Q&A: City Councilmember Henry Wade talks development, housing, guns (VIDEO)
Henry Wade Jr. has been a member of Maricopa City Council six years and is also the director of housing counseling services for the nonprofit Chicanos por la Causa. He just spent one year as vice mayor. A native of South-Central Los Angeles, he spent 20 years in the U.S. Air Force before retiring to become a real estate broker. He spoke with InMaricopa about development and issues the city is experiencing.
Remind us of your background.
I’m Henry Wade, city councilmember for the City of Maricopa. That is my most cherished job. I enjoy doing that above everything. I also am actually the director of housing counseling services for the nonprofit Chicanos por la Causa (CPLC). CPLC is celebrating its 50th year of community service. It is a community development fund. My portion of it is a HUD-approved housing counseling agency. So what we do is first-time homebuyer education. We do loss mitigation to help people stay in their homes if they’re facing foreclosure. We do financial literacy education as well. We have an office in Phoenix, one in Tucson and then one in Las Vegas, Nevada, that I manage. I’ve been working with Chicanos por la Causa now, my eighth year with them, and thoroughly enjoy the atmosphere as a nonprofit. Its one of the largest Hispanic nonprofits in the United States. The No. 1 supplier of health and human services in Maricopa County. A lot of people don’t know anything about it. They way I came about working for Chicanos por la Causa was through my real-estate background. Before I retired from the Air Force I spent time learning real estate, going to school, what have you. So, I was first licensed in 1980 here in Arizona. I was a licensed appraiser, Realtor, broker. Started a company called Northstar Homes. I chose the North Star because that’s what Harriet Tubman used to help guide slaves into freedom. My schtick was I helped guide people into home ownership. Thoroughly enjoyed doing that.
