ACORN Housing New Orleans Planning Team

ACORN Housing
New Orleans
Planning Team

The ACORN Housing Planning Team brings together the finest practitioners in each field below to carry out a comprehensive line of action for the rebuilding of New Orleans, from disaster preparedness to implementation, and beyond. These are some key members of our team.

An Adobe Acrobat PDF version of this webpage is available for download [HERE ].

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

We have some of the most distinguished and innovative community organizers in the country working with the Planning Team to mobilize people and make sure their voices drive the planning process.

Stephen Bradberry is the Head Organizer of New Orleans ACORN and recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2005. He and his team have received national recognition in the areas of voting rights, lead poisoning prevention, living wages, Earn Income Tax Credit outreach and numbers of people receiving free tax services in partnership with the IRS's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites. New Orleans ACORN also serves as a regional training center for community organizing within the ACORN family.

PLANNING

Our planners will use their technical expertise to develop the most authentic, accurate, and rigorous rebuilding plans through continuous involvement of community members in the planning process.

Richard Hayes, Project Manger, is the Director of Special Projects for ACORN Housing . Richard holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning and has over 25 years experience in managing complex projects, having worked extensively in the fields of public policy and administration. After serving as a senior advisor in the White House during the Clinton-Gore administration, Mr. Hayes was the director of national partnerships for the National Community Lending Center at Fannie Mae, responsible for sourcing over $2 billion in annual goal-rich loans.

Kenneth Reardon is the chair of the department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University . Ken is a planner who has completed more than two dozen plans in New York City, East St. Louis, and Rochester, NY. He founded the East St. Louis Action Research Project at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which has provided empowerment planning services to the residents of East St. Louis for over 15 years.

Ronald Shiffman, is the founder of the Pratt Center and was appointed a New York City Planning Commissioner by David Dinkins, the Citys first African-American Mayor. In 1994 he was elected president of the Salzburg Congress on Urban Planning and Development and was elected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners (FAICP) in 2002. He is has also been elected as an Honorable Member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Ron has worked on community-based neighborhood planning, housing, and economic development in New York City; Atlanta, GA; Hartford, CT; Camden, NJ; Moscow, Russia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Johannesburg, South Africa.

ENVIRONMENT & INFRASTRUCTURE

A comprehensive understanding of environmental issues and infrastructure enables our team to look at many of the issues that face the neighborhood and planning district as well as the city of New Orleans.

Hillary Brown is Principal of New Civic Works , an organization that assists government agencies, universities, institutions and the nonprofit building sector in integrating sustainable design practices into facilities and infrastructure construction programs and projects, through education, policy development and technical support.

Susan Saegert is the director of the Center for Human Environments at the City University of New York . Since earning her PhD in social psychology from the University of Michigan, Susan has taught in the environmental psychology program at CUNY, and published extensively on psychology and social capital in low-income communities.

ARCHITECTURE

With esteemed architects from LSU, Pratt Institute, and Cornell University, the Planning Team has already designed our own hurricane-resistant, high-quality, and affordable houses to jumpstart the revitalization process.

Marsha Cuddeback, AIA, is the Director of the Office of Community Design and Development at Louisiana State University and Principal of Desmond-Cuddeback Architects in Baton Rouge. She is currently working on designing cost-effective, high-quality modular homes that respect the historic fabric of New Orleans and can be built by a small construction crews quickly.

James Dart, AIA, a New Orleans native, is the Principal of James Dart Architects in New York City and leads New Jersey Institute of Technology s role in the Planning Team. His firm specializes in adaptive reuse and historic preservation, and is committed to the idea that thoughtful architecture stems from a deep understanding of social and physical context of a community. He has also taught design studios at University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, and was awarded an Excellence in Teaching award at NJIT in 1998.

Deborah Gans is Principal in the firm of Gansstudio in New York City and is leading Pratt Institutes architectural role in the ACORN Housing Planning Team. The firm's work in the fields of industrial design and architecture has been exhibited at RIBA, London; IFA, Paris; and the Van Alen Institute in New York City. The firm has won international awards and a grant for development from the Johnny Walker Fund for their investigation into disaster relief housing for Kosovar refugees and subsequent housing projects. Their continuing work on alternative forms of housing includes a transitional housing system designed for Common Ground Community. Commissioned by the School Construction Authority of New York, their patented next generation school desk is now in production and has been included in the permanent collection of the New York Historical Society. She is has taught at among others places, Yale University and Pratt Institute where she was the Chairman in the School of Architecture. The Organic Approach: Alternatives to the Social and Physical Production of Architecture and most recently Extreme Sites: Greening the Brownfield are among Gans' publications that are relevant to the rebuilding effort collection of the New York Historical Society. She is has taught at among others places, Yale University and Pratt Institute where she was the Chairman in the School of Architecture. The Organic Approach: Alternatives to the Social and Physical Production of Architecture and most recently Extreme Sites: Greening the Brownfield are among Gans' publications that are relevant to the rebuilding effort.

