Local housing experts are asking why the board of El Paso HOME – the public housing authority mandated to provide affordable housing to the city’s low-income residents – is spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying real estate in other states.
“I think they run into a risk. If they’re thinking about outside of El Paso, then they may be overlooking our community. There’s a lot of questions that I have,” said Miguel Hernandez, who was executive director of the El Paso County Housing Authority from 2015 to 2025.
The county housing authority serves residents in the unincorporated areas of the county and is not affiliated with El Paso HOME, which serves residents in the city limits. Previously, Hernandez was part of El Paso HOME’s leadership team under its CEO Gerald Cichon.
The Houston Chronicle broke the story in late August that a new El Paso HOME affiliate, Sixteenth Floor Residential, had spent the previous year purchasing about 2,000 apartment units in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia.
Scrutiny is falling on Cichon and his board for their foray beyond the El Paso market, and whether this compromises their local statutory obligations.
“I don’t know his objectives, and I don’t know what his plans are. But as a member of the community, I would want to make sure that we have transparency,” said Hernandez, adding, “If they’re not being transparent, people might feel like, well, what is their true goal? Are you stepping away from your main mission, which is to be able to provide affordable housing locally?”
El Paso Inc. has verified that Sixteenth Floor Residential, which registered with the IRS in May 2025, is directly linked to the El Paso housing authority, known as El Paso Housing Opportunity Management Enterprises, or HOME. Sixteenth Floor Residential and El Paso HOME have the same address, conduct meetings at the same time and location, and share the same CEO, Cichon.
In addition, “the board members for El Paso HOME are the same board members for Sixteenth Floor Residential,” spokesperson Jeff Hahn said in an email.
Hahn is a principal of the Hahn Agency, an Austin-based firm specializing in brand messaging and crisis communications that was recently hired by El Paso HOME.
The board members of El Paso HOME and Sixteenth Floor Residential are Anna Perez (not the 41st Judicial District Court judge), Angelica Avila, Eileen Karlsruher, Richard A. Porras and Gilbert Esparza III.
With Sixteenth Floor Residential buying multifamily properties in other parts of the country, some of them upscale apartments, affordable housing experts are asking the same question posed in the Houston Chronicle’s report: Why is a nonprofit operated by a West Texas public housing agency accumulating a large real estate portfolio on the other side of the country?
All of El Paso HOME’s board members were appointed by El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson.
In an email to El Paso Inc., Johnson described Sixteenth Floor Residential as “a separate nonprofit organization affiliated with El Paso HOME” and said, “No City of El Paso funds are being used for Sixteenth Floor Residential’s out-of-state activities” and that the “city has no financial obligation or exposure related to those investments.”
Johnson did not provide answers to El Paso Inc.’s inquiries on whether he believed it was a conflict for both El Paso HOME and Sixteenth Street Residential to have identical board members, headquarters and shared business meetings. He also did not address if he believed it was appropriate for Sixteenth Floor Residential, as a direct affiliate of El Paso HOME, to be acquiring, developing and collecting revenues from properties outside the city and state.
Questions regarding their operations “are best addressed directly by HOME and Sixteenth Floor Residential,” he said.
“My focus continues to make sure El Paso families have access to safe, quality and affordable housing,” Johnson said. “I expect HOME and its affiliated organizations to operate transparently, responsibly and in accordance with all applicable laws.”
Cichon declined to be interviewed for the Houston Chronicle story.
El Paso Inc. requested comment on this issue from Cichon before El Paso HOME’s Sept. 16 board meeting on the 17th floor of the Blue Flame Building, where the agency is headquartered. He declined, stepping away and quickly walking into an adjoining room.
He was asked again from the podium during the meeting’s public forum and again declined to comment, saying only agenda items could be discussed.
On Friday, El Paso HOME provided a two-page information sheet, which included Cichon’s prepared comments.
“El Paso has more than 20,000 families waiting for an affordable home and not enough money to help them. We have no trust fund, no big donors and no revenue from the city or the state,” he stated. “If we want new resources for El Paso families, we have to earn them, and Sixteenth Floor Residential is how we do that, in places that ask us to come.”
The information sheet stated that neither El Paso HOME nor Sixteenth Floor Residential receive money or appropriations “from the City of El Paso, El Paso County, or the State of Texas.”
In addition to private-sector investments, El Paso HOME receives government funding through federal grants and an array of federal tax-credit incentives and programs.
Sixteenth Floor Residential, according to the news release, “shares a common purpose with El Paso HOME” and its sharing of board members is “an arrangement (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) encourages and permits.”
Sixteenth Floor Residential said that revenues from its out-of-town properties have “been retained in the properties for reserves and improvements,” adding that “it is the stated intent of the board that net cash flow be directed to affordable housing in El Paso.”
Each of the nonprofit’s acquisitions has been “financed with tax-exempt 501(c)(3) bonds issued by a government agency in the property’s home state and repaid from the property’s own revenue,” the information sheet states. “El Paso HOME issued no bonds and provided no dollars for any Sixteenth Floor purchase.”
