By Mindy Charski

Henry G. Cisneros doesn’t see cities like most people see cities. Where some might just see a surplus truck yard, he might see the potential for single-family homes. That aging factory site near downtown? He might envision it transformed as a mixed-use property with retail.
“That’s a beautiful thing about cities,” says the San Antonio native. “They’re live organisms. They can be recycled. They don’t have to die with the previous use. And suddenly there’s nothing that says a piece of ground that was off limits two years ago can’t be one of the most thriving areas of the city today.”

Cisneros, 59, is passionate about bettering cities and the lives of their inhabitants. That passion has been a central theme of his life and work for four decades. “I had always known I wanted my life to be about service to society,” he says. “It struck me that perhaps the greatest service would be to dedicate [myself] to the urban agenda. There are few people who can say what they decided at 20 years of age is what they ended up doing the rest of their lives.”

Cisneros currently serves as chairman of CityView, which provides institutional capital to partners willing to build affordable housing in urban areas for working families. The Santa Monica, California-based lender is also a developer and offers specialized services such as generating community support and helping to get approvals from the local government. In 2004, Cisneros was named “Builder of the Year” by El Nuevo Constructor magazine for his efforts to strengthen the nation one neighborhood at a time.

CityView has access to about $600 million in institutional capital, the largest chunk of which comes from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. (Cisneros had launched a similar company in 2000 called American CityVista that morphed into CityView when the latter was formed in 2003.)
Currently, the company is building 4,000 homes across the country in cities including Dallas, Los Angeles and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, with $1 billion in ongoing development. Many of the homes are priced within reach of people earning between 80 percent and 150 percent of an area’s median income. An estimated one-third to one-half of the residents in CityView properties are Hispanic.

Cisneros sees such development of inner-city homes, built close to employment centers like hospitals, schools and fire stations, as the key to revitalizing cities. “I think many city officials have discovered the most durable form of economic development is building middle-class neighborhoods,” he says. “Every one of those rooftops becomes disposable income that adds to the vitality of the city.”

Working families need quality, affordable housing not just in suburbia, but in the heart of America’s cities. CityView takes on the most challenging sites, even abandoned and polluted land. It has cleared defunct oil fields and recently leveled an old retail center town houses.

While some might question the wisdom of business ventures in such problematic areas, Cisneros was compelled to look more closely at America’s distressed neighborhoods.
“Homes for working families will always be in demand,” he says.
In the end, building for America’s workers is building for America. Everyone benefits, he says. Part of Cisneros’ theory is that in encouraging the economic progress of all, CityView will help build deeply-rooted, cohesive communities that will bolster cities.

Cisneros, whose degrees include a master’s in public administration from Harvard and a doctorate in public administration from George Washington University, brings years of public-sector experience to his company. In 1981, at age 33, he was elected mayor of San Antonio and served four terms. A charismatic politician, he drew national attention not only for being the first Hispanic mayor of a major U.S. city, but also for his success rebuilding the city’s economic base and creating jobs through infrastructure improvements. “San Antonio took a step forward as a major American city and I’m proud of that,” he says.

Among those who recognize his talents is his friend Thomas Castro, president of Border Media Partners in Houston. “Henry is a natural-born leader who enhanced his leadership skills through his military training [as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army] and hard work in civic affairs,” Castro says. “How often is it that someone in his 30s is considered for the vice presidency after just a few terms as mayor of San Antonio?” Indeed, Cisneros was interviewed by Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale as a possible running mate in 1984.

Nine years later he was tapped by President Bill Clinton to serve as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In his four years there, Cisneros is credited with making the agency more effective, transforming many of the nation’s public housing neighborhoods, and creating policies aimed at increasing home-ownership rates.
Cisneros left his post in 1997 amid a scandal involving payments made to a former mistress. In 1999 he pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of lying to the FBI and paid a $10,000 fine. Though Clinton pardoned Cisneros in 2001, the independent counsel continued his investigation, which ended in January 2005.

Today, in addition to working with CityView, Cisneros also serves as chairman of a local community development housing organization called American Sunrise. He is beginning to launch the nonprofit nationally with CityView among the initial partners. He also recently finished editing a book about Latino home and neighborhood design called Casa y Comunidad.
Cisneros still lives in his grandparents’ former home in a Mexican American working-class neighborhood on the edge of downtown San Antonio. He has no plans to run for elected office again, he says.

“I’m so completely committed to the job we’re doing, which I think touches as many lives as if I were in public office,” he says. “Building homes, trying to extend the model beyond what we build, preaching the gospel of cities and immigrant neighborhoods and homeownership and immigrant justice—that’s what I would be doing in public life, only I get to do it full-time, around the clock.”

Words of Wisdom

CityView isn’t the first private-sector endeavor for Cisneros. He once ran a fixed-income management firm and served as president and chief operating officer of Univision Communications from 1997 through 2000. He currently serves on a number of boards of directors including those of Countrywide Financial, the entertainment company Live Nation, and the nonprofit New America Alliance, which works to develop wealth and empowerment for Hispanics. The advice he offers businesses: Stay focused.
“The mistake that many small businesses make is they get drawn to other functions and lose focus of the immediate task at hand,” Cisneros says. “Maybe they get overreaching in terms of the rate of growth. I would say focus on your niche and capabilities, be brutally honest about matching up your strengths and the needs, and work very hard within that focus.”
To maintain its success at producing city homes for working families, Cisneros and his partners have had to resist the temptation of getting involved in possibly more lucrative ventures like resorts or higher-priced housing.
“My calculation is we want to be known for being very good at something, so we are the top-of-mind choice when people want that product,” Cisneros says. “We don’t want to get greedy and we want to continue to refine what we do."