Alumni Spotlight: Arden Levine (MPA-PNP 2006)

Arden Levine (MPA-PNP 2006), chief strategy officer, NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development

We'd love to learn more about your journey in affordable housing and what drew you to this field.

So, there I was, a teenager in Washington, D.C., in the 1990s, watching 60 Minutes with my parents (born-and-raised New Yorkers with careers in community health). And on comes a feature about Breaking Ground (formerly Common Ground), a relatively new and totally innovative organization transforming derelict buildings in New York City into beautiful, modern apartments with on-site social services for unhoused and vulnerable individuals. This first awareness of the concept of supportive housing transforms me, pretty much instantly, into a geek: I become fascinated by the idea that fiscal ingenuity, programmatic creativity, and human compassion can change the fortunes of lives, buildings, and neighborhoods. 

I say (out loud, even), “That’s the work I’m going to do.” And then I do. Right after graduating college, now living in New York (the city of my heart and heritage), I join the property management team at the brand-new Breaking Ground residence, and the rest is [insert a cliché and a career]. 

I’ve since directed programs at various organizations and agencies that develop housing and promote resident empowerment, including the Center for Urban Community Services, YWCA of Brooklyn, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Community Resource Exchange, and now the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), where I’m the Chief Strategy Officer. I re-learn every day how and why the foundation of personal and interpersonal well-being (including education, health, and economic security) is one's home and home geography. Strong, comprehensive housing policies and practices pour that foundation (literally and figuratively) using data, clear-thinking, and a commitment to redressing persistent biases. 

In the almost 25 years I’ve spent creating, preserving, and maintaining housing affordability, residential stability, and neighborhood strength, I’ve never lost that initial sense of awe or focus on what a home is or what it can do.

 

In your current role, you focus on strategy. What does that look like in practice?

Let’s start with the word itself, because it’s one of those terms that everyone uses but also struggles to define! When I train others on strategy and strategic planning (which I’ve done as both a consultant and practitioner), I describe strategies as the set of methods and techniques taken to meet an objective in support of a mission. Where an organization’s objectives and mission should stay consistent through its functional life, strategies (and the actions that carry them out) are dynamic; they should be renewed, modified, or replaced based on the conditions of the moment in history, the needs and desires of the public, the funding landscape, and the political powers enveloping the organization’s context. 

In practice, good strategic planning is an ongoing process of prioritization that balances aspiration with capacity: based on the data we have or can gather, what strategies will create the most impact for those whose lives we hope to improve, given the relative feasibility of implementing them? Choosing strategies that are high impact but low feasibility means the work may never get finished (or even get underway). But, go for the low-hanging fruit (high feasibility/low impact), and you have the opposite problem: the positive change may be superficial or limited rather than deep and lasting. So, striking a balance is key. In my role at HPD, embedding this practice means helping to guide my colleagues’ intentional decision-making, ensuring that HPD’s internal operations and broader policy intentions align with its commitment to the public and affirming that we’re meeting those commitments as robustly, efficiently, and with as much compassion as possible. 

 

What do you find most rewarding in your work? 

The hat-trick of inspiration-sources for those in public service are the people we serve, the colleagues we serve alongside, and (if we’re fortunate enough to have some) the mentors who guide us in serving. I feel rewarded in my proximity to each of these engines of good energy, even (indeed, especially) when they are challenging and contradicting my approaches or conclusions. My goal, as a cog in the public service machinery, is never to let my gears get stripped; I want to always be learning, and doing so means paying attention to, honoring, and retaining a sense of wonder about what makes a city a fair, healthy, safe, and vibrant place to live. I’m grateful every day for the discussions in the office and in the field that validate my perspective or that alter it; those opportunities to sit down and talk straight while recognizing another’s humanity are the reason I do this work (and also the only way to be sure I continue to do it well).

 

What’s your advice to those wanting to work in your field? 

Here are three tips, adapted from the question I’m often asked by prospective employees about what I’m looking for in a staff member (!):

1. Embrace chaos and challenge. Public service is not simple, and it is not meant to be. Get comfy with the idea that good solutions will not present themselves bedecked in fairy lights; they are hard-won through analysis, dialogue, and second-guessing. If the paths to social justice and housing equity were an easy walk, we would have arrived there by now. No matter how tempting, the expedient answer is rarely the right one, so find joy in digging below entrenched assumptions into the lower aquifers of policymaking creativity.
2. Make curiosity your default position. I believe that many Americans are hungry for genuine discourse, and we reject it at our personal and collective peril. Recently, I made this statement to pre-college students, and it bears repeating: Everyone, even the most open-minded, should examine their embedded prejudices and assumptions and should hold conversations and space with those who may not share their views. Remember that good public policy serves all members of a society, an important issue rarely has only two sides, and common ground is found in unexpected places.
3. To avoid discouragement, source your own motivation. I’ve watched true champions become burned out over a period of years; some of that fatigue is well-earned, but in other cases, it is brought on by a false expectation of recognition. Doing the work toward infusing society with empathy, connecting people to home, undoing historic patterns of racism and discrimination in housing and city planning, these are their own accolades. If you never get even a hi-five but you move the needle by even a micrometer toward justice, feel really rewarded.

 

What do you cherish the most about your time at Wagner? 

I attended Wagner part-time while employed full-time in supportive housing management, hustling straight from the work site to the classroom on most evenings (sometimes with half a minute to grab a strong black tea en-route). It was no mean feat, but the process of debriefing my days in near-real-time helped get me through them; it was comforting and empowering to learn that my experiences were hardly unique over the long arc of social practice, and that the decisions I was making were either consistent with, or could be informed and enhanced by, the academic wisdom of the ages. I was also really lucky to meet some of my closest friends in this program, who share my genuine desire to shape raw motivation around tools, designs, and modes of thinking that help us deliver the best versions of ourselves to our work. I still keep numerous Wagner-sourced texts in my office and refer back to them regularly… And if you’re carrying your student lessons 20 years after the fact, that seems like the hallmark of a cherished experience.

 

In your other life, you’re a writer. Can you give us a glimpse of that?

It’s really a delightful coincidence that Fair Housing Month and National Poetry Month are one and the same! And I do believe that poetry is a language of social justice, not only insofar as it has the power to inspire and compel, but also in its tight distillation of truth into digestible and potent statements. (And incidentally, I’d give poet-hopefuls those same three earlier tips as readily as I’d give them to policy-wonks!) My first poetry collection, Ladies’ Abecedary, is a compendium of micro-biographies-in-verse of women, and when it was published, I actually wrote a whole essay describing the similarities between urban planning and poetry-making, and the persecution and resurrection of poems and cities. My next poetry collection, Spoke (a finalist for the National Poetry Series), is forthcoming in September 2025; it follows a young woman on her bicycle (with a really excellent ‘70s/’80s/’90s soundtrack) and addresses themes that Wagner folks appreciate: the complexities of behavioral health, the realities of human dynamics, and the literal and figurative contours of city landscapes. If you want to hear more about it as it gets pedaling, keep a watch at www.ardenlevine.com or on Instagram.