linkage of housing authorities for Chicago, Milwaukee and Los Angeles with the Federal Home Loan Bank System.
On the policy front, Liu has worked with and on behalf of the Bipartisan Policy Center and its Housing Commission which produced a milestone report in 2013 Housing America’s Future: New Directions for National Policy, recommending sweeping changes to the housing finance system and federal affordable housing programs.
Earlier in his career Liu served in senior community development financing positions with Bank of America, FSB (Hawaii), Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Liu is a graduate of Stanford University, and he earned a law degree from the University of Hawaii’s Richardson School of Law. He practiced for 13 years. He is a member of the DC (active) and Hawaii (inactive) Bar Associations.