teacher housing in San Francisco and communities with excess land set aside for schools. Under the program, HUD financing supported construction and rental assistance for housing dedicated for teachers. San Jose, California, has a similar program now in effect. Agnos worked with city leaders throughout the region to create the first funding for homeless coordination between neighboring cities to address concerns that services were not well matched with those in need. Agnos also led an effort to combat predatory lending aimed at minority homeowners and to repeal "racial covenants" barring non-whites from living or staying overnight in many California communities. Agnos worked with his mentor former California Assembly Speaker and Lt. Governor Leo T. McCarthy to establish the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at the University of San Francisco. He has frequently been called upon by the US State Department, the National Democratic Institute, the Asia Foundation, and other international bodies to provide leadership development on democracy building, including in the Russian Far East, the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Zaire, Sierra Leone, Angola, Korea, and as one of the first officials to arrive in Bethlehem to offer disaster assistance after the Palestinian-Israeli army siege of the Church of the Nativity ended on May 10, 2002. He also is frequently sought as a speaker on disaster preparedness and recovery. In 2007, Agnos was appointed as receiver for the troubled San Francisco Housing Authority. The Housing Authority sued to block the court order, and the matter went before the California Court of Appeals. The city still failed to act for two years, while appealing Agnos' appointment. By April 2009, the SF Chronicle reported that continued inaction while Agnos' appointment remained in court "seemed to jolt City Hall into action. Agnos never took control of the agency; instead, Fortner resigned under pressure from Newsom, who appointed Mirian Saez, director of operations at Treasure Island, to run the agency on an interim basis before hiring Alvarez. Under Saez and then Alvarez, the agency sold off properties to satisfy the judgments." Agnos' most recent projects also include advising the founders of Open House, the first senior housing planned for elderly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in San Francisco as well as a project working with young families seeking to improve neighborhood schools in their neighborhood of Potrero Hill in San Francisco, and he has worked as a consultant