Our Professional Team

Professional Consultants

The professional consultants listed here are retained by the California Affordable Housing Agency to provide the full range of services necessary for financing and implementation of agency initiated programs.

Applied Residential & Trio is a provider of affordable homeownership programs specializing in a lease option financing program brand name “Trio”. Trio is designed to provide more flexible home financing and extend the availability of credit to the housing market. Trio further preserves affordability for its lessees through its Own Option Mortgage program that provides assumable consumer based mortgages.

Nick Benjamin

Mr. Benjamin currently serves and the Executive Director of the California Affordable Housing Agency. Prior to his current position, Mr. Benjamin has over twenty-eight years of experience in serving public housing authorities and nonprofit agencies. For eleven of those years, he served as Executive Director for two mid-sized housing authorities in California and acted as Chief Executive Officer for their affiliated nonprofit agencies. He has over thirty-eight years of experience in building and construction and has held accreditations/licenses as both a building inspector and a California General Contractor. Mr. Benjamin earned an A.S. degree from Vision Christian University.

Tom Lewis, Esq. serves CALAHA as General Counsel and provides legal services to housing authorities, governmental agencies and non-profits throughout California.

Jones Hall serves as bond counsel, as well as providing disclosure and tax counsel to CALAHA.