DEVELOPMENT

The individuals from the Planning Team who execute this critical phase of our projects are highly skilled in development projects with particular expertise in affordable housing.

Martin Shalloo is the National Housing Development Director of ACORN Housing Corporation. Marty has worked in the housing and community development fields for the past 26 years, directing the acquisition and development of over 200 units of scattered site housing and 331 units of multi-family rentals. He has successfully secured over $5.5 million in grant subsidies from grants from the Federal Home Loan Banks of San Francisco, Dallas and Chicago; HUD programs such as SHOP; and State Housing Finance Agencies. These grants supported $16 million in development activities and leveraged over $10 million in financing for single family affordable housing projects.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS

The Planning Team will work with the LSU Hurricane Center - home of the largest group of Gulf Coast hurricane experts in the nation - to protect our city while we plan.

John Pine is an Associate Professor of Research and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Geography at the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center with a specialization in Hazard and Risk Assessment and GIS application to disasters. With this background, John will provide us with specific, empirically based recommendations and warnings as we develop our rebuilding plans.

POST-DISASTER AND STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

Technical engineering expertise is brought through members of the Planning Team who lend years of engineering experience in disaster prone and recovery situations.

Rebekah Green holds a PhD in structural engineering and is a post-doctoral fellow at the Earth Institute of Columbia University. Rebekahs research has focused on post-disaster engineering and emergency mitigation techniques. She served as the project coordinator of the American Red Cross and Istanbul Disaster Preparedness Education Program in Istanbul, Turkey in 2002-2003.

Bijan Khazai is a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Hazards and Risk Research at the Earth Institute of Columbia University . Since earning his PhD in structural engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, Bijan has worked in the post-earthquake Kashmir region of Pakistan and in Sri Lanka following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Andrew Smyth is an associate professor of Civil Engineering at Columbia University . He has published extensively on mitigation building techniques in disaster prone areas. Andrew is the Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

HISTORIC PRESERVATION

To ensure that all rebuilding efforts honor the history and beauty of New Orleans, we have three of the top practitioners in the nation on our team.

Jeff Chusid is an Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation Planning at Cornell University and has consulted on public policy, resource inventory, conservation, and urban design for cities such as Shanghai, China; Sevastopol, Ukraine, Levuka, Fiji; and Bastrop, Texas. Focused on the fate of historic resources in areas of conflict, Jeff has also authored neighborhood preservation plans for distressed communities and is currently leading ACORNs engagement in the adaptive reuse of the St. Roch Market.

Michael Tomlan, Director of the Historic Preservation Program at Cornell University is an expert in building conservation technology, documentation methods for preservation, and the history of the preservation movement. He is advisor to the Global Heritage Fund and consultant for the World Monuments Fund, the J. Paul Getty Trust, and rehabilitation and restoration projects in Arizona, New Jersey, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Tennessee, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Vicki Weiner has served as Executive Director of two New York City non-profit, preservation organizations the Historic Districts Council and the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation . During her tenure, Vicki provided assistance in the creation of City, State and National designated historic districts, developed preservation strategies and public policy initiatives, and produced publications, educational programs and conferences. Her work included enhancing the financial resources, facilitating successful board development, and conducting sound strategic planning.

IMPLEMENTATION & MANAGEMENT

Our expertise in managing and guiding the growth and adaptation of a multitude of previous projects prepares the Planning Team to take community vision beyond the planning stages into reality.

Marie Adele Lee is the Manager of Housing Development at ACORN Housing and has more than thirty-five years of experience in the areas of community economic development, finance management, public policy, and banking, continuously working for the mitigation or abatement of persistent poverty. Actively financing affordable housing, developed mainly by community-based organizations since the mid-70's and developing affordable, public and special needs housing since 1989, she brings considerable experience in housing development for ACORN members within the complex recovery situation in New Orleans.