When Robert “Bobby” Calvillo, president and CEO of Affordable Homes of South Texas, Inc. (AHSTI), walks into work to share a middle-of-the-night brainstorm, his coworkers are ready to listen – and to follow-up.
“He’ll come in and say, ‘I was thinking, what if we do this?’” says Myra Martinez, executive vice president and chief operating officer. If the idea makes sense, as it often does, the staff at the NeighborWorks nonprofit will work on the next steps, whether it’s opening their own real estate office or a Blimpie sub shop.
Calvillo’s innovations, compassion and leadership led NeighborWorks America to name him as the recipient of the 2025 NeighborWorks Founders Award. Ann Houston of The Neighborhood Developers was also chosen as a recipient. The two will receive their awards April 3 during a ceremony at the NeighborWorks Executive Symposium in Washington, D.C.
A pivot to community development
Calvillo was in what would have been the middle of a banking career in the late 1990s when he made what he calls “a pivot.” He’d worked his way up the banking ladder since college, and had been told he could name his position. Instead, he walked away to lead AHSTI.
“I decided it was time to do something different,” he explains. “Looking back, it was the best decision I ever made. If I’d stayed at the bank, I would have been happy on pay days. Here, I’m happy on most days. When I leave at the end of the day, I’m content. I know the work we did that day is going to have results for somebody; I know the work we’re doing is helping somebody.”
The community knows it, too. People find the NeighborWorks affiliate not through advertising, but word of mouth. “They know we’ll take care of them, that we’ll give them a good quality product that will be as affordable as we can make it,” Calvillo says. “We see kids who came with a parent to sign closing documents now coming in with their own kids.”
Almost 30 years after starting this job, Calvillo is still the first to come to the office and the last to leave. “It’s not because I have to; I do it because I love the work we do.”
Working for the community
When Calvillo arrived at AHSTI, the organization was developing 23 affordable homes a year. Now, the organization is a comprehensive provider of housing services that includes construction, mortgage lending, counseling and homebuyer education. AHSTI also includes multifamily housing, an important part of the housing spectrum. They average 100 homes built or rehabilitated a year, consistently ranking in the top 10 among NeighborWorks network organizations.
“When I came in, we were working on a development that included a large city park and an elementary school,” Calvillo says. Successful completion of that subdivision led staff to realize: We can do this. “We were not a little nonprofit without capacity. We can develop the capacity and do this work.’ And that’s just what we did,” Calvillo says. The organization currently has four subdivisions in various stages of completion.
Meanwhile, social enterprises, under a subsidiary called TuCasa Investments, have become an integral part of the organization. Calvillo says the need for outside-the-box innovations came as competition increased for grants – and awareness increased that to remain sustainable, they would have to rely on themselves. “We needed to create our own source of revenue.” NeighborWorks America’s Sustainable Business Initiatives was a support, and AHSTI was a member of the inaugural group.
Calvillo had reasoned that they already had a “back office” – accounting, legal, IT, a maintenance crew. “We just need to create the front end.” The goal was to help families who weren’t being served by the private sector and the new enterprises included a real estate company, a property management company, a custom-home builder and more.
“Another thing we added was a property and casualty insurance agency,” Calvillo says. That was Hope Insurance, which started in 2016, an idea born after a major hailstorm hit McAllen. Premiums were high and families were struggling; the company aims to provide affordable insurance, helping clients protect their biggest assets.
The Blimpie, too, came under the TuCasa umbrella. AHSTI owned a small strip mall and Calvillo believed the franchise could turn a profit, provide an alternative to fast food and create jobs – including management training – for people in the community. They ended up opening a second franchise as well. Along the way, Calvillo attended Blimpie University and added “chief sandwich maker” to his resume.
The franchises lasted several years, before the organization decided to scale back and focus on endeavors that were closer to AHSTI’s core housing mission. Staff who had become managers at the Blimpie now work for the nonprofit in other capacities.
“It did its job,” Martinez says. Even though the restaurants closed, they garnered attention for the nonprofit – and attracted more funders, interested in out-of-the-box thinking.
Says Calvillo: “I’ve always wanted to be innovative in the work we do. A house is a house. But maybe there’s a way to improve the house, or to improve the financing to make the house more affordable.”
Leadership
Around the office, Calvillo’s nickname is “The Historian.” He’s internally cataloged events from the past 30 years, and is able to put things into context.
(He’s also known for his taste in shoes on casual Fridays. “Great kicks,” says Cynthia Torres, chief financial officer and the staffer who nominated him for the award – for other reasons, obviously, than the shoes.)
He likes being behind the scenes and is never happier than when someone on his staff is in the limelight.
“I think his humbleness is part of what makes him a great leader,” Martinez says. “He’s very comfortable with leading from behind and trusting he has hired the right staff and that they know their stuff.”
He cares for the staff, making sure they are able to put family first. Many of them stay on at the organization for years.
Torres remembers learning that her dogs got out of the house while she was in the McAllen office. “He just told me to go take care of them,” she says. “And wherever we go, people ask for him. They say, ‘How’s Bobby? He’s built a rapport, everywhere.”
Relationships are important, Calvillo says. With clients. With staff. With government workers and funders. With everyone. “The relationships are important for the organization and for me. These people become friends. It’s easier to come to work when you’re working with friends.”
The friends he works with do an amazing job helping families in South Texas, he says. “We’ve seen the results.”
And those people say the same thing about Robert Calvillo. “Always, he thinks about the community,” says Torres.
