Executive Agency Counsel - job 5 of 6

About the Agency:

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is the nation’s largest municipal housing preservation and development agency. Its mission is to promote quality housing and diverse, thriving neighborhoods for New Yorkers through loan and development programs for new affordable housing, preservation of the affordability of the existing housing stock, enforcement of housing quality standards, and educational programs for tenants and building owners.
Your Team:

Within HPD’s Office of Legal Affairs (OLA’s), the Contracts and Real Estate Division (CRED) handles, among other things, all of HPD’s legal work related to real estate development, land-use planning, and asset management. The division’s primary responsibility is to provide legal services to the Agency’s affordable housing development programs, including by advising on real estate financings, sales and leases of City-owned property, and affordable housing regulatory agreements, and by closing the Agency’s real estate transactions. The division is also responsible for advising on planning, pre-development, and asset management matters and affordable housing development policy and program design and implementation


Your Impact:

You will be part of a team of talented attorneys and support staff who provide critical legal services to the agency as it executes the City’s ambitious affordable housing plan.

Your Role:

Your role will be to provide legal services to the agency’s affordable housing development programs and associated offices on related matters.

Your Responsibilities:

- Support the agency’s development programs by providing legal services to the agency’s affordable housing development programs.
- Perform closings of construction and permanent financings, dispositions of City-owned property, and affordable housing regulatory agreements.
- Prepare and review complex legal documents related to real estate transactions and governmental approvals.
- Analyze federal, state, and local statutes and regulations.
- Handle other complex legal issues pertaining to the implementation of affordable housing programs.
- Negotiate difficult and complex issues, transactions, and documents.
- Work collaboratively with agency colleagues and partners.

Preferred skills

- Experience in a transactional real estate practice.
- Familiarity with State and City laws and rules relating to affordable housing creation and preservation, including, for example, statutory loan authorities under the Private Housing Finance Law and General Municipal Law, rent stabilization and the Rent Stabilization Code, and New York City zoning and land use laws and regulations
- Familiarity with federal, state, and local affordable housing subsidy programs and policy
- Excellent writing, legal research, and analytical skills
- Experience managing and supervising attorneys and other professionals
- Ability to draft legislation and rules
- Ability to review and analyze proposed legislation and rules
- Ability to liaise with litigation counsel to protect Agency programs and processes
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills

EXECUTIVE AGENCY COUNSEL - 95005

Admission to the New York State Bar; and four years of recent full-time responsible, relevant, satisfactory legal experience subsequent to admission to any bar, eighteen months of which must have been in the supervision of other attorneys, in an administrative, managerial or executive capacity, or performing highly complex and significant legal work.

Incumbents must remain Members of the New York State Bar in good standing for the duration of this employment.

The City of New York is an inclusive equal opportunity employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and providing a work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment based upon any legally protected status or protected characteristic, including but not limited to an individual's sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity, or pregnancy.