Housing Connect Project Manager for the Division of Housing Opportunity

About the Agency:

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation Development (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.

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Your Team:

The Office of Housing Access and Stability (HAS) consists of the divisions of Housing Opportunities & Program Services, Tenant and Owner Resources, Housing Stability, Budget and Program Operations, and Program Policy and Innovation. Our mission of the office 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. Housing Access is committed to expanding housing choices, affirmatively furthering fair housing, and stabilizing the financial health of buildings.

The Division of Housing Opportunity & Program Services 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. Housing Opportunity & Program Services administers the housing lottery and homeless placements programs and crafts policy and procedures to ensure that these programs offer equal opportunity to all applicants and affirmatively further fair housing.

Your Impact:

As a Housing Connect Project Manager for the Divion of Housing Opportunity, you will work to ensure the fair and equitable distribution of affordable rental and homeownership opportunities. You will help to ensure that affordable housing serves the households it is intended to serve. You will help to make the process of accessing affordable housing inclusive and protective of applicants with housing instability, poor credit, justice involvement, disabilities, language access needs, complex income scenarios, and other barriers to housing. You will provide assistance to developers and applicants, alike, in navigating regulatory and statutory requirements to achieve successful lease ups of affordable housing.

Your Role:

Your role as a Project Manager in the Housing Connect program includes educating developers, marketing agents, and applicants on the Housing Connect lottery system; ensuring that developers and marketing agents adhere to the policies, procedures, and requirements for marketing and tenant selection, which are outlined in the HPD/HDC Marketing Handbook; and interacting with applicants and the public to provide assistance in the housing search and application process.

NYC Housing Connect 2.0:

You will be required to track and monitor the timely lease-up or sale of assigned projects administered through HPD’s online NYC Housing Connect system. You will work to ensure that marketing agents and developers adhere to the HPD Marketing Handbook during the unit designation and lease-up or sales process.

Meetings:

You will be required to chair or co-chair marketing and compliance meetings with developers and marketing agents. You will prepare the agendas and put together packages of program-related and project-specific materials for everyone attending these meetings.

Public events and communication:
You will be required to attend community outreach events where you will represent the Housing Connect program, handing out or presenting materials and answering questions about the affordable housing lottery process. You will also interact with housing applicants through the Housing Connect phone hotline and other day-to-day communications to ensure they have the information they need to navigate their housing search.

Field work:

You may be required to commute to various locations within the city, in order to perform on-site applicant file reviews, supervise the data entry of paper lottery applications, meet developers/marketing agents at a post office to open a P.O. Box to receive paper lottery applications, among other functions.

Your Responsibilities:

- Facilitating marketing and compliance meetings; reviewing developers’ marketing plans to ensure compliance with HPD’s Marketing guidelines
- Monitoring lotteries and reviewing lottery logs throughout the tenant selection period to ensure that applicants are processed in the appropriate order, taking into consideration preference categories and disability set asides
- Reviewing applicants’ files and required documentation to ensure they meet income and other eligibility standards
- Answering the Housing Connect hotline to assist applicants with any questions they may have about the lottery process by phone
- Reviewing and drafting correspondence in response to applicant inquiries, concerns, complaints, appeals

Preferred skills:
- Strong analytical ability and attention to detail
- Strong time management skills, demonstrated ability to work under tight deadlines and effectively manage multiple projects
- Excellent organizational and communication skills (oral and written)
- Proficiency in MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint; MS Access a plus
- Demonstrated ability to think creatively and be a team player
- Understanding of affordable housing and tax credit rules and regulations
- Familiarity with housing lotteries and the process of marketing affordable apartments and homes

Authorization to work in the United States is required for this position. The NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development does not provide sponsorship for international employees for visa applications, extensions, or status changes, including H-1B visas. Applicants are responsible for ensuring that they meet all qualifying requirements for this position at the time of application.

COMMUNITY COORDINATOR - 56058