Mayor de Blasio made three appointments to the Rent Guidelines Board, naming Helen Schaub and K. Sabeel Rahman as public member representatives, and Scott Walsh as an owner representative.
The Rent Guidelines Board determines annual rent adjustments for approximately one million apartments across the city subject to the Rent Stabilization Law.
Helen Schaub, one of the public member representatives, has spent more than 10 years as a community organizer with a focus on housing.
She is currently the New York State Director of Policy and Legislation at 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.
Before her years at SEIU, she worked as an independent consultant, helping grassroots organizations with organizational development and fundraising.
K. Sabeel Rahman is an Assistant Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School.
Rahman has a distinguished academic career spanning much of the past decade, serving as a Teaching Fellow for Law and Social Movements at Harvard Law School, and as a Teaching Fellow and Instructor at Harvard College.
Rahman has developed and consulted on economic and financial regulatory policy for a wide range of government and non-government organizations, including the Gettysburg Project, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Governance Lab at NYU, the President’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affair.
While a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, he advised the Office of the NYC Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development on issues including regulating the sharing economy, homelessness and place-based development.
Scott Walsh, the owner representative, is the vice president of development at Forest City Ratner Companies.
A trained and former practicing architect, he has consulted for a wide array of stakeholders, including for the Urban Land Institute.
Previously, Walsh spent more than a decade at TF Cornerstone, most recently as a director. In this role, he was involved in all new development projects from acquisition to stabilization, and has developed and maintained pricing models for portfolio of institutional grade rental and condo apartment houses.
Before becoming director, Walsh worked as an associate within Residential Acquisitions at TF Cornerstone, and as Residential Property Manager prior to that.
Walsh serves on the board of the Long Island City Partnership.
