Chair Russ Participates in Future of Construction Summit
On February 24, NYCHA’s Chair and Chief Executive Officer Greg Russ participated in a virtual panel discussion organized by “City and State,” a media organization covering New York’s local and state politics and policy. The event, titled “Future of Construction in New York,” was moderated by Deputy State Politics Reporter Rebecca Lewis.
The panel consisted of five other industry experts: James Starace, Chief Engineer at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; Robert Cornegy, Principal at Green Stone First Consulting and a former City Council member; John Egnatios-Beene, Special Counsel for Real Estate at Stroock; Rafael Cestero, CEO of the Community Preservation Corporation; and Michael Sutton, CEO of Infrastructure Engineering, Inc.
Chair Russ discussed the need for more federal investment in NYCHA. Mr. Cestero, who has spent more than 30 years advocating for affordable housing in New York City, agreed: “It’s now the responsibility of New Yorkers to come up with solutions to save our most critical and our most vital affordable housing resource: NYCHA. Chair Russ and his team have put together a plan that works, that saves public housing, that generates billions of dollars of capital investment that otherwise wouldn’t happen. And the public housing trust is the next step. It just needs to happen. We need to recognize that it’s not one fix for NYCHA, it’s not two fixes – it’s every tool in the toolbox focused on saving our public housing and once and for all creating quality living conditions for people in our neighborhoods that deserve it.”
