Speaker Biographies

Nancy Biberman

Co-Founder & President, WHEDCO

For over two decades Nancy Biberman, Esq., co-founder and president of the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDCO), has been a public policy activist whose achievements include housing reform, domestic violence prevention, and economic opportunity programs for low-income families. Since 1986 Ms. Biberman has been developing distinctively stylish public housing units for thousands of New Yorkers based on her belief that "uplifting spaces transform; horrific environments degrade," an operating principle that has evolved from years of representing indigent clients into a mission to achieve social change by creating structures that combine community support programs with high design standards.

Ms. Biberman began her career as a Legal Aid lawyer; she was an organizer of the strike that established the right of indigent clients to be represented by the same attorney throughout a given case. In 1976, following a move to Legal Services, she and a few colleagues sued New York City and State, winning the first class action lawsuit in the country to give battered women access to the court system and police protection. Ms. Biberman went on to defend indigent, mentally ill, and elderly clients who faced illegal and sometimes violent evictions from Single Room Occupancy Hotels (SROs). In 1980 she helped create the SRO Law Project, and became the director of its East Side office. In search of more permanent solutions to the housing crisis plaguing the city's poor, Ms. Biberman left the SRO Law Project in 1985 to study at Columbia University's School of Architecture and Planning with the help of a Revson Fellowship. During that time she developed a multigenerational housing plan for low-income tenants and raised $8.6 million for a 100-unit dwelling on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The completed project is the nationally recognized West End Intergenerational Residence, known for its breakthrough programs for homeless families and seniors as well as for surmounting fears that often arise when low-income housing projects are introduced into upscale neighborhoods.

In 1988, Catholic Charities hired Ms. Biberman to manage a $60 million, city-financed housing rehabilitation project in the Highbridge section of South Bronx, a depressed area that at that time had no occupants, stores, or services. The project, finished in only three years, includes a childcare center, a health clinic, and other social services along with apartments for 722 low- and moderate-income families. With the Highbridge restoration completed, Ms. Biberman formed the Women's Housing & Economic Development Corporation (WHEDCO) and set her sights on the neighboring Morrisania Hospital, a stately but severely dilapidated building that had been abandoned for over twenty years. Raising the needed $23 million to restore the building was an uphill battle in an often-hostile political climate, but in 1998 the restoration, known as Urban Horizons, began operations. The complex provides apartments for 132 families and houses a number of poverty-fighting services for the community: Head Start; an adult literacy class; after-school care for 400 young people; job-training programs, which include a school for restaurant trades; and an affordable gym. With the construction phase completed, Ms. Biberman is working to maintain adequate levels of funding for WHEDCO's programs in order to meet the ever-growing needs of its clients. Added to the constant challenges poor people must cope with, low-income neighborhoods like the South Bronx have been disproportionately hurt by the depressed job market following September 11th and by the recent limits placed on welfare benefits. Ms. Biberman and WHEDCO are also collaborating with The House of Elder Artists (THEA) to construct a mixed income, culturally inclusive senior residence for New Yorkers based on learning, creative expression, and engagement with the urban landscape.

Ms. Biberman serves on two committees that seek broad-based input for rebuilding New York City following the World Trade Center disaster: The Municipal Art Society's Imagine New York, a project that is engaging New Yorkers from diverse backgrounds in a dialogue about how they'd like to see New York City and State commemorate the September 11th tragedy in Lower Manhattan; and the Labor Community Advocacy Network to Rebuild New York (LCAN), a cooperative initiative sponsored by the Fiscal Policy Institute and Central Labor Council to see that that reconstruction projects are inclusive and meet the needs of historically disenfranchised communities- the jobless and homeless New Yorkers who are part of the widening group indirectly affected by the World Trade Center disaster. Serving on both LCAN's and the Municipal Art Society's Imagine NY steering committees, Ms. Biberman is working to achieve consensus among the various coalitions and civic groups that have formed in the attack's aftermath.

A frequent contributor to publications on housing law and policy, Ms. Biberman has taught at Harvard University, NYU, and the City University of New York. In 2002 Harvard Business School selected her as a guest panelist for its prestigious Dynamic Women in Business conference. She serves as a Trustee of the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Ms. Biberman has three children, Matt, 26; Jake, 19; and Lily, 13; she is married to Roger Evans, Director of Public Policy and Law at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.