Helping the City and Its Citizens: Leora Jontef (MPA '04)

The first word Leora Jontef’s resume brings to mind is “eclectic.” Over the past eight years, the Baruch alumna has helped individuals with disabilities find jobs, revamped volunteer programs for Citymeals-on-Wheels, and overseen affordable housing initiatives. But there is a thread running through her far-ranging professional pursuits. “Every job change has exposed me to a different and often neglected population—the disabled, the homebound elderly, people living below the poverty line,” Jontef says. “It’s been a real eye-opener.”

These days Jontef is a project manager in the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s Participation Loan Program (PLP), which arranges low-interest loans for affordable housing construction and rehabilitation. “Basically, I’m the liaison between HPD, the participating developers, architects, and banks,” she says. “It’s an amazing program. If you walk through Harlem or the South Bronx, HPD’s impact is visible throughout the community.”

Many of the participating properties receiving PLP loans are distressed and in urgent need of rehabilitation. “Even more of a concern is the fact that the people living in them—working poor, immigrants in minimum-wage jobs, and even middle-class families—have very few housing choices,” says Jontef. “So a program like PLP can really make a difference.”

Fresh out of Vassar College in 1996, the Brooklyn-born Jontef spent a year traveling and working abroad before returning to New York and entering the not-for-profit field, first with Women’s American ORT, an educational organization, and then as a job developer for the Epilepsy Institute. In 2001 she signed on as director of volunteer programs for Citymeals-on-Wheels and enrolled in Baruch’s School of Public Affairs as a part-time evening student.

“The following summer I took a course in urban economic development with Professor Jerry Mitchell,” she recalls. “It was a big jumping-off point for me. I realized then that I wanted to focus my career on community development and housing issues in New York, to make the city a better place to live.”

At Citymeals-on-Wheels, Jontef launched a number of volunteer initiatives, including a “Friendly Visiting Partnership Program” that expanded the organization’s mission—to deliver meals to homebound elderly throughout the city—and promoted volunteer visits to the clients. “When you’re 85 and living alone, human contact can be just as important as a hot meal,” Jontef says. She moved from Citymeals to HPD last year.

The transition from a nonprofit agency to the government sector has been “interesting,” she acknowledges. “There is certainly bureaucracy to navigate, but HPD is doing important work and doing it well. I play a very small role in that work, but it’s a role I feel privileged to have.”

—Bruce Felton