Enterprise Community Partners is seeking a Fellow to support the development of a comprehensive program related to the preservation of public housing in New York. 

About Enterprise

Enterprise’s mission is to create opportunity for low- and moderate-income people through affordable housing in diverse, thriving communities. We are also committed to addressing the impacts of long-standing racial segregation and sustained disinvestment in neighborhoods. Enterprise provides programs and expertise, advocates for effective policies, and raises and leverages financial resources to help communities create and preserve safe, healthy affordable housing. Over more than 30 years, Enterprise has invested $16 billion to create or preserve nearly 320,000 affordable homes nationwide, including nearly 50,000 in New York, and touched millions of lives. Enterprise employees create opportunities for low-income families to open doors to hope and opportunity. Enterprise incubates new programs to solve persistent issues related to affordable housing and community development, scales them up through capital, and transforms systems through policy change.

Enterprise recognizes diversity as a driving force that allows us to further our goal of building stronger communities, ending housing insecurity, and lifting individuals out of poverty. We believe an inclusive environment broadens our perspective, enabling us to better support the communities we serve, and makes for a richer, more dynamic place to work every day.

The preservation of public housing communities is one of Enterprise’s key strategies to address the preservation of affordable housing and to better connect residents to opportunity across all neighborhoods. Public housing provides affordable homes to our region’s most vulnerable residents, including extremely low-income families and seniors. Enterprise has identified three core pillars of this program:

1. Support stakeholder and resident engagement so that public housing preservation strategies are shaped by stakeholder and resident input and residents are empowered and educated through the process of preservation.
2. Enhance service connections to better expand access to neighborhood services.
3. Integrate green, healthy and resilient design practices into preservation projects and develop participatory design strategies.

Our accomplishments related to public housing preservation in New York include:

• With the support of the Atlantic Philanthropies, Enterprise partnered with six public housing authorities, including the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), to strengthen peer networks of older adults living in public housing. This work helped increase the confidence and empowerment of low-income older adults, improved housing authorities’ understanding of resident needs, and directly improved the delivery of health and social services to low-income senior residents. Following conversations with NYCHA residents, Enterprise delivered a best-practices memo to NYCHA leadership in 2013 on how to help NYCHA’s seniors find alternative housing solutions that let them age safely and independently in place, while freeing up larger units to help the thousands of families on NYCHA’s waiting list.

• With support from ConEdison, Enterprise developed an energy and water retrofit strategy for 66 NYCHA developments (31,000 apartments). The project envisions a three-year, $140 million program that would generate up to $14 million in annual utility savings while reducing the peak electrical load by 12 MW.

• The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship partners early-career architectural designers with local community development organizations, where they facilitate an inclusive development approach to create green, sustainable, and affordable communities. The 2016-2018 cohort includes a Rose Fellow at NYCHA, who is focused on supporting the Authority’s design excellence goal, including developing a peer design review and developing design guidelines.

• In winter 2016, Enterprise and other partners convened a diverse set of stakeholders, including NYCHA, community-based and advocacy organizations, and NYCHA residents to develop a set of guiding principles to ensure the preservation of resident rights as NYCHA leverages new financing programs to preserve 15,000 units of public housing. This group of stakeholders is also developing tools and strategies to engage and educate residents in the preservation process.

• Enterprise is a partner with the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery on their Public Housing Resiliency Pilot, funded by the National Disaster Resiliency Competition. Through this program, Enterprise is working with four public housing agencies in New York State to incorporate resilience and disaster preparedness into their properties and operations.

Job Responsibilities

The Fellow will build on the work above to support the implementation of a robust programmatic approach to preserving public housing that counteracts systemic disinvestment in our region’s public housing, and leverages programs, capital solutions, and policies that promote healthy, green, and resilient public housing communities better connected to their neighborhoods. As part of this work, the Fellow will also help facilitate collaboration across departments in Enterprise’s New York Office.

Specific responsibilities will include:

• Lead the implementation of projects related to the preservation of public housing properties and improvement of design and energy efficiency of public housing portfolios
• Create and pilot tools that support the three goals of empowering residents, enhancing connections to services and neighborhood amenities, and integrating green, healthy and resilient design practices.
• Manage events and stakeholder convenings
• Support internal strategy and coordination across programs
• Work with Program Director to strategize on the evolution of the program
• Work with our communications team to create case studies and other materials that highlight our work to date

Because of the developing nature of this program, the Fellow will need to be nimble, creative, thoughtful and persistent in identifying, assessing, and developing new opportunities to add value to the field. The Fellow will consult closely with Enterprise NY Office leadership on this work, and will receive ample support and feedback.  At the same time, the Fellow will have a unique opportunity to have a significant impact on the direction of the work.

This position is for one year and includes full benefits

Qualifications

• Graduate degree in relevant area (public administration, urban planning, social sciences, development, etc.) or undergraduate degree and at least 2 years of related work experience
• Self-directed and motivated, and persistent at collecting and synthesizing information from various sources
• Strong project management skills
• Enthusiasm, flexibility, and creativity
• Experience working in collaborative teams and a diverse set of stakeholders
• Strong research skills, including ability to independently direct research and collect information from sources both publicly and non-publicly available
• Strong written/oral communication and organizational skills
• Familiarity with the affordable housing and/or public housing sectors a plus
• Experience with resident engagement and education a plus

This position is located in NYC and reports to Michelle Mulcahy, Program Director and Chief of Staff.