Mark Colón
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Housing
Mark Colón is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Housing (DASD(H)) in the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment (ASD(EIE)) at the Pentagon. In this capacity, Mr. Colón provides executive leadership on all matters related to U.S. military housing worldwide, whether government owned, leased or privatized. He is also principal advisor to the ASD (EIE) regarding their Congressionally mandated “Chief Housing Officer” duties and responsibilities.
Mr. Colón brings more than twenty-five years of public & private sector experience to his new role. This includes thirteen years in executive roles with New York State Homes & Community Renewal (HCR), first as Deputy Counsel of HCR’s Office of Legal Affairs (OLA) and more recently as President of the Office of Housing Preservation (OHP).
As OHP President, Mr. Colón oversaw one of the largest, most diverse affordable housing portfolios in the country, with more than 450,000 units in 3,200 projects across the State. His tenure included the recapitalization & rehabilitation of nearly two-thirds of the State’s mixed income housing portfolio, including the nation’s largest, federally subsidized rental and cooperatively owned housing complexes.
As HCR’s Deputy Counsel, Mr. Colón advised the State’s Housing Commissioner, Governor’s office and HCR’s senior management on a broad array of legal and policy matters and served as the State’s “Disaster Recovery” housing counsel in the wake of Hurricanes Sandy and Irene, designing policies & programs for the award of $3B+ in federal, state and private relief funding.
Mr. Colón also practiced for two international law firms, representing financial institutions, government agencies, private developers and surety providers on an array of complex public/private housing finance transactions, as well as in the origination, syndication and restructuring of more than $4B worth of commercial and residential real estate financing.
Colón graduated magna cum laude from CUNY/Hunter College and received his J.D. from the Yale Law School, where he served as Managing Editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. He subsequently clerked for the Hon. Julio M. Fuentes, the first Hispanic justice in the history of the Third Circuit US Court of Appeals. He is a member of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) and the Puerto Rican Bar Association, and a former Director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).