Howard County Names Acting Director of Housing Department

The new year will see a new leader at the helm of the Howard County Department of Housing and Community Development.

Deputy Director Tom Carbo has been selected to lead the department in an acting capacity upon the resignation of Director Stacy Spann, who has accepted a similar position in Montgomery County.

Carbo will oversee the department and the separate Howard County Housing Commission until a permanent director is selected.

Spann leaves the department at the end of this month after five years as the director, according to a statement issued by Howard County.

"Stacy transformed this agency: his attention to detail and his business acumen helped several large-scale projects go from ideas to reality," County Executive Ken Ulman said in the statement.

Ulman credited Spann for increasing the amount of quality affordable housing in Howard County, and said that Carbo played a large role in that accomplishment.

During Spann's tenure, according to the statement, Howard County did the following:

• Increased its rental housing portfolio from 370 units to nearly 1,000 units
• Started the redevelopment of two of its aging low-income housing projects into state-of-the-art, green, mixed-income communities
• Purchased and preserved an existing 300-unit community using bank-qualified loans
• Developed the nation's first affordable, green, universally designed single-family, for-sale community

Carbo is credited in the statement with being instrumental in "developing a strategic housing plan for Howard County that emphasizes quality, inclusive, mixed income, mixed finance, green, sustainable and financially sensible housing development."

Carbo began his career as an assistant attorney general for Maryland's Department of Housing and Community Development.

As a Howard County assistant solicitor for 13 years, he helped create the  Howard County Housing Commission—the county's public housing authority.

He also served as the county's hearing examiner and labor coordinator.

Neither Spann nor Carbo responded to requests for comment.