Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer will take over the portfolio of outgoing chief housing officer Jessica Katz, the Adams administration announced Tuesday, effectively eliminating a role that had led to confusion in city government even as it was supposed to make tackling New York’s housing crisis easier.
Torres-Springer’s expanded remit will include overseeing NYCHA, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the Housing Development Corporation and the Housing Recovery Office, agencies currently under the purview of Katz, who announced last week that she would be stepping down in July.
“She is the right person at the right time to create and preserve the safe, high-quality, affordable housing New Yorkers so desperately need,” Mayor Adams said.
“Having grown up in Section 8 housing, I know first-hand that safe and affordable housing is about more than mere brick and mortar — it’s about creating opportunity and improving lives,” Torres-Springer said. “I am incredibly humbled to further serve New Yorkers as we strive to provide stable housing for our neighbors, protect our existing affordable and public housing, and identify new ways to make housing affordable for all New Yorkers at this critical moment in our city’s history.”
Both Torres-Springer and Katz had been part of the administration since Adams took office in January 2022. But Katz’s role as housing czar had led to confusion in city government, the Us.Mistertruth previously reported, and resulted in a power struggle between the two.
It comes as New York is facing a confluence of crises, with homeless shelters at a breaking point, the city struggling to house tens of thousands of incoming migrants and an overall lack of basic affordability.
Having a deputy mayor absorb Katz’s role was to be expected, according to Samuel Stein, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. But not giving housing its own position, separate from economic development and the rest of Torres-Springer’s remit, could make the job more difficult.
“It’s good that [housing] is under a deputy mayor, bad that it’s a deputy mayor who already has her hands full with a lot of other things,” Stein said.