Event Description: NYC’s Chief Housing Officer Jessica Katz will speak about the current housing crisis with activists, scholars, and CUNY students. The discussion will be moderated by Tom Angotti; Professor Emeritus and former Director of CUNY Hunter College’s Center for Policy and Planning. Speakers include Jessica Katz; NYC Chief Housing Officer, Hattie Elmore; CUNY Kingsborough Academic Student Support Program Director, Jason Leggett; Kingsborough professor of Behavioral and Political Science, Shaindy Weichman; former Kingsborough Student and Rob Robinson; community organizer, housing activist, and human rights defender.

About the Speakers

Tom Angotti is Professor Emeritus of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He was the founder and director of the Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development. His recent books include Transformative Planning: Radical Alternatives to Neoliberal Urbanism, Zoned Out! Race, Displacement and City Planning in New York City, Urban Latin America: Inequalities and Neoliberal Reforms, The New Century of the Metropolis, New York For Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate, which won the Davidoff Book Award, and Accidental Warriors and Battlefield Myths. He is an editor of progressivecity.net and Participating Editor for Latin American Perspectives and Local Environment. He is active in community and environmental issues in New York City.

Jessica Katz is New York City’s Chief Housing Officer. Katz oversees the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the New York City Housing Authority, the Housing Development Corporation, the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations, and the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. Katz most recently served as executive director of the research nonprofit Citizens Housing and Planning Council, where she led a policy and research agenda on topics ranging from basement apartment conversions to equitable code enforcement to resident decision-making at NYCHA. She previously served for over ten years at HPD, most recently as the associate commissioner for New Construction, where she oversaw the creation of affordable and special needs housing. Katz held a variety of roles at HPD, including as assistant commissioner of Special Needs Housing, senior adviser to the commissioner, and assistant commissioner for Preservation Finance. Katz holds a BA in Urban Geography from McGill University and a Masters in City Planning from MIT.

Rob Robinson is a formerly homeless community organizer and activist based in New York City. His work focuses on changing people’s fundamental relationship with land and housing. He works with social movements around the world including the Movement of People Affected by Dams in Brazil (MAB), the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil (MST), Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa (the Shackdwellers movement), and the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages in Spain (the PAH). Rob is the USA-Canada Coordinator of the International Alliance of Inhabitants, an alliance of 12,000 members worldwide which supports a Zero Evictions Platform. As a longtime member of the US Human Rights Network, his work is framed in international human rights law. In the US he works with communities on several social issues including, poverty and debt, police violence against the poor, gentrification, and access to broadband. He is a regular guest lecturer at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He has lectured at several US law school human rights institutes, including the University of Miami, Northeastern University Massachusetts, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard.  Rob is currently an adjunct professor of Urbanism in the Design and Urban Ecology program at Parsons New School University.

Hattie Elmore, MSW, is the Program Director for the Access Resource Center and Special Programs at Kingsborough Community College. Hattie prides herself on being a “Student Advocate” while empowering students to advocate for themselves in any and all situations. Prior to coming to Kingsborough nine years ago, Hattie worked for a community-based organization where she supported historically marginalized communities in obtaining benefits as well as legal and financial support. At Kingsborough, she continues the good fight and, as a result of listening to students, has incorporated many more resources to support their academic success. Hattie works holistically when serving students or community members by meeting each person where they are and allowing them to decide what it is they want and need by being fully present and supportive throughout the process. Hattie is a proud CUNY alumna and has earned her Master’s degree in Social Work from the Hunter Silberman School of Social Work, has a Bachelor’s degree from John Jay College in criminology, and her Associate’s degree in paralegal studies from LaGuardia Community College. In 2021, Hattie became a certified holistic coach to further solidify her passion of helping people. 

Jason Leggett is an Assistant Professor of Law and Society, CUNY Kingsborough. He holds a J.D. from Seattle University and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Washington. Leggett has published articles about the social construction of technology as well as participatory action research with diverse students with an emphasis on civic engagement, culturally responsive pedagogy, and equity. Leggett’s current grant-funded projects include working with students as co-researchers to integrate digital technology with action research in order to study structural displacement related to sea-level rise, housing injustice, and migration.

Shaindy Weichman is a former Kingsborough Student. Shaindy is a visual artist and a community activist, Shaindy Weichman contributed to the UnHomeless NYC website content. Shaindy grew up in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox community. By 19 years old, she was already a wife and mother. At the start of a four-year-long custody battle, she was made homeless by a court order in which she had to leave her home. She also sought to be granted the right to enroll her son in a school that provided students with basic secular education, unlike the ultra-Orthodox yeshiva he had been attending since the age of three that did not. Despite ultimately losing the custody battle and the right to change her son’s school, today Shaindy is a strong advocate for her community’s right and access to basic secular education as a Parent Ambassador with YAFFED (Young Advocates For Fair Education) https://yaffed.org/. Shaindy is a 2020 recipient of the Armstrong and Dorothy Lim Award in Photography and a 2022 semifinalist for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship.