Jerilyn Perine

An urban planner with 40 years of experience in housing and community development, Ms. Perine has served in a variety of roles in New York City, most notably as the Commissioner of NYC’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, America’s largest municipal housing agency, for both Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

She was the principal author of Mayor Bloomberg''s New Housing Marketplace Plan that provided $3 billion over five years to preserve and create 65,000 units of affordable housing. With demand for housing increasing and availability of buildable sites decreasing, the Housing Plan provided financial incentives to New York City''s private market to create affordable housing with below cost financing and tax relief coupled with a strategy of rezoning and targeted financial assistance to redevelop derelict industrial areas.

Ms. Perine established and chaired the Mayor Bloomberg’s Neighborhood Investment Panel which includes housing professionals from New York''s banks, philanthropic organizations, research institutions, academia and the not for profit and for profit development industry in an effort to restructure the agency''s programs and monitor the effectiveness of the housing plan.

Under Mayor Giuliani, Ms. Perine designed and managed programs designed to return tax foreclosed, abandoned residential property to local, private ownership and to prevent future cycles of abandonment. She successfully developed and negotiated with HUD, a plan to save small buildings purchased through HUD''s 203(k) program which was plagued by scandal. She negotiated a settlement of a long-standing legal battle over the City''s community gardens, which preserved gardens and allowed more than 3000 units of affordable housing construction to proceed.

Since 2006, Ms. Perine has served as the Executive Director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, a research and policy analysis not for profit organization focused on supporting public policy that improves access to affordable housing and sound land use planning principles. There she has led their effort Making Room which has helped to rethink housing typologies to serve a changing population. CHPC’s work has influenced changes to the NYC Zoning Resolution that help to expand the supply of housing, accommodate more single adults, and improve the design of residential buildings.  She has expanded CHPC’s research and policy work beyond the confines of report writing to include interactive digital mapping, museum exhibitions, interactive public discussions, and gaming technology.  She established the William R. Ginsberg Fellowship program for graduate students and international and national housing experts.  www.chpcny.org

Ms. Perine has lectured extensively at conferences in the U.S. and abroad including Germany, Austria, Spain, Israel, the UK and Northern Ireland. She has coauthored with Michael Schill (currently President of the University of Oregon) Reflecting on NYC''s Housing Policy: 1987-2004, an article that was included in Neighbourhood Renewal and Housing Markets:Community Engagement in the US and UK, edited by Harris Beider and published through the University of Birmingham, England in 2006 by Blackwell Publishing.

Affiliations

Board of Directors West Side Federation of Senior and Supportive Housing

Board of Directors Highbridge Voices