Brad Lander has spent his career working for affordable housing, good jobs, and livable communities in Brooklyn and throughout New York City. A city planner and one of New York’s leading voices for community development, Lander has created programs and helped to change laws at the state and city level that have created and preserved tens of thousands of units of affordable housing, aided local small businesses, and placed hundreds of low-income New Yorkers into living wage jobs.
Brad currently directs the Pratt Center for Community Development, which works for a more just, equitable, and sustainable city for all New Yorkers by empowering communities to plan and realize their futures. During Brad's tenure, the Pratt Center has helped to shape a new inclusionary zoning policy in order to create affordable housing in New York City, to protect the tenure of public housing residents, and to create a new dialogue and strategies for how growth can be made to work for New York's communities. Brad also teaches community planning and affordable housing at Pratt Institute.
Brad served for a decade as executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, an award-winning, not-for-profit community-based organization in Brooklyn that develops and manages affordable housing; creates economic opportunities through workforce development, job creation, and adult education; and organizes tenants and workers to fight for a better community. Brad's work has been recognized with awards from the Ford Foundation, Fannie Mae Foundation, New York magazine, the NYC Chapter of the American Planning Association, and the Prospect Park YMCA.
Brad serves as the co-chair of the Housing & Human Services Committee of Brooklyn’s Community Board 6, on the board of directors of the Jewish Funds for Justice, as policy co-chair of Housing First!, and as a little league coach. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago, University College London, and Pratt Institute. Brad lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with his wife, Meg Barnette, the Director of Finance and Operations at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and their children, Marek and Rosa, who attend Public School 107 in Brooklyn.
