New Bourne Housing Authority Director Prioritizing 'Getting Things Done'
One year after the resignation of its former executive director, the Bourne Housing Authority is officially under the command of Kara Galasso-Garcia. Ms. Galasso-Garcia was appointed as interim director in her predecessor’s wake last May and, after undergoing the full application and interview process, was named executive director in April.
Looking back on the first two months in her new position, Ms. Galasso-Garcia told the Enterprise that things have been going great. She and her staff of five, she said during the phone interview, are “running a good ship here.”
Though she is new to the job, Ms. Galasso-Garcia said, she has been with the authority for more than a decade and has worn many hats during that time.
“I started here part time [in 2012] as their federal housing administrator,” she said. She held that position for two years before applying to fill a vacancy overseeing the authority’s Section 8 program.
“I’ve been in Section 8 since,” she said, “However, I’ve had my title changed a few times, where I became office manager, leased housing manager and then, when Mr. [Gregory] Wheeler left, I was named interim [executive director].”
Ms. Galasso-Garcia’s experience working in the housing sphere is even more extensive than that of her career with the authority. She is a Falmouth native and graduate of Falmouth High School (Class of 1992), but actually got her start in housing on the West Coast after finishing junior college.
“I first got all my housing experience when I was living in San Diego,” Ms. Galasso-Garcia said. She had family members in California that she stayed with while working her way through the ranks at a local hotel. She then landed in retail and did some management in that field before getting into the housing business alongside her uncle, Michael B. Galasso of Falmouth, and his business partner at their real estate company.
Barone Galasso & Associates, according to its website, was the first developer of a new single-room occupancy hotel in San Diego utilizing the federal low-income housing tax credit program and has since established itself as a leader in the affordable housing field.
“I have helped Barone Galasso do a lot of things, such as putting together applications for tax credits and opening up their properties,” Ms. Galasso-Garcia said. “The opportunity came up right after I got married and I decided to take it on; I didn’t even know what a tax credit was. Through training and other employees, that’s how I got my start in housing.”
There are parallel threads between the organization Ms. Galasso-Garcia got her start with and the one she now heads; both, for example, provide affordable housing for low- and moderate-income families and individuals.
In San Diego, Ms. Galasso-Garcia said, she mainly did family housing, which was “a little bit more fast-paced, a little bit more of a turnover,” in comparison to the Cape.
While the authority’s mission of providing and maintaining safe, quality affordable housing for lower-income families and elderly or disabled persons differs slightly from that of her former employer, the knowledge she gleaned on the West Coast further enabled her to be of service back home on Cape Cod.
“I do still enjoy working with clients,” she said. “Housing is a passion of mine. I’ve been doing it for over 20 years…and there’s not enough of us out there that are willing to take on the positions without any schooling or anything like that.”
Looking ahead in her new role, Ms. Galasso-Garcia knows there will be more responsibilities, but her main initiative remains to service the authority’s many clients as best as possible and provide the housing they need.
“My goal here at the authority is first to keep us moving along,” she said, adding that she would like to see some more development in newer places. Securing funding, Ms. Galasso-Garcia explained, has been the authority’s biggest roadblock when it comes to development, but another hope of hers is to learn to do grant writing for the authority to mitigate that.
In the future, Ms. Galasso-Garcia would like to see the authority’s housing inventory expand but, having been in the business of developing and managing affordable housing for so long, she knows that the process is long and comes with its own set of roadblocks. Funds aside, even researching a potential location can be an arduous task.
“Sometimes you get the NIMBY-ism of ‘not here, not near me,’” she said, “and I think a lot of individuals think of public housing as dangerous or they’re not going to keep their unit up or they’re going to bring their property value down—that’s not the case. If you have a good developer and a good housing administrator to see the job through, you’d be surprised.”
Personally, though, Ms. Galasso-Garcia said the location of affordable housing is not as contentious of an issue—not after seeing how many daily calls come into the authority from individuals stuck on a waitlist.
“Some have only been on a month, which means the wait time is still a good five to six years,” she said. “Section 8 alone is a 13-year wait.”
Ms. Galasso-Garcia said the authority does get calls from out-of-towners who have been waitlisted, but Bourne residents are given priority for most of the authority’s housing situations.
The housing inventory problem has been exacerbated Cape-wide in recent years, specifically the lack of workforce and affordable housing. As far as the authority goes, Ms. Galasso-Garcia said it is more focused on family housing and elderly units right now, but she would “love to see” workforce housing taken on by the authority.
“Maybe future plans,” she said. “But in general, it’s Cape-wide, that’s what’s needed. And for those people that are in the middle, they don’t make a lot but they don’t make a little, so that’s where I would like to see housing focused.”
When asked what she is most looking forward to in her new role, Ms. Galasso-Garcia said she is excited about future development in Bourne but put extra emphasis on taking actual action.
“Getting things done,” she said. “Not just talking about it and going before a board and then it fizzles out. My goal would be to see things through in a timely manner for the residents of Bourne.”