Housing Departures Continue With Visnauskas

Adding to the turnover at New York City’s housing agencies, RuthAnne Visnauskas, acting commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation & Development, has submitted her resignation and will be leaving in two weeks, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

Visnauskas was a holdover from former mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, in which she served for eight years, first as deputy HPD commissioner before taking over the top job from Mathew Wambua, who left the administration in August for the private sector. At HPD, Visnauskas helped implement Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan, which created and preserved over 160,000 units of affordable housing.

Her departure follows that of another former Bloomberg housing official, Marc Jahr, the president of the city’s Housing Development Corporation, who, as City & State reported, was asked to resign at the behest of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development, Alicia Glen.

Calls placed to an HPD spokesman went unreturned, and the mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

De Blasio has yet to name permanent replacements for Visnauskas or Jahr, nor has he named a chairperson for the New York City Housing Agency, whose former chairman, John Rhea, resigned in December.