A History of Innovation
Since 1983, BRIDGE Housing has delivered thousands of affordable homes along the entire West Coast, demonstrating the impact of our founding vision, creative leadership, and community partnerships.
1983
After forming a blue-ribbon Housing Task Force, the San Francisco Foundation establishes the Bay Area Residential Investment & Development Group (BRIDGE) to build quality affordable housing on a large scale. Alan Stein, who headed the Task Force, is elected BRIDGE’s founding Board Chair, Don Terner is selected as President and CEO, and Rick Holliday as Vice President.
1986
BRIDGE completes its first project, Pickleweed, a 32-unit property in Marin County town of Mill Valley.
1988
By its fifth anniversary, BRIDGE has developed five properties with 635 apartments in three Bay Area counties: Alameda, Marin and San Mateo.
1996
BRIDGE Vice President Carol Galante is appointed President and CEO upon Don Terner’s tragic death and, among other initiatives, she invests in broadening resident programs.
1997
The redevelopment of Acorn Apartments in Oakland marks BRIDGE’s expansion into rejuvenating distressed public housing projects.
1998
BRIDGE branches out beyond the Bay Area to Southern California, with the opening of Villa Loma Apartments, an award-winning 344-unit community in the city of Carlsbad.
2001
Alan and Ruth Stein endow the Stein Educational Assistance Program, the first of three scholarship programs that support BRIDGE residents pursuing higher education and skills training.
BRIDGE receives $175 million from the State of California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) as part of a new partnership to develop urban infill affordable housing projects.
2008
San Francisco selects BRIDGE to lead the redevelopment of Potrero, one of the city’s oldest public housing projects, into a modern mixed-income community.
Rick Holliday is elected Board Chair.
2010
Carole Galante is appointed to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Housing/Federal Housing Commissioner in the Obama administration. Cynthia Parker, a 30-year veteran in affordable housing, is appointed President and CEO of BRIDGE.
2013
Los Angeles selects BRIDGE and The Michaels Organization to redevelop historic public housing project Jordan Downs into a mixed-use, mixed-income village, launching the city’s largest urban revitalization project.
BRIDGE establishes a presence in the Pacific Northwest, developing a 142-unit, mixed-income residential building in Portland, Oregon.
2015
BRIDGE earns an A+ credit rating from Standard & Poor’s, becoming the first nonprofit affordable housing provider to be able to issue investment-grade bonds.
BRIDGE acquires seven properties from the San Francisco Housing Authority as a leader in HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program to preserve and improve public housing communities.
Kent Colwell
2016
Ronald Nahas is elected Board Chair.
BRIDGE launches a scholarship in memory of longtime Board member Kent Colwell.
2018
On its 35th anniversary, BRIDGE reaches the milestone of 100 properties, with the opening of Heritage Square in Pasadena. By year’s end, BRIDGE has 105 communities comprising 11,394 units.
2020
BRIDGE issues $100 million in Sustainability Bonds to finance the development and acquisition of affordable housing, transit-oriented development, green building and energy efficiency.
Ken Lombard
2021
Ken Lombard, a nationally respected real-estate investor dedicated to improving the quality of life in underserved neighborhoods, is appointed President and CEO.
Kenneth Novack is elected Board Chair.
2022
BRIDGE secures a $250-million financing commitment from Morgan Stanley and the National Equity Fund to acquire and preserve affordable housing communities.
The Kripamayi Scholars Program is launched in honor of philanthropists Vimla and Sumer Aggarwal.
2023
S&P Global Ratings upgrades BRIDGE’s credit rating to AA-, the highest rating assigned to any nonprofit developer.
BRIDGE receives an $8 million grant from MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropy, Yield Giving, and $1 million from Orkney Trust at the launch of a five-year strategic planning period.
2024
BRIDGE enters its fifth decade with a portfolio of 130 properties, 13,769 units and more than 30,000 residents.
Our Founders
A civically minded businessman. A University of California, Berkeley professor he knew from state government service. And an entrepreneur who had been the professor’s student.
Meet the trio of visionaries who launched BRIDGE Housing.
Don Terner
Ian Donald Terner, popularly known as Don, was a social entrepreneur who had an enormous impact on the field of affordable housing.
As an academic, policymaker, and nonprofit leader, the Harvard-trained architect and city planner devoted his life to strengthening low-income communities in the United States and abroad.
Mr. Terner was named the first President of BRIDGE by Board Chairman Alan L. Stein, who had previously lured him away from UC Berkeley to serve as Director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Mr. Terner’s passion and drive to build quality affordable homes on a large scale instilled an enduring spirit of innovation at BRIDGE.
His mantra was “whatever it takes,” whether that meant new financing strategies, improved construction techniques or creative approaches to planning and community engagement. During his 13-year tenure, BRIDGE built 6,000 homes in communities enriched by resident programs. A relentless idealist, Mr. Terner inspired people to collaborate for the public good and earned national recognition for BRIDGE as a model for the affordable housing industry.
He also ventured overseas on his mission to reduce poverty. In 1996, he died in a plane crash along with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and a delegation of business leaders while visiting the war-torn Balkans to assist in rebuilding efforts.
His legacy lives on at BRIDGE and UC Berkeley through an endowed professorship and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, a leading research institute established to develop bold public- and private-sector solutions to the housing affordability crisis. Among other honors, Mr. Terner was also inducted posthumously into the National Housing Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C.
Alan L. Stein led a distinguished career as a businessman, politician, educator and philanthropist.
He not only led the San Francisco Foundation task force that recommended founding BRIDGE Housing, but he also served as Chairman of the Board for 25 years, until 2008, and endowed the first scholarship for BRIDGE residents to pursue post-secondary education.
To lead BRIDGE’s executive team, he recruited Don Terner – for the second time. As California Governor Jerry Brown’s Secretary of the Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency from 1978 to 1980, Mr. Stein brought in Mr. Terner to head up housing and community development.
Outside of politics, Mr. Stein was a prominent investment banker. After graduating from Columbia University and earning an MBA from Harvard Business School, he worked at Goldman Sachs for 22 years, rising to partner in charge of corporate investment banking on the West Coast. He later held senior management roles at Montgomery Securities, venture capital firm Weston Presidio and JMP Securities. Deeply committed to the arts, Mr. Stein served as Chairman of the Board of the American Conservatory Theater and as a Trustee of the California College of the Arts.
During the 1981-1982 academic year, Mr. Stein served as Associate Dean of Executive Education at UC Berkeley’s Walter Haas School of Business. Expanding access to education was central to his work at BRIDGE. In 2001, he and his wife established the Alan and Ruth Stein Educational Assistance Program, which has awarded $3 million in scholarships to help BRIDGE residents pursue higher-education and skills training. Mr. Stein passed away in 2018.
Alan L. Stein
Rick Holliday
Rick Holliday earned an undergraduate degree in urban policy and a master’s in city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, where one of his professors was Don Terner.
After graduating, the Bay Area native joined Eden Housing, a nonprofit affordable housing provider. In 1983, he reunited with Mr. Terner to launch BRIDGE and served as Vice President until 1988, when he started his own company, Holliday Development.
Mr. Holliday continued to serve on BRIDGE’s Board and, succeeding Alan L. Stein, served as Chairman from 2008 to 2015.
In 2017, he co-founded and became CEO of Factory OS, which uses modular construction to develop multifamily housing. Mr. Holliday has been a guest lecturer at the Urban Land Institute and graduate real estate programs at the University of New Mexico and UC Berkeley.