Sixteenth Floor Residential’s website describes the company as “a national nonprofit organization that provides quality mixed-income affordable multifamily housing” and makes no mention of its tie to the public housing authority.
Public notices for El Paso HOME’s board meetings regularly list other “Texas nonprofit public facility corporations” that will also be “holding public meetings simultaneously with HOME, at the same time and location.”
Making a regular appearance on the list are the Housing Opportunity Management Enterprises, Sixteenth Floor Residential Inc., Blue Flame Group LLC, and the Paisano Housing Redevelopment Corporation.
Searches on the IRS website and ProPublica nonprofit database for tax documents for El Paso HOME and its variations returned no results. The Blue Flame Group was also not in those databases. Sixteenth Floor Residential was listed on both but had no tax documents because of its recent registration.
The Paisano Housing Redevelopment Corporation was found on both websites, and its listing of directors for 2025 is also nearly identical to the boards of El Paso HOME and Sixteenth Floor Residential: Anna Perez, Eileen Karisruher, Angelica Avila, and Richard Porras. Cichon is again listed as CEO.
Its total assets for 2025 were more than $465 million, according to tax documents.
The out-of-state expansion by Cichon and his board is also creating a stir among national commercial real estate observers.
“Over the past year, Cichon, the CEO of the Housing Authority of the City of El Paso (HOME), has been conducting one of the more audacious and under-the-radar experiments in multifamily,” stated a Sept. 4 article by The Promote, a publication of ten31, which is an insider group monitoring commercial real estate issues. “Via a nonprofit entity, Sixteenth Floor Residential, HOME has acquired 2,000 units in places as far-flung as the Carolinas and Georgia.”
Noting the nonprofit’s roughly $400 million portfolio, the article said Cichon’s expansion “represents a highly unusual form of (commercial real estate) dealmaking: a public body flexing its bond fundraising and tax-exemption landing abilities to cross state lines.”
Cichon, a former felony prosecutor for the El Paso District Attorney’s Office and former chief counsel for the Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas, or CLEAT, first came on board with the city’s housing program in 2008.
He promptly cleaned up the troubled housing authority by cutting costs and modernizing operations, garnering national attention for public housing successes at a time of dramatic cuts in government funding.
One of his strategies, back in 2013, was to use a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development pilot program that transferred ownership of public housing from the federal government to the housing authorities, allowing for greater flexibility in local spending decisions.
The program, known as the Rental Assistance Demonstration, also opened the door for what has become Cichon’s signature strategy: tapping private investment and low-income housing tax credits to help finance low-income housing improvements and construction.
Under Cichon, El Paso HOME led a massive revitalization of 6,000 of El Paso’s public housing units using millions of dollars of public and private funds. The El Paso housing authority received the highest rating from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as multiple designations as a “High Performer” in its housing choice voucher program.
But in 2014, the strain of the ambitious plan began to show, with fired employees speaking out against the “top-down/ivory tower” approach they said characterized the city housing authority, which at the time was overseeing a $91 million budget. Former employees said they were held to unrealistic expectations. Cichon, who at the time earned more than $220,000 as CEO, said the firings were necessary to eliminate underperformers.
The Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reviewed the housing authority and found missed deadlines and some sloppy record-keeping involving funds received through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
While Cichon and his board are only now drawing attention for their national real estate ventures, he has been vocal about that goal for years.
“I did work for Gerry before I went over to the County Housing Authority,” said Hernandez. “He had, and probably still has, a very ambitious vision of expanding outside the city of El Paso. He wanted to be known as the largest developer of affordable housing.”
Some real estate experts say Cichon and his board may be on weak legal ground by involving El Paso HOME in property acquisitions outside of El Paso. They cite Texas Local Government Code 303.021, which states that a housing-authority-sponsored public facility corporation can “finance, own, or operate a multifamily residential development” only if “the development is located inside the area of operation of the sponsor, if the sponsor is a housing authority.”
Questions also have been raised about Sixteenth Floor Residential resisting public information requests by claiming it is a nonprofit separate from El Paso HOME, said some real estate professionals.
As noted by the Houston Chronicle article, “A Texas law appears to say that a nonprofit formed by a housing authority is considered a public entity subject to open records laws.”
Patrick Tuttle, broker-owner of Coldwell Banker Heritage Real Estate, said he disagrees with El Paso HOME and Sixteenth Floor Residential being leveraged as competitors of private development companies. He also is troubled by the lack of transparency and how Cichon and his board are operating different nonprofits within the El Paso HOME orbit, expanding beyond El Paso.
“To see them buy an apartment complex in South Carolina, how does that help the local people who need affordable housing? Are they going to take the rent money, the return on investment, and reinvest it here?” he asked.
“I’ve been watching it,” he said. “I don’t know Gerald Cichon. But I have questions. My question is, what’s going on?”