Print pageFor Immediate Release
March 27, 2025
Contact: Douglas Robinson
National Housing and Community Development Leaders Honored with NeighborWorks Founders Award
Washington, D.C. — Robert “Bobby” Calvillo, president and CEO of Affordable Homes of South Texas, Inc., and Ann Houston, past executive director of The Neighborhood Developers and Opportunity Communities, are recipients of the 2025 NeighborWorks Founders Award. NeighborWorks America presents the award each year to a current or former leader, either from the NeighborWorks network or NeighborWorks America, who has greatly improved the housing and community development field and whose legacy endures in innovation, in dedication and in the values that contributed to the formation of NeighborWorks America.
"I think this recognition is a testament to the hard work of the team I am blessed to lead in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas,” Calvillo said. “Being so remote, we often get overlooked. This recognition by NeighborWorks provides support to the notion that our team and our organization is, in fact, a high producing, high impact affordable housing organization and is recognized on a national basis.”
Calvillo’s commitment to affordable housing began nearly 30 years ago after a major pivot in his life, when he shifted from leadership in banking to leading a local nonprofit. “I firmly believe God had a plan for me all along: Go get experience and learn from some amazing mentors and then go implement what you’ve learned … to help people. While many of my colleagues and even some of my family members questioned my sanity of leaving a professional banking career to go work for a nonprofit, it has been the best professional decision I’ve ever made,” Calvillo said.
Said Houston: "I am so honored to receive this recognition because I really love the NeighborWorks network. NeighborWorks America has always been a vital center to our work, promoting the values we embrace and skills we need." Her goal has been building communities “where everyone can thrive, and that has meant creating decent, affordable homes, and also economic mobility and good community amenities and resources. It’s a tall order requiring a wide variety of skills, strategies and resources.”
NeighborWorks and the NeighborWorks network “have always been the first place we turn for advice and inspiration. We started out as a very small organization that has grown tremendously, thanks in large part to the privilege of learning from others who have transformed their own communities. I think that [the award] reinforces it locally, and with funders, that the work that The Neighborhood Developers has been doing over the past 25 years is really of a national standard.”
Setting standards and building capacity in the nonprofit housing community is at the center of Houston’s career. She is the catalyst behind Opportunity Communities, an innovative partnership model launched in 2018 to support nonprofit housing providers by having high caliber centralized “back office” functions supporting three different nonprofit providers who have the skill advantages scale can provide, but the responsiveness of a local organization. By sharing the services of financial, human resources, real estate development and asset management staff, it saves money for the three organizations and ensures that all organizations benefit from the expertise of professional staff.
“Communities I serve are immeasurably richer for the lessons I learned from my colleagues at NeighborWorks America, and I'm really humbled to be recognized with the Founders Award,” Houston said.
About NeighborWorks America
For more than 45 years, Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp., a national, nonpartisan nonprofit known as NeighborWorks America, has strived to make every community a place of opportunity. Our network of excellence includes nearly 250 nonprofits in every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and on Native lands. NeighborWorks offers grant funding, peer exchange, technical assistance, evaluation tools and access to best-in-class training as the nation's leading trainer of housing and community development professionals. NeighborWorks network organizations provide residents in their communities with affordable homes, owned and rented; financial counseling and coaching; community building through resident engagement; and collaboration in the areas of health, employment and education.
