Cindy Reid Receives Second Annual Erhard Mahnke Award

Award namesake Erhard Mahnke congratulates 2026 recipient Cindy Reid of Cathedral Square at the Housing & Homelessness Alliance of Vermont's annual meeting.

MONTPELIER, VT — Cindy Reid, Director of Real Estate Development at Cathedral Square, received the 2026 Erhard Mahnke Award at this year’s annual meeting of the Housing & Homelessness Alliance of Vermont (HHAV). The award honors lifelong work to advance affordable housing in Vermont and beyond, and recognizes Reid’s nearly 40-year career, which has produced hundreds of affordable homes across the state.

In presenting the award, HHAV board member Peter Elwell said Reid scores high on every one of the award’s criteria. “She provides a living example for the rest of us in this work about the value of staying committed and creative for the long haul,” Elwell said.

Reid began her career in 1987 at the Burlington Community Land Trust (now Champlain Housing Trust), where she spent six years, followed by two years with the Central Vermont Community Land Trust (now Downstreet) and 17 years with the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. Early on, she authored a Community Land Trust Homeownership Program Manual that was distributed nationally. For the past 13 years, as Cathedral Square’s Director of Real Estate Development, she has led the creation of hundreds of homes for older Vermonters and people with diverse needs.

Beyond individual projects, Reid has strengthened the broader affordable housing movement. She served on the steering committee of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition, one of the two organizations that merged to form HHAV, from 2014 to 2022, including five years as chair from 2016 to 2021. She has also served on the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston's Advisory Council.

“Colleagues describe Cindy as someone who doesn’t shy away from a challenge and who makes the impossible possible through grit and determination,” said Cathedral Square CEO Kim Fitzgerald, who nominated Reid for the award. “What sets Cindy apart is that she has never treated this as just a job or a challenge to solve. She knows this work is about providing housing, safety, and community, and she pours her heart and soul into each project with residents and the broader world in mind.”

Fitzgerald added that Reid “listens closely to what residents need, and she is quite ingenious and persistent when it comes to making deals happen.”

Reid will retire at the end of this year. “There is no better way to honor that legacy than with an award named for someone who spent his own career in exactly that same pursuit,” Fitzgerald said.

Reid expressed gratitude for the recognition and said she is “passionate about social and economic justice, affordable housing, and aging with dignity.”

About the Erhard Mahnke Award: HHAV presents the award annually in recognition of lifelong work to support affordable housing in Vermont and beyond, steadfast dedication to equity, passion for legislative advocacy, policy acumen, and lasting impact on safe, affordable, and accessible housing policies and programs. It is named for Erhard Mahnke, longtime leader of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition and a strong advocate for its merger with the Vermont Coalition to End Homelessness that created HHAV. Mahnke played a central role in establishing the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, the cooperative housing model, the Champlain Housing Trust, and the bedrock principle of permanent affordability. He was also a longtime leader in the New England Housing Network and the National Low-Income Housing Coalition and capped his 30-year career on the staff of Senator Bernie Sanders, shaping federal housing policy.

About HHAV: The Housing & Homelessness Alliance of Vermont is a coalition of affordable housing and homelessness services providers that works toward a future in which all people living in Vermont have safe, stable, affordable homes, and where homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring. For more information, visit: hhav.org