Bon Moncrief: An Appreciation
Sometimes heroism is a day-to-day thing, performed quietly in an office, a matter of flowcharts and budgets, negotiations and regulations, agencies and advocates--bureaucratic in form and catalytic in effect. Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights bids farewell, with gratitude and admiration, to Bob Moncrief, who retired in July 2007 from his position as the City’s Housing Manager, having served with great dedication and effectiveness in that capacity since 1996. Under his leadership, the City has invested more than $162 million, which leveraged an additional $100 million in other public and private funds, for the construction of 900 new residences and the acquisition and rehabilitation of 600 existing residences, benefiting low-income families, seniors, people with disabilities, and formerly homeless persons.
“One of Bob’s most remarkable talents,” says Andy Agle, the City’s director of Housing and Economic Development, “was his ability to build partnerships–with community organizations, affordable housing providers, City departments and outside agencies–in the mission of promoting housing opportunity for our neediest residents.”
As a residential community organizer in New York City, Bob organized tenants in abandoned buildings in Harlem and taught them how to manage their own buildings. He later became the Deputy Commissioner for Housing, upgrading and managing 55,000 apartments, thereby saving them for affordable housing. Eighteen thousand of them were sold as low-income co-ops to tenants, and thousands of apartments were made available to homeless families. In 1991 Bob became Housing Director for the City of Los Angeles, where he was in charge of lending funds to nonprofit affording-housing developers. He directed the housing component of the Northridge earthquake recovery, during which over 13,000 apartments were built or reconstructed.
Joan Ling, of Community Corporation of Santa Monica, says that Bob is driven by love mingled with fairness and generosity of spirit: “Aside from the impressive statistics about money invested and units preserved and built for affordable housing, his enduring legacy is the culture of competence and effectiveness in the Housing Division. Bob exemplifies what a mensch is.”
SMRR offers deep thanks to Bob Moncrief, and extends fond wishes to him in his retirement.