South County Housing has tapped John Cesare as its first chief
financial officer after a year of unprecedented growth in 2006.
Morgan Hill – South County Housing has tapped John Cesare as its first chief financial officer after a year of unprecedented growth in 2006.
Cesare, 50, spent 20 years as a tax attorney in the high-tech industry and in private law before joining the non-profit housing developer in May to ensure the organization’s financial integrity.
“It’s not as though we haven’t had a director of finance in the past,” said South County Housing spokesman Jack Foley. “But what’s different now is we’ve grown a great deal, and we’re growing faster than ever.”
In its first 25 years, South County Housing built about 2,000 units of affordable housing in Santa Clara, San Benito, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. But in 2006, South County Housing completed or began construction on an unprecedented number of new housing developments, finishing 265 units worth $88 million. During the next five years, the non-profit expects to complete 1,400-plus additional apartments, homes and condos for low-income families.
“The growth is directly correlated with the need for affordable housing in Silicon Valley and beyond,” said South County Housing CEO Dennis Lalor. “What started as a need for farm workers to find affordable housing is now a problem felt by many people.”
Cesare is on vacation and could not be reached for comment.
Cesare assumes responsibility for all financial systems and reporting for South County Housing and its subsidiaries and affiliates, including South County Property Management and South County Community Builders.
His main job, he said in a news release, is to ensure “the integrity of the financial information that we supply to others internally and externally,” including funding sources and government agencies.
Cesare studied law and business at Syracuse University in New York. He holds a master’s degree in tax law from New York University’s School of Law. After six years working as a tax attorney in New York City, Cesare moved to California in 1990 and lives in Willow Glen with his wife and two children.
Before joing South County Housing, Cesare served as director of international tax at Seagate Technology in Scotts Valley, and assistant treasurer and senior director of financial planning and analysis at McAfee.
At South County Housing, Cesare will keep tabs on a $7-million budget whose resources include grants, bank loans, federal and state funding sources and income from administering construction projects.
Foley said securing funding for housing projects takes patience and concentration at the non-profit level. An extreme case is a 49-unit senior housing development in Pacific Grove, completed last year, that took 10 years to finish.
“Non-profit housing developers are a strange animal,” Foley said. “We piece together six, eight or 10 funding sources to do a project. It’s a tricky situation.”
