Mayor Appoints Five Members to the Rent Guidelines Board

Mayor de Blasio recently appointed the following five members to the Rent Guidelines Board:  David Reiss as Chair; May Yu, German Tejeda, and Alex Schwartz as public members; and Patti Stone as an owner member. The Rent Guidelines Board determines annual rent adjustments for approximately one million apartments across the city subject to the Rent Stabilization Law. The following are the appointments:

David Reiss. David Reiss is a professor at Brooklyn Law School. He concentrates on real estate finance, housing policy, and community development, and is the founding director of the Community Development Clinic. He is the Research Director of the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE), a Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Reiss was an associate in the New York office of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and at Morrison & Foerster. He also clerked for Judge Timothy Lewis of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Prior to attending law school, he worked for Community Access, a not-for-profit organization that assists people who have psychiatric disabilities as they make the transition from shelters and hospitals to independent living.

May Yu. May Yu is the Senior Director of Real Estate & Economic Development at the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Prior to this role, Yu served as the Director of Neighborhood Planning within the Neighborhood Development Division at the New York City Department of Small Business Services. She began her career in municipal government as a Senior Project Manager in Development at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Previously, Yu was a Founding Staff Member & Partner Manager at Citizen Effect, and a Plenary Associate at the Clinton Global Initiative. Yu is an alum of the University of Chicago and a Fellow of the Urban Design Forum.

German Tejeda.  German Tejeda currently serves as the National Director of Financial Programs at Single Stop, a nonprofit agency dedicated to reducing poverty by improving access to benefits and helping low-income students across the country stay in college and graduate. Previously, Tejeda worked at the Food Bank for New York City, serving as the Vice President of Anti-Poverty Programming from 2016 to 2018 and as the Senior Director of Income Policy from 2002 to 2016. From 1992 to 2002, Tejeda served as the Director of Homelessness Prevention at the Community Food Resource Center. In his spare time, Tejeda serves on the Board of Directors for the Bronx Legal Services.

Alex Schwartz. Alex Schwartz is a professor of Urban Policy at the New School. He served as Program Chair in the Department of Public and Urban Policy from 2001 to 2012. He holds a doctorate in Urban Planning and Policy Development from Rutgers University. Professor Schwartz’s research centers on housing and community development, including public housing and other affordable housing programs, mixed-income housing, fair housing, and community development corporations. Professor Schwartz is Director of the New School's Urban Policy Lab, in which teams of graduate students advise government agencies and nonprofit organizations on a wide array of policy and management issues. He is the author of Housing Policy in the United States and co-author of Policy Analysis as Problem Solving, both published by Routledge.

Patti Stone. Patti Stone is a Member of Rosenberg & Estis, P.C. within the firm's Administrative Law Department. Ms. Stone has more than 30 years of experience in New York City real estate and has an in-depth understanding of the day-to-day business needs of owners in New York City. Ms. Stone has successfully handled all types of cases, such as demolition, luxury deregulation, harassment, overcharge, and service issues before the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, from the administrative level through appeals to the Supreme Court and the Appellate Division. Ms. Stone specializes in advice and consultation regarding rent regulatory compliance with the Rent Stabilization Law to prospective purchasers of residential real estate.