For the month of November, ULI is highlighting some of our members in the housing sector and the great work that they’re doing.  

Meet Marissa Feliciano, Director of Marketing and Communications at Jamboree Housing. Her work focuses on external communications and branding for Jamboree, which is a non-profit affordable housing real estate developer with wraparound services. Marissa is also an avid taiko (traditional Japanese) drummer, music lover, and has a family of four. 

For almost 20 years, Marissa worked in marketing and business development for architecture firms, until her personal struggles with finding housing in San Diego led her to the affordable housing sector. When Marissa faced her own challenge of not being able to afford living in San Diego due to the lack of middle-income housing, she shifted her focus to development, hoping that she could work to solve this issue herself. Marissa used ULI’s learning resources to teach herself about development and was very vocal in her advocacy for affordable housing, attracting the attention of Jamboree Housing and earning her a job offer. 

“The ultra-capitalist model of ‘excel, succeed, and earn enough to buy a single-family home’ is simply out of reach for a significant portion of the population,” Marissa explains. “Housing insecurity is often misunderstood, and it’s natural for skepticism to arise around affordable housing development, especially from those who haven’t experienced or been directly connected to these challenges.” As such, she values her role in communications which allows her to educate, bring awareness to, and dispel myths about affordable housing to counter that negative public discourse. 

Marissa is particularly passionate about providing access to housing for seniors. “In America, the general sentiment about older adults is that they don’t contribute to society anymore,” Marissa says. She shares that she has family from the Philippines, with a culture that has a great deal of respect towards elders, which she finds lacking in the United States. The elderly population, she says, is often overlooked, and has a hard time finding housing that they can afford, as many of them live on a fixed income and limited financial resources. “We all have family members who will need some sort of assisted living at some point, so what do you do?” Marissa inquires. “What about seniors who are low and middle income?” She states that there needs to be more housing options for a wider range of people, not just a specific subset of the population. In the same vein, Marissa was recently appointed to the City of San Diego’s Senior Affairs Advisory Board. In this role, she helps to advise the mayor and city council on how to improve quality of life for seniors in San Diego. She hopes to use her platform to continue to champion these issues. 

Marissa was the chair of our Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI) for two years, working to encourage everyone to join and feel welcome in the group. She also served on the WLI Americas Executive Committee for two years. Her advice to those considering which professional organization to join is, “just join ULI” because it is a true snapshot of the full commercial real estate cycle and encapsulates all roles in the industry. She also greatly appreciates ULI’s inclusive and welcoming environment. 

Thank you to Marissa for sharing her insights and for her involvement with ULI.