Head of city’s affordable housing finance agency to step down

Gary Rodney, the head of the city’s affordable housing finance agency, will step down in September, city officials said Thursday.

Rodney, who has led the Housing Development Corp. since 2014, will head to the private sector, joining City Real Estate Advisors, a syndicator that acts as a liaison between the city and affordable housing developers seeking tax credits and equity, Crain’s reported.

“We are immensely grateful for Gary Rodney’s incredible contributions to the Housing Development Corp., and the historic levels of affordable housing he helped to spur,” the mayor said in a statement.

Eric Enderlin, currently the deputy commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, has been nominated to replace Rodney. HDC is a key mechanism in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s effort to incentivize developers of affordable housing development, and has made $3.9 billion in loans under the current administration. Last fall, the agency provided a $144 million acquisition loan to the Blackstone Group for its $5.3 billion purchase of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village. In exchange for the subsidy, Blackstone agreed to preserve 5,000 affordable units at the East Village complex.

Other recent administration departures including Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and the mayor’s counsel Maya Wiley, along with the city’s chief digital officer, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection and head of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability. [Crain’s] — E.B. Solomont