Ex-state official joins Honolulu housing, homeless office

Denise Iseri-Matsubara, a former state housing official, has been hired to lead the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Homelessness as its executive director.

Her first day on the job was Wednesday.

“We are most fortunate Denise has agreed to join our team and take on this extremely important role,” Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said in a news release. “Our Administration is determined to succeed with all our various housing initiatives for the City and County of Honolulu, and Denise’s depth and breadth of knowledge and experience is exactly what we needed. We are very excited and most grateful to welcome her to our team.”

Iseri-Matsubara previously worked for roughly seven years with the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp., first as a board member and then as its executive director.

Prior to joining HHFDC, Iseri-Matsubara was a senior special assistant to former Gov. David Ige, working on policies aimed at affordable- housing development.

In her new role at the Office of Housing and Homelessness, she will take over leadership of the city’s Affordable Housing Working Group, whose members include Land Management Director Scott Hayashi and Deputy Director Cat Tasch­ner; Community Serv­ices Director Anton Krucky; Planning and Permitting Director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna and Deputy Director Jiro Sumada; Chief of Affordable Housing Policy and Strategy Craig Hirai; Budget and Fiscal Services Director Andrew Kawano; and Corporation Counsel Dana Viola.

“Now that the city has returned to the housing bond business, it’s a great opportunity for me to help coordinate the financing programs between the city and the state to keep the momentum of housing production going,” Iseri-Matsubara said in the release.

Her new position will pay her a salary of $150,000 per year, according to the city.

Iseri-Matsubara is a graduate of Kamehameha Schools Kapalama and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s in public administration from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

She also served on the boards of the Native Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce and the Kamehameha Schools Alumni Association.