Roy Priest, the former longtime CEO of the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority, has been named the interim CEO until a permanent successor is chosen, the organization announced this week.
Priest was CEO of Alexandria’s public housing authority from 2006 to 2017, and his temporary reinstatement follows last month’s resignation of interim CEO Rickie Maddox. Priest started work on July 7 and will act as interim CEO for five or six months until the ARHA Board fills the permanent CEO position, ARHA Board Chair Mark Jinks told ALXnow in an email.
“We are thrilled to have Mr. Priest return to ARHA to assist during this transition period to a permanent CEO,” Jinks said in a statement. “His knowledge of HUD, public and affordable housing, ARHA and the Alexandria community is extensive. During his prior tenure, he gained the trust of ARHA staff, its residents and the City government. We look forward to his insights and recommendations on how to address the issues that ARHA faces.”
The Alexandria Times was the first outlet to report the development.
ARHA’s internal tailspin started last summer, when its then-CEO Erik Johnson was fired for living in a public housing unit. City Council then received the resignations of its nine-member board, which spent months resigned and was replaced. With a housing waitlist in the tens of thousands, the organization has since been challenged with high staff turnover, budget issues, reorganizing rent ledgers and a pledge to conduct unit-by-unit inspections of ARHA properties.
In the meantime, ARHA is under a hiring freeze, and all new hires must be approved by the interim CEO. Jinks said that two senior positions, the senior director of asset management and the senior director of the Housing Choice Voucher Program, are vacant. Otherwise, he said that there are two staffing vacancies — a project analyst, and the equivalent of one senior management position due to one staffer filling the jobs of deputy CEO and the director of housing programs.
ARHA owns and operates more than 1,100 housing units in Alexandria and administers the Housing Choice Voucher program to more than 1,600 residents in private properties citywide.
Priest is the former CEO of the National Congress for Community Economic Development, a job he held for seven years before joining ARHA. He is also the former director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Economic Development, and for the last three years he has chaired the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission.
