President and CEO
Kelvin A. Jeremiah has served as PHA’s President & Chief Executive Officer since March 2013. As President & CEO, Mr. Jeremiah establishes a vision and provides strategic direction and leadership on all agency matters, reporting directly to the Board of Commissioners. He was appointed to the position after serving as the HUD-appointed Administrative Receiver and the Interim Executive Director, where he organized and directed a successful Recovery Plan that corrected major deficiencies in PHA’s operations and governance and returned the agency to local control. Under his leadership, PHA has been reformed and transformed, returning to its core mission of creating and preserving affordable housing, and opening doors to opportunity for low-income families with children, seniors, and people with disabilities. He has directed efforts to rout out fraud and abuse and built a new administrative/management infrastructure that supports and rewards innovation, accountability, excellence, and high ethical standards. He reallocated resources to provide rental assistance to new families, streamlined operations to eliminate a long-standing structural deficit, and aggressively sought out and forged partnerships with community groups, non-profit and for-profit developers, philanthropies, and social service organizations.
Under Mr. Jeremiah’s leadership, PHA is implementing a $4.3 billion portfolio-wide asset management strategy and has built, funded or preserved thousands of affordable housing units. He directed PHA’s successful efforts to secure three Choice Neighborhoods Implementation grants and three Choice Neighborhoods Planning grants. He has taken the lead in revitalizing Sharswood, one of Philadelphia’s most distressed neighborhoods, including implementing a plan to build over 1,500 mixed income units and consolidating all of PHA’s administrative operations in a new headquarters built on Ridge Avenue. HUD Secretary Scott Turner toured Sharswood in March 2025. Mr. Jeremiah also led PHA’s collaboration with the City to revitalize the North Central neighborhood through the Choice Neighborhoods Program. Former HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge visited North Central in 2022 to celebrate the completion of the final housing phase. He has spearheaded PHA’s efforts to preserve and expand affordable housing through the RAD program, while advancing an array of community development initiatives including the selection of four community-based partners to renovate vacant and distressed PHA properties in the Brewerytown neighborhood for sale to low and moderate-income Philadelphia households.
Mr. Jeremiah came to PHA after serving as Inspector General for the New York City Housing Authority, the nation’s largest housing authority, with a portfolio of 178,000 units housing, over 450,000 residents, an HCV Program with nearly 100,000 participating families, and an operating budget of over $3.5 billion.
Mr. Jeremiah received a Bachelor’s degree in History/Business Administration from Pace University, a Master of Arts in American Social History from Rutgers University, and a Master of Public Administration from American International College, after emigrating from Grenada to the United States as a teenager. Mr. Jeremiah is a Certified Public Purchasing Official, a Certified Public Housing Management Specialist, a member of the Association of Inspectors General, and a member of the National Leased Housing Association Board. In 2023, he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Cheyney University.
