Heather Lyons is a passionate believer in affordable housing as a social and economic right. She has a wide breadth of experience with a variety of programs that assist in different ways to help people achieve wealth-building homeownership at a monthly cost they can afford. Heather manages Community Frameworks’ Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program as one of four HUD Grantees nationwide, overseeing development financing to organizations in a four-state area operating sweat equity homeownership programs where buyers help with the construction of their homes to reduce their cost to purchase. During her leadership of this program, she has helped to secure and administer over $25 million in funding for the development of 1,300+ sweat equity homes across the Pacific Northwest. Focused upon creating quality homes and informed, empowered homebuyers, Heather directs homeownership development activities as well as homebuyer education and counseling and down payment assistance programs, with hundreds of people realizing their homeownership goals under her leadership. In the interest of providing more and better services to aspiring homebuyers, she led her organization in becoming HUD-approved for counseling and fully lending compliant, and developed a unique county-wide down payment assistance program that expands housing choices for low-income homebuyers while improving their financing options. As an executive management team member, she is committed to organizational success, actively participating in decision-making processes across the spectrum of organizational planning and function including strategic planning, budgeting, forecasting, policymaking, and culture-creation. She is an experienced and determined advocate for affordable housing, advancing meaningful policy change at both state and federal levels including expansion of the first-time homebuyer definition in Washington state and the removal of burdensome regulatory requirements affecting the Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program nationwide. Heather earned a B.A. with faculty honors in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Politics & Values with a focus in Nonprofit Management from University of Washington. She is a licensed mortgage loan originator who has been working in lending in one capacity or another for over 25 years, 13 of those in the nonprofit world. She holds a number of counseling and lending-related certifications through NeighborWorks America.
