After more than a decade of going to bat for affordable housing developers, Jolie Milstein is leaving the New York State Association for Affordable Housing.
Milstein, who joined the organization in May 2014, is stepping down as CEO and president at the end of June. The organization, which represents more than 350 developers, lenders, architects and others who work in affordable housing, is searching for her replacement.
Before joining NYSAFAH, Milstein, a licensed architect, worked for Praxis Supportive Housing Initiative, where she developed supportive housing and found ways to incorporate horticulture-focused amenities into her projects.
After leaving NYSAFAH, Milstein will turn her attention back to design, joining AvardDaniels Architecture, an architecture firm focused on adaptive reuse. As a principal at the firm, she will work on transforming hospital and medical buildings into housing.
“When there is a hospital that’s closed, short of bringing back hospital services, communities want to see this building that they’ve known and depended on put to a very good purpose,” she said. “Housing often is the answer to that question, ‘what can we do with this building?’”
Ahead of her departure, Milstein spoke with The Real Deal about her time at NYSAFAH and what lies ahead for the organization.
What do you remember from when you first joined NYSAFAH?
I was recruited from my previous job as an in-house developer for a not-for-profit, supportive housing group. I was very proud of the work I was doing, and I said no the first couple of times I was approached to interview for this. And then Bill de Blasio had been elected mayor, but he announced his housing plan with billions of dollars for affordable housing, and that kind of was a paradigm shift for me. I thought, I can make a much bigger impact doing statewide policy than these one-off buildings.
What was the environment like for building new housing?
Things were different. HPD, HTC and HCR were encouraging new projects in the pipeline. I think the barriers to entry are higher now, and the pipeline is more clogged up. I know intimately the problems, because we are the complaint department for the industry.
What are you hearing from developers?
The existential threat of the federal government looms large over all. We don’t know what’s real and what’s just talk. The uncertainty is problematic. And despite what we see as some successes in Congress with trying to get an expansion of the low-income housing tax credit and a couple of other positive things, the threat of pulling funding for rental support across the state, that’s a real distinct threat, probably the biggest one.
What do you consider your biggest policy success with the organization?
Institutionalizing a regular funding stream for affordable housing, mostly the state five-year plan. It wasn’t done by us alone, but we helped lead this effort. The governor, then Cuomo, began to understand that you needed a housing budget with dependability, like an MTA budget, that this needs to be institutionalized as a regular funding stream. Also, on the funding side, the state low-income housing tax credit that got done and expanded and expanded again this year, especially at a time when the federal government may be pulling back a bit or at least recalibrating their commitment to funding, is extremely important and a great model for other states.
Is there anything that you wish you had been able to kind of get across the finish line?
Yes, repeal of the scaffold law [which holds property owners liable when construction workers are injured in height-related falls]. This is an insane thing that I have spent way too much time trying to unwind. We’re the only state in the country that still has this bizarre, problematic law on the books. It looks like at the federal level, we have a champion who may try and address some major part of this very expensive, antiquated law. Hope springs eternal. I deeply regret not having gotten it over the finish line during my tenure, but I’m optimistic that perhaps it could still happen in 2025.
So it’s kind of a weird moment: There are both existential threats, but also policies on the horizon that you’d like to see done?
We’re the housing party. We’ve always been bipartisan. I’m the founding president of the consortium of all the state associations, and we have affordable housing groups in red states, blue states and in purple states. We don’t really talk about politics when we come to solve housing problems. I’ll be in DC next week, meeting with a lot of my colleagues and talking about how we can push agendas forward. We’re very opportunistic, and under a Democratic president, we got some wins, but not as many as we’d like. And we’re agnostic as to who gets it over the finish line. We just need to see these changes implemented. You have to be like speaking Esperanza, you have to be the go-between and not let politics or preconceived notions about what’s doable get in your way, and just go in and try and be compelling with well-researched data and find common ground around a shared problem in red and blue states.
What’s in store for NYSAFAH?
There’s a lot of things up in the air. There’s the mayoral election, which is huge, there’s the federal impact on the governor’s very ambitious housing agenda. I think expanding the coalition of affordable housing advocates is important going forward. It’s a big, complicated industry, and I think an expanded footprint would be great, and just staying nimble with how to negotiate the mayorality, whoever steps into those shoes, and paying attention to making friends in Washington.
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