NYCHA’s Department of Strategy & Innovation

Under the leadership of Chair Greg Russ, NYCHA created a new department that is leading efforts to transform the Authority so that it can better serve residents. Its establishment was also a significant structural change made toward compliance with the agreement between NYCHA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which requires the Authority to change the way it operates to become a more effective landlord.

NYCHANow spoke with Eva Trimble, the department’s newly appointed executive vice president, to learn more about the department and its goals.

You’ve spent the last two decades in city government analyzing economic and budgetary data. At the Department of Housing Preservation & Development, you oversaw financial management, tenant resources, asset and property management, technology, and human resources. What experience most prepared you for this new role?

Every experience, no matter how minor, came together to prepare me for this role. They’ve given me the technical expertise and deep understanding of processes that allowed me to see beyond the math: the people that our programs impact and the direct effect on their lives. But it was as a budget analyst early in my career that I learned to ask the kind of questions that would lead to those insights and that set that approach for the rest of my career. What is the impact we’re having? What are the tradeoffs? What is the cost? Are we meeting the right combination of needs? It was the same with later positions that focused on finance and accounting. However, it was when I worked with Section 8 housing that I fell in love.

What intrigued you about Section 8?

It dealt with the areas that I most enjoyed in prior jobs: operations, policy, and analysis. But it also had a direct service impact, a human connection. At the end of a day I could say, “I knew we helped give people new homes.”

What is the purpose of the Department of Strategy and Innovation?

For now, the department will focus on engaging with the federal monitor, Bart Schwartz, and with consultants to develop a strategic vision and organization plan for the Authority. We see the monitor as someone who not only ensures that we comply with the agreement but who is also part of a collaborative relationship. He is helping us prioritize and coordinate efforts to turn the Authority around and make it responsive to residents’ immediate needs – and that coincides with the department’s long-term mission: to completely transform the culture of NYCHA and the way it does business.

We need to move away from constantly responding to emergency situations and instead direct our time and resources to keep them from ever occurring at all, to being more proactive, not reactive. More than that, we need to turn NYCHA into an innovative national leader in public housing, one that becomes “the first to…” (and we’ll find creative ways to finish this sentence).

How is the department structured?

Currently, there are two sections: Performance Management & Analytics comprising the Performance Tracking & Analytics Department (led by Anne-Marie Flatley and Sybille Louis, respectively) and Strategic Planning (headed by Arvind Sohoni). We will be adding a Special Counsel position that will focus on compliance and legal issues, and work directly with the monitor.

Although that’s the department’s bare-bones structure, I’m excited to work with all aspects of the Authority – from operations, to capital, to community engagement and partnerships. There’s tremendous talent at NYCHA, people who care deeply about what they are doing and have been doing for many years. By working together, we can make the positive changes that we need to make, and must make. If we do that, failure is impossible.

What exactly does NYCHA’s transformation effort involve?

We have a two-pronged approach; the first concerns achieving the short-term results required by the agreement, the second concerns the process by which we achieve those results and adopt it agency-wide to change how we approach, well, everything.

First, we are working closely with Operations to address the six pillars, the areas that require remediation and reform set out in the agreement. They include lead-based paint, mold, heating, pests/waste, elevators, and inspections. We want to find ways for residents to start seeing immediate improvements in their quality of life. But it also includes restructuring the institution, its management, organization, and workforce to make it more responsive to residents’ needs and set the stage for a new role as a national leader.

Secondly, to accomplish these things, I am looking to apply the principles of “service design.” It’s based on the same ideas of user-centered design, which has been very effective in the tech sector to improve customer experience, increase efficiency, reduce costs, grow customer loyalty, and promote trust. It uses prototyping and usability testing to ensure that an agency does not invest scarce resources on products and services that are not needed or frustrating to use. It’s more than approach, though. It is a new way of thinking. We don’t start by asking, what do we have to offer? And we do have much to offer. We start by asking, what do residents need? The entire institution needs to be rebuilt around the answers to that question. When we talk about transforming NYCHA, that’s how we will do it, by putting residents first.