Charles Brass

Charles Brass is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Real Estate Development program at Columbia GSAPP.

Charles Brass has more than 30 years’ experience in housing development and finance. He is a partner at Forsyth Street, where Brass provides consulting services to both for-profit and not-for-profit developers seeking to develop affordable and mixed income housing. He also currently serves on the Executive Board of the New York Housing Conference and the New York State Association for Affordable Housing as well as the Settlement Housing Fund.

Forsyth Street is an advisory and asset management firm focused on affordable housing, real estate and municipal and impact investment.

For the past 20 years Brass has held various positions at the New York City Housing Development Corporation, including president from 2002-03. During his tenure, he was responsible for designing and implementing various financing programs that have resulted in the creation of more than 20,000 units of affordable housing. He created many of the HDC Programs that comprise the City’s New Market Housing Place Plan.

Brass has served as Senior VP for CPC Resources developing and preserving affordable housing properties in New York City and State.

Before joining Forsyth Street in 2009, he was Executive VP for development at Atlantic Development Group, where he brought 2,000 units and several hundred thousand square feet of commercial and community space to construction.

Brass worked at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development from 1981-84 where he worked in both of its Policy/Intergovernmental Relations and Development divisions. He was a member of the Board of the National Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies from 1988-2003 and President of NALHFA from 1993-96.

Brass is a graduate of SUNY at Binghamton and holds a Masters of Arts in History from UNC Chapel Hill where he also completed all his required class work for a Masters in Regional Planning.