Carol Gore: leader of Southcentral's affordable housing movement.

• Author: Anjurn, Shehla
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

Under Carol Gore's leadership the Cook Inlet Housing Authority (CIHA) has made significant advances in providing quality, affordable housing for residents of Southcentral Alaska. Gore, president and CEO of CIHA for the past fifteen years, calls herself a "Forever Alaskan" whose mother is originally from Ninilchik. She was born in Anchorage and grew up in Mountain View, a neighborhood that her organization is now revitalizing. "It has been a great privilege that my work with CIHA allowed me to make a difference in the neighborhoods where I was born and raised," Gore says.

Empowering Alaskans

Alaska's fourteen regional housing authorities, including CIHA, were created by the State of Alaska in 1974 in response to a critical need for quality affordable housing for elders, families, and individuals, Gore says. As Cook Inlet Region's tribally designated housing entity, CIHA is eligible to receive Indian housing block grants from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), but CIHA offers its services to everyone, not only Alaska Natives, Gore says. "Fifteen years ago CIHA made a decision to serve everyone without preference. We offer a diversity of housing from studios to four-bedroom rental homes as well as home ownership. Our mission is to empower all people."

To serve both Native and non-Native clients, including low- and moderate-income families and seniors, CIHA mixes various sources of money, including HUD grants, to develop housing. "The mix includes state money, foundation money [Rasmuson primarily] grant funds, [and] debt financing from banks such as Wells Fargo and Northrim. We use a lot of debt instruments to help with mortgage financing," Gore says.

Before coming to CIHA, Gore worked in the real estate department of her Native corporation, CIRI, for ten years and managed a $200 million portfolio. At CIHA Gore found a different environment. CIHA looked and acted like a nonprofit and it did not have the familiar for-profit corporate profile that includes a "pyramid of leaders," she says. "It was vastly different. I was working for a board rather than an individual."

She realized that CIHA would benefit from using a village council leadership structure that uses consensus building, bringing everyone's best talents together to meet CIHA's mission. She focused on building a "leader full" organization, in which "every leader has the responsibility to bring their best talent to the table, to learn from each other, and to work...