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The Real Story is talking to Rick Holliday, co-founder and CEO of BRIDGE Housing, Northern California’s leading affordable housing developer. Rick explains the differences between non-profit, affordable and public housing, since the words are often used interchangeably—which is absolutely incorrect. Public housing is built and owned by the government to serve those members of the community with the lowest income. Affordable housing is just that—housing built for people whose monthly salaries are not high enough to keep up with the cost of housing in the communities where they work. Affordable housing is often built with school teachers, firefighters and policemen in mind. Non-profit housing is built, owned and managed by private organizations and operated at cost.

The idea of BRIDGE Housing came about just a little more than 25 years ago, when local Bay Area business leaders came together to talk about stopping the outmigration of workers from the central employment centers to suburban residential neighborhoods. At the time, the BRIDGE business plan was to look for opportunities to build affordable housing within the nine-county Bay Area; today BRIDGE is building in Southern California and Sacramento as well.

Interestingly, over all of its years in business, BRIDGE’s target audience hasn’t changed—which is a reflection of the way Bay Area housing prices were outpacing salaries—until the current market downturn. Rick points out that the silver lining in this housing crisis is that with foreclosures and short sales, there are now more affordable housing choices available than the state has seen in years.