Robert Ford started working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development before he had even graduated from college. 

His decision to depart the agency during the early days of the second Trump administration — after nearly a quarter century, in which he rose to be the top HUD official in eastern Pennsylvania — came with a lot of heartache.

“I check in on my closest friends who are still there,” Ford said of his former co-workers.  “The workload has gotten significantly higher because a lot of people left last year.”

The housing expert is now dividing his time between several new ventures. In addition to working as a real estate agent and an affordable housing consultant, Ford is the defensive line coach for the West Chester University football team.

And earlier this month, Ford was appointed by Mayor Ed Brown to serve on the Planning Commission for Upper Darby, a municipality bordering Philadelphia that is the sixth most populous in the state.

Ford’s last day as a HUD employee was April 30, 2025. 

He started with a summer internship facilitated by an uncle who worked at the agency and rose to become the field office director leading HUD's Philadelphia office, which oversees the agency's operations in 38 counties across eastern Pennsylvania.

Ford stayed with the agency through the entire first Trump administration, which he said went fine: “Other than the secretary he brought in, everyone had a housing background and an idea of how HUD operated.”

But as the president’s new set of appointees took control of the agency in early 2025, Ford realized the situation would be different this time around. 

The effort to downsize the federal government’s footprint, spearheaded by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, led to the creation of a deferred resignation program. This allowed workers to avoid return-to-office mandates and retain their retirement benefits if they agreed to depart later that year.

Ford, who had intended to stay at HUD until he was eligible for retirement at age 58, didn’t initially opt in.

“I didn’t want to leave my job,” the 45-year-old said.

But the HUD lifer changed his mind after his position was reclassified to Schedule F, which made him easier to fire. If Ford was canned under the new designation, he could have lost all of his retirement benefits.

“If you came into the office and just looked at someone the wrong way, they could decide to fire you,” he said.

“It sucked. It really was a hard decision to make. It was an emotional decision to make,” he said of leaving the agency. “The work environment was terrible. … They didn’t treat career HUD employees as the experts they were.”

After departing, Ford spent a month assessing his situation before his schedule started to fill up again.

He became a certified real estate agent in Pennsylvania and Maryland last year and now works selling residences in Philly and Delaware County through Realty One Group. He primarily deals in single-family homes, but he has also sold properties as large as six units.

He also started a consultancy called RJF Property Strategies, in which Ford helps affordable housing companies file paperwork correctly with HUD and other federal agencies.

He is now hoping to use his housing expertise to aid the township where he lived for most of his career while he was at HUD.

“I’ve lived in Upper Darby for 22 years now,” the West Philadelphia native said of his new Planning Commission role in the dense suburb just outside city limits.

“The times that I’ve given back to the community, it’s pretty much been Philadelphia. That was my original community,” he said. “This is my opportunity to give back to Upper Darby.”

The former Northeast High School football star, whose college dreams were ended by an injury, also decided to turn his two-plus decades of youth and high school coaching into a part-time career.

After leading the team at Monsignor Bonner & Archbishop Prendergast Catholic High School in Upper Darby to a statewide divisional championship in 2024, he was tapped to help lead WCU’s defensive squad.

Ford said his coaching background helped him excel in the federal government. 

“One thing I learned from football was that every player responds to you differently. … I feel like football taught me that same lesson while I was a leader at HUD,” he said.

“Every employee, every director, every person, any stakeholder I ran across had their own motivations. It was my job to find out what that motivation was and what helped them make the best outcome.”

In Upper Darby, Ford aims to enable the construction of more housing without sacrificing its limited remaining green space.

He saw the potential for adaptive reuse projects, some of which he oversaw at the agency, to help accomplish that goal.

“If there are places in Upper Darby that are old industrial, old commercial and no longer being utilized in that way, let's find a way to redevelop that space, get it active again and hopefully make it housing or mixed-use,” he said.

Ford also sees an opportunity for upzoning around 69th Street as a way to generate more housing and foot traffic. The neighborhood, anchored by a dense SEPTA transit hub and a retail corridor, is walkable but riddled with vacancy.

Ford said SEPTA is pushing multifamily construction at some of its other stations around the region and pointed to suburban mixed-use projects like the King of Prussia Town Center as potential inspirations.

Some of the greatest accomplishments he cited from his time at HUD were rehabilitations of struggling neighborhoods.

Ford was particularly proud of the $30M grant his former team issued to the Philadelphia Housing Authority to help redevelop Sharswood in North Philadelphia.

PHA moved its headquarters to the neighborhood after tearing down a derelict high-rise complex and is adding hundreds of lower-density townhome-style apartments.

“That neighborhood has totally changed for the better,” Ford said. “I’m very proud of that.”