Behind the Data: Saul Mackler to Retire After 40 Years of NYCHA Service
In honor of Jewish Heritage Month, we are featuring NYCHA employee Saul Mackler, whose retirement this summer will conclude 40 years of dedicated service to the Authority.
Mr. Mackler arrived at NYCHA on April 29, 1985, after taking the Housing Assistant exam almost exactly one year earlier. Back then, many of the Authority’s systems still relied heavily on paper processes and older-generation computing. Over the following years, Mr. Mackler’s work took place at the center of one of the most important transformations in NYCHA’s history: the development and stewardship of the digital systems that track tenancy, occupancy, rent collection, annual reviews, and other critical information.
Beginning in the early 1990s, Mr. Mackler played an essential role in NYCHA’s AS/400 operations, helping install and support evolving tenant-data and rent-collection systems.
Over time, his responsibilities expanded well beyond technical operations. He taught field staff how to use the systems, performed quality assurance, interpreted housing policy for programmers translating regulations into software, and produced reports relied upon throughout NYCHA — from frontline staff to executive leadership. Along the way, he became a central repository for how information moves and lives within the Authority.
His work has often involved answering critical operational questions: How long does it take to re-rent an apartment? What is the current rental delinquency rate? How quickly are annual reviews being completed? Through decades of organizational change and evolving technology, Mr. Mackler has been a steady presence connecting data, policy, operations, and staff.
Mr. Mackler has also long been active in Batei Tsibur, the Organization of Jewish Employees at NYCHA, where he serves officially as Secretary/Treasurer but where, in the words of Daniel Mahpour, the association’s leader, “he always has done much more – shopping, schlepping, putting fliers together, setting up the rooms, reminding me of upcoming events and more…he has been the cornerstone of our organization.”
Born in Brooklyn in 1962 but raised primarily in Queens, Mr. Mackler grew up in a conservative Jewish household. His father was a World War II veteran; his grandfather was an immigrant from the Baltic region who unloaded fruit ships on Manhattan docks. Another branch of his family once lived in the Lower East Side tenements that were later demolished to make way for NYCHA’s Vladeck Houses.
Today, Jewish practice remains an important part of Mr. Mackler’s life. Together with his life partner Jacqueline Gold, he participates in weekly Shabbat dinners and belongs to a synagogue community in Riverdale.
“She actually brought me back into Judaism a bit more than I had been on my own,” he said.
For more than 30 years, Mr. Mackler also volunteered as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for the Throggs Neck Volunteer Ambulance Corps, after doing similar volunteer work on City Island. His service included stints as a dispatcher as well as the organization’s treasurer.
Mr. Mackler has given decades of his life in service to his many treasured NYC communities — not just NYCHA. He’s also been a stage manager, and actor/singer, and photographer, and volunteer EMT!
Mr. Mackler also spent many years in NYC community theater, chiefly with the Bronx Spotlight Theater Company, mostly as a stage manager but occasionally as a performer — including as a barbershop quartet singer in the company’s 2003 production of Bye Bye Birdie. Currently, he’s a volunteer photographer for the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
“It’s just part of what you do,” Mr. Mackler said modestly about his service to community.
