Assistant Commissioner for the Division of Housing Opportunity

City of New York • New York City, NY

2d

About The Position

About the Agency: The New York City Department of Housing Preservation (HPD) promotes quality and affordability in the city's housing, and diversity and strength in the city’s neighborhoods because every New Yorker deserves a safe, affordable place to live in a neighborhood they love. - We maintain building and resident safety and health - We create opportunities for New Yorkers through housing affordability - We engage New Yorkers to build and sustain neighborhood strength and diversity. Your Team: The mission of the Office of Housing Access and Stability (HAS) is to ensure fair, efficient, and transparent access to affordable housing. HAS provides subsidies, placement services, and tools that connect New Yorkers to affordable housing and ensures vulnerable households in subsidized housing have the support they need to be safely housed. HAS is committed to expanding housing choices, affirmatively furthering fair housing, and stabilizing the financial health of buildings. HAS consists of the divisions of Housing Opportunity, Tenant and Owner Resources, Housing Stability, Budget and Program Operations, and Program Policy and Innovation. The Division of Housing Opportunity (DHO) ensures that HPD’s affordable housing is made available through fair, transparent, and accessible programming. Developers creating affordable housing are required to offer many types of units through an open lottery process on NYC Housing Connect and fill other units through a placement process for households in the City’s shelter system. The Division of Housing Opportunity (DHO) administers the housing lottery and homeless placements programs, as well as rental subsidy coordination for supportive housing and the Housing Ambassador Program. DHO also and crafts policy and procedures to ensure that these programs offer equal opportunity to all applicants and affirmatively further fair housing. Your Impact: As Assistant Commissioner of Housing Opportunity, you will play a pivotal role in shaping one of the nation’s largest affordable housing placement systems. You will drive the strategy, policy operations, staff development, policy development, and performance of HPD’s programs to connect thousands of New Yorkers each year to affordable housing opportunities. This is a mission-critical leadership position for someone who wants to build and steward systems that advance housing equity, improve public trust, and deliver results at scale. You will serve as HPD’s senior subject matter expert on affordable housing access, helping to implement high-priority City initiatives and representing the agency across City government and to non-profit and private sector partners who play key roles in the leasing, marketing and placements of affordable housing units. In recent years, DHO has connected over 10,000 households with affordable units through the Housing Connect lottery system (a system with over 1m users), assisted 2,500 households with accessing rental subsidy, and made over 4,000 placements of homeless households into permanent housing per year, and launched and expanded a time-sensitive citywide housing navigator program for several thousand emergency rental voucher holders. You will report to the Associate Commissioner of Housing Opportunity and Placement Services and lead major initiatives to house New Yorkers, strengthen policies, streamline processes, enhance technologies, and improve accountability in housing access processes. Your leadership will help ensure New Yorkers in need of affordable housing and subsidies can access opportunities as quickly as possible through systems routed in fairness, transparency and efficiency while making sure that the City’s investment in affordable housing succeeds in leasing or selling units to eligible households.

Requirements

• A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college and four years of satisfactory, responsible, full-time experience in public relations, journalism, advertising, or a related field, at least 18 months of which must have been in an administrative, consultative, managerial or executive capacity; or
• Education and/or experience equivalent to “1” above. However, all candidates must possess the 19 months of administrative, consultative, managerial or executive experience as described above.

Nice To Haves

• Experience managing cross-functional teams and objectives-driven, performance-based operations
• Experience collaborating with a variety of partners and customers across sectors and levels
• Exceptional written and verbal communication and presentation skills
• Experience with affordable housing regulations, lotteries, rental subsidies, and/or LIHTC compliance
• Working knowledge of the Federal Fair Housing Act and State and City Human Rights Laws
• Facility with data analytics and business intelligence tools, and use of data to communicate performance
• Experience advising on aspects of program processes for technology projects

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop four high-performing teams, with approximately 85 employees, including four Directors, five Deputy Directors, team leaders, data and policy analysts, project managers, program coordinators, and temporary staff. Foster a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration and professional growth.
• Co-manage NYC’s affordable housing lottery system in close partnership with the NYC Housing Development Corporation. Shape and refine fair housing policy in collaboration with HPD’s Offices of Policy & Strategy, Legal Affairs, and the NYC Law Department. Ensure that housing lottery and placement programs advance equity and comply with fair housing laws.
• Spearhead special initiatives to further the City’s housing priorities, in alignment with the administration’s priorities.
• Serve as key advisor on media requests, proposed legislation, and public communication for HPD and HDC’s External Affairs and Communications teams.
• Impact HPD development and asset management policies by partnering with HPD’s Offices of Development and Asset & Property Management to inform and strengthen development processes and regulatory compliance (including Low Income Housing Tax Credit compliance).
• Collaborate with the NYC Department of Social Services and other City agencies to modernize and operationalize referral processes, policies, and systems for connecting homeless New Yorkers with permanent housing opportunities.
• Build and sustain partnerships with subsidy administration programs, maintain and expand connections with HPD’s subsidy administration programs, serving a variety of rental subsidy recipients in affordable housing and on the market.
• Deliver public presentations and trainings to government leaders, housing developers/marketing agents, housing seekers, community boards, and advocacy organizations.
• Act as the business lead and subject-matter lead on major technology initiatives, guiding product development for systems for systems that support the housing lottery, homeless placements, and rental subsidy administration.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive
• Number of Employees: 101-250 employees