While you were riding Rapterra until you puked up your corn dog this summer, HDA has been hard at work. 

Welcome Baby Margot!

HDA Partner Eric Mai, and his wife Rebecca, produced yet another perfectly adorable child. Their daughter, Margot Eloise Mai, arrived on June 13th in their home and big brothers Miles and Galen are giving her lots of love.

Our New Team Member: Kendra Mamula

This summer we welcomed Kendra Mamula to our team! Kendra is a professional photographer and set decorator for television and film. She is helping manage HDA communications, data, and other projects —basically, she makes sure we don't accidentally burn the place down.

Show and Tell: New Federal Policy and Funding Dashboards

HDA recently designed and built two interactive dashboards to help practitioners and advocates across the Commonwealth gain a fuller understanding of the chaotic federal housing landscape in 2025. We developed these resources as part of our ongoing role staffing HousingForward Virginia, with additional support from the Virginia Housing Alliance.

Federal Housing Action Tracker: Created in direct response to significant stakeholder desire for “a centralized news feed tracking federal housing policy changes” to break through the 24/7 news cycle. Tracks Executive Orders, departmental policy changes, judicial proceedings, and other reforms—sourced only from official and reputable sources.

Federal Funding for Housing in Virginia: Provides real-time access to comprehensive federal spending data for housing and community development programs across the state. Captures over 30,000 grants and 100,000 loans from federal agencies, representing billions of dollars in investments from fiscal year 2018 through the present.

Both of these apps were built in-house using the Quarto and Shiny packages for R, along with a little help from some custom CSS and JavaScript. These open source tools are highly flexible and require no recurring costs beyond minimal hosting fees.

Want our help building similar tools for your organization? Send a note to eric@hdadvisors.net and jonathan@hdadvisors.net with your ideas.

Welcome New Clients

YWCA of Richmond: We've been engaged by the YWCA of Richmond to provide real estate advisory services for their $20 million multi-use development in Henrico County. This project will combine affordable apartments and townhomes with an early childhood education facility and other commercial spaces, providing vital services to the community. It also includes a partnership with our long-time client, the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust. If you are building an affordable housing project and need some expertise, reach out to erica@hdadvisors.net to get started.

VEREP (Virginia Episcopal Real Estate Partners): VEREP has hired HDA to assist them in implementing over $300,000 in grant funds from Trinity Church NYC and several Virginia Housing Community Impact Grants. This initiative focuses on helping individual congregations in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia repurpose their properties, with a strong emphasis on affordable housing.