Her Agency Distributes Billions for Housing Projects. Her Husband’s Company Helped Develop Some of Them.

As head of Oregon’s housing finance agency, Andrea Bell oversees a lot of taxpayer money. Oregon Housing and Community Services has handed developers more than $1.4 billion in state funding to build rent-restricted apartments over the last five years — and even more counting federal tax credits the agency allocates. Bell’s husband, Joshua Crites, works as a director for the consulting firm JH Brawner, which helps local housing authorities develop subsidized apartment projects that receive a lot of money from Bell’s agency. The company lists offices in Oregon, Washington and Arizona and says it has played a role in creating 20,000 low-income housing units that cost $3 billion to develop. JH Brawner’s Oregon work includes consulting on two housing authority projects that applied for or were awarded tens of millions of dollars collectively from Bell’s agency since her husband started working for the company. (JH Brawner gets paid by the housing authority rather than the state.) Oregon law requires leaders like Bell to report their sources of household income on annual ethics disclosures, including naming their spouses’ income sources, especially when they could present a conflict of interest. The law also says any government official with a conflict should notify the person who appointed them in writing. But Bell didn’t do either until ProPublica asked her about it. A spokesperson for Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat whose predecessor appointed Bell in 2022, told ProPublica that the governor’s office had “not been notified of any potential or actual conflict of interest.” The closest Bell came to a disclosure was in 2025 with this vague note with a misspelling: “Spouse serves in an advisory role for a developmen.” It did not name a company but instead showed a misspelled street address, with no suite number, for JH Brawner’s office in Issaquah, Washington, a commercial building with multiple tenants. Bell filed amended economic disclosures for the last three years on Sept. 23, the day that ProPublica asked her why she did not disclose her husband’s employer. The new forms explicitly name the consulting firm. “I take concerns about my statement of economic interests (SEI) seriously and am committed to transparency, accountability, and compliance with state law,” Bell said in a statement. She did not respond when asked whether she had played any role in her agency’s decisions regarding projects the company worked on. A spokesperson said housing subsidies are approved first by an internal committee that does not include Bell and then are reviewed by another group, the Housing Stability Council, which Bell does not serve on. The spokesperson, LeiLani Barney, told ProPublica to file a formal records request to learn who’s on the internal committee. Bell advises the housing council as it sets policy and makes funding decisions, according to the agency’s website. Neither JH Brawner nor Crites, the firm’s director of strategic initiatives, responded to messages seeking comment. Three former officials familiar with state ethics laws told ProPublica that Bell’s lack of disclosure was a problem that merited review to see whether she influenced any government decisions that benefited her husband’s company. Russell Lehman, a retired administrative law judge who served on Washington’s Public Disclosure Commission from 2019 to 2021, said Bell appeared to have violated the law, even if she later corrected her mistake. Lehman said he would want to know: “Why did it take a reporter asking you about it to have you file your reports?” “In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need ProPublica for this kind of thing,” Lehman said. Kotek’s spokesperson called for an evaluation by the state’s ethics commission. “The Governor holds all agency leadership to consistent and high ethical standards and any question on conflict of interest should be referred to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for thorough review,” Kotek’s spokesperson said in a statement. Bell told ProPublica in a statement that she had sought an advisory opinion from the commission at the governor’s urging and that she had updated her ethics disclosures “to provide clarity.” Money from Bell’s department plays an essential role in helping to build apartment projects intended to be affordable, channeling state funding and federal tax credits in order to reduce developers’ costs so they can charge lower rents. JH Brawner, where Bell’s husband works, advises public housing authorities that are putting together subsidized housing deals. The company’s responsibilities have included negotiating acquisitions, structuring deals, ensuring project appraisals are completed and collaborating with the state agency that Bell leads. Crites joined JH Brawner in 2023 after jobs with local housing authorities in Oregon, Washington and Ohio. He and Bell own a home together in the Portland suburbs, records show. JH Brawner says on its website that it worked in Oregon as a development and financial consultant on Park Place, a 200-unit project being built by the housing authority in Clackamas County with $36 million in state funding. Another project in Washington County, Aloha 209th, is awaiting a $17.5 million subsidy from the state. A spokesperson for Clackamas County said the housing authority there “did not advocate or discuss the Park Place project or application with Andrea Bell” and that the county hired JH Brawner as a consultant before Crites joined the firm. The company was involved in two other state-backed projects for Washington County that were well into the financing process before Crites started working for JH Brawner. Work continued on both as recently as last year, according to JH Brawner’s website. Bell’s agency adopted a new policy in 2024 that effectively reduces its discretion over which projects get funded, moving from a competitive bidding model to one that gives money to eligible projects in the order that applications were received. But at least one developer has asked Bell’s agency to exercise its discretion. The housing authority in Washington County in suburban Portland, which is using JH Brawner as a consultant on the Aloha 209th project, is not due to get its $17.5 million from the state until at least 2028. Molly Rogers, executive director of the county’s housing authority, said in a June public meeting that she had contacted Bell about the project and the county’s desire to get state money sooner. “She’s open to having a discussion, which is great,” Rogers said. Rogers did not respond when asked, via a spokesperson, to comment about her public remarks, and Bell did not respond when asked to comment on Rogers’ account. Pat Hearn, who served as the ethics commission’s director for nearly two decades, said he advised state leaders “to stay as far away from the line as possible, not to get as close as they can without crossing it.” In Bell’s case, he said, “It’s just too close, especially since we know that the agency has approved funding for these projects that the husband’s company has advised on.” Bell’s situation is the second conflict-of-interest issue Oregon housing officials have faced in the last year. In December, a state investigation revealed that an appointee to Oregon’s Housing Stability Council, the body that approves housing subsidies, had violated a state conflict-of-interest law by voting to award money to projects designed by the architecture firm where she worked. (The appointee, who later resigned, told an investigator she believed she had followed high ethical standards and had recused herself from voting on projects she worked on. The commission gave her a warning letter.) A spokesperson for Oregon’s state housing agency told The Oregonian/OregonLive at the time that housing council members had received feedback about how to be “clearer and more consistent” when declaring conflicts. Four months later, Bell filed her annual ethics statement. The only income it listed at that time for her household was her own.