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Builder and Housing Advocate David K. Hill Dies in Illinois
 David K. Hill — executive chairman of the Rolling Meadows, Ill.-based Kimball Hill Homes; a major leader in efforts to modernize the nation’s housing finance system; and an advocate for affordable workforce housing — died on July 26 at a hospital in Park Ridge of complications from melanoma. He was 67.
“David had a deep, unfaltering passion for the home building industry, his company and most of all, his fellow associates, and his spirit will live on within each of us,” said Ken Love, president and CEO of Kimball Hill Homes.
Hill was at the helm of his home building company for almost 40 years. Under his leadership, Kimball Hill Homes grew into one of the largest privately held home building companies in the U.S. David Hill followed in the footsteps of his father, Kimball, who started building homes in 1939 to help his fellow veterans find affordable, quality housing.
Both father and son are inductees in NAHB’s National Housing Hall of Fame in recognition of their lasting contributions to the industry.
David Hill helped create the Housing Finance Division of NAHB, enabling the association to become one of Washington, D.C.’s most effective advocates for housing finance issues. He was a co-founder of the Home Mortgage Access Corporation and helped market its mortgage commitment programs with Fannie Mae and others. Hill chaired the Mortgage Roundtable and served on the Fannie Mae Advisory Board.
From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, Hill served as a primary NAHB liaison with the three housing government-sponsored enterprises, helping to shape the association’s positions of support for the mortgage securitization of home loans.
Appointed by President George Bush, he served on the Federal Home Loan Bank Board of Chicago from 1991 to 1994.
Hill served for three years as chairman of the NAHB Affordable Housing Task Force, during which time he helped work on affordable housing mortgage programs; fought for more liberal mortgage underwriting criteria; and convened the first National Homeless Conference in Washington shortly before the 1987 enactment of the McKinney Act, the first and only major federal legislation responding to homelessness.
Born on Nov. 22, 1940 in Evanston, Ill., Hill graduated from Princeton University and Northwestern University Law School. He practiced law in Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Hill was a former president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago, and he remained actively involved in NAHB through his membership in the High Production Builders Council.
Hill is survived by his wife, Diane; son, David; sister Georgia Walter; brother, Tracy and numerous nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Nancy Marling.
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