Birmingham City Councilor Carol E. Clarke, who was elected in 2012 to represent District 8, will not seek re-election when her four-year term ends this year, she confirmed to AL.com.

No other councilors have thus far announced their re-election plans. The primary will take place on August 26.

In June 2023, Clark, a Birmingham native (and jazz fan) with a long-time interest in housing policy and affordable housing, was hired as CEO of Neighborhood Housing Services of Birmingham (NHSB).

NHSB, which was founded in 1970, works with Birmingham on various housing programs. So since accepting the position, Clarke has recused herself from city actions related to NHSB and avoided interacting with city employees in any discussions about its programming.

“I’ve been walking on eggshells ever since taking the job,” Clarke says. “I knew when I took it, I would not run again, so I had to make the decision then.”

In 2021, Clarke became the first female to represent her district (she lives in Bush Hills) by easily winning the general election with 51.7 percent of the vote in a field of eight candidates to replace long-time councilor Steven Hoyt, who had held the seat since 2005.

She calls the NHSB role a “dream job.”

“Anyone who knows me knows I care deeply about affordable housing and housing policy,” she says. “Quite frankly, my whole interest in city council was to work on housing policy because our city’s housing policy toolkit was so lacking.”

She says the toolkit “has improved markedly in some important ways.”

Clarke cites being involved in efforts that led state lawmakers to authorize the city to foreclose on code enforcement liens, “which will help the city to strategically reclaim vacant properties,” she says. “This is especially important when the value of the liens exceeds the value of the property.”

Other policy “triumphs” include a new workforce housing tax credit passed during the 2023 session. “It was funded for 3 years to a level that should allow for a good demonstration and hopefully lead to an extension and higher cap,” says Clarke.

Finally, Clarke points to a new state amendment that permits Jefferson County to grant a new property tax exemption to long-term homeowners who are 65 and older, which freezes property taxes.

NHSB is affiliated with NeighborWorks America, which was founded by and is funded by Congress. Though nearly 250 affiliates nationally, it “creates opportunities for people to live in affordable homes,” according to its website.

“My interest in this organization from day one was always that it was connected to NeighborWorks America,” Clarke says. “Being affiliated with a national powerhouse in community development gives us a lot of potential to bring a lot of things to bear on Birmingham that it really, really needs.”

Clarke’s interest in housing policy was sparked in 2000 when she joined then-Mayor Richard Arrington as a consultant and saw those “two strange words”—housing and policy — in her position description.

“I didn’t really know what it was,” she says. “But it set me on this path of being interested in impacting housing policy in Birmingham.

“We had this machine that tore down houses,” she said. “A well-oiled machine to handle abatements and structures, but we didn’t have a programmatic thrust for the replacement of housing units. So, we’ve been tearing down hundreds of houses for decades, but we haven’t been saving them or replacing them. So, those two words changed my life.”

Joining NHSB, she says, is “the fulfillment of a quest that I was set in motion in 2000 with those two words: housing policy.”

In other public service roles, Clarke was named to the Birmingham School Board in 2012 as a District 4 replacement for board president Edward Maddox, who resigned as part of a plea agreement after being charged with two counts of using a public office for personal gain.

She has also worked for four Birmingham mayors. After Arrington retired months before the end of his term, Clarke continued consulting for Interim Mayor William Bell (who assumed the role from his position as City Council president). She later became director of Economic Development with Bernard Kinkaid and worked for two months for Larry Langford before joining Regions Bank as head of supplier diversity in the procurement department.

Prior to johnson NHSB, Clark was project director and community development specialist for Corporate Realty, where she worked closely with residents during the redevelopment of the Southtown public housing community.

No candidates have yet announced that they will run for the seat.