Philly's housing & planning directors Jesse Lawrence and Angela Brooks

Please join us for our next Philly Policy Forum on Friday, February 27 featuring two leaders of the Parker Administration’s $2 billion H.O.M.E. Initiative (Housing Opportunities Made Easy) and other housing, planning, and community development work.

You will hear these insiders' view of the how the H.O.M.E. initiative came to fruition, how it's going so far, and what kinds of achievements and obstacles they face.

Jessie D. Lawrence is Director of the Department of Planning and Development, and Angela D. Brooks is the Chief Housing and Urban Development Officer in the Mayor's Office. They helped initiate and now lead the Mayor’s multipronged campaign to create or preserve 30,000 housing units in the city.

Jessie has 20 years of experience in public and privately driven real estate development, urban planning, entitlements, and land policies, including senior positions in the Mayor's Office, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, the Philadelphia Land Bank, and the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation (PHDC). At PHDC Jessie directed a land-management team that arranged for the sale and disposition of publicly owned land for redevelopment and enabled the "Turn The Key" program under City Council’s Neighborhood Preservation Initiative. Jessie holds a BS in Architecture from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a Master’s Degree in City and Regional Planning from Georgia Tech. He currently resides in Mount Airy with his wife and two sons and thoroughly enjoys music and traveling.

Angela has more than two decades of leadership in urban planning, affordable housing, and community development. Prior to Philadelphia, she served as the Director of the Illinois office of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, where she oversaw training, lending, technical assistance, and systems change work throughout Illinois. She is the Immediate past national president of the American Planning Association, and served on the Chicago Board of Zoning Appeals, the Illinois Affordable Housing Advisory Commission, City of Seattle Planning Commission, the King County Washington Boundary Review Board, and the national Housing Supply Accelerator. A native of Seattle, Brooks holds a BA in Urban Studies from Jackson State University and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of New Orleans. She is also a kidney donor and passionate advocate working to increase minority organ donors. (And her Philly colleagues are working to convert into an Eagles fan for next season.)

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