Sarah Gerecke

Sarah Gerecke is principal at SSG Community Solutions, using her four decades of experience to design program and policy responses to complex affordable housing and community development challenges.  Her current work covers housing policy research, counseling program evaluation, manufactured housing, capacity-building for CDFIs and housing counseling intermediaries, housing challenges for Native Americans, and performance-centric coaching and mentoring. An Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning for NYU’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service since 1999, she teaches several graduate law and policy seminars on public management, land use, housing and community development.  She is also a non-resident Fellow at the Urban Institute, and has published articles about affordable housing, housing finance and land use policies.

From 2011 to 2019, Ms. Gerecke was Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Housing Counseling at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  At HUD, her responsibilities also included programs to increase access to affordable, quality housing and mortgages, and initiatives to help families improve their financial and housing conditions.  She was the first Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Housing Counseling. 

From 2009 to 2011, Ms. Gerecke was Executive Director of New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, a leading academic research center.   From 2001 until 2009, Ms. Gerecke was Chief Executive Officer of Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) of NYC, where she supervised lending, education and real estate programs that assisted over 10,000 New York City residents each year.  She has held leadership positions for a homeless housing provider in Westchester County, New York, and appointed positions in New York City government under Mayors Koch and Dinkins with responsibilities for planning and implementation of major revitalization projects in Harlem, the South Bronx and Central Brooklyn.  She is a member of the Supreme Court bar, the New York State bar and a graduate of Harvard Law School and Princeton University.   She lives with her husband Jeff in the Bronx.