As a longtime steward for affordable housing, Cestero is the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, where he led the organization from February 2009 to April 2011. During his time at the HPD, Cestero helped launch the updated $750 million New Housing Marketplace Plan for distressed properties and a Proactive Preservation Program.

Prior to that, Cestero served as the deputy commissioner of development at HPD from 2004-2007. Over a 15-year period, he worked for Enterprise for in key leadership positions, including director of New York programs, and most recently as senior vice president and chief program officer for its national division.

Cestero says his first priority at the CPC will involve evaluating its existing preservation programs and tools. Next, he says the organization will look at new ways in which a company can continue to be a vital source of capital for multifamily apartment owners.

“We know lots of organizations around the city and around the country are still feeling the effects of the economic downturn,” he says. “At a time in which financial institutions and banks and traditional lenders of affordable housing are feeling increasing constraints and are less able to provide capital, all the more reason why you need a strong CPC to step in and be able to provide that capital.”

Cestero says part of that funding could be used to complete energy-efficient, green retrofittings, which falls under the city’s new legislation for owners and managers. “That is a perfect opportunity for CPC to step in and provide the capital necessary for owners to do those upgrades,” he says.

CPC, founded in 1974, played a critical role in the 1970s and 1980s in saving many apartment houses across the five boroughs from going vacant or abandoned. “That was during a period of time when our neighborhoods were really struggling, and many neighborhoods were written off by people,” Cestero says. “CPC was at the crux of bringing capital to those neighborhoods to make sure they came back and weren’t written off.”

Providing over $8 billion in investment, the CPC has preserved 144,000 units throughout the boroughs, including core inner-city neighborhoods in the South Bronx, Northern Manhattan and Central Brooklyn. In 1990s, the organization expanded its footprint outside the city to municipalities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and smaller river towns along the Hudson Valley.

But one of its key areas of concern is Manhattan. “It is a place where the pressures on the affordable stock are greater than anywhere else because of the strength of the residential market,” he says, noting that CPC’s primary focus has been, and will continue to be, in neighborhoods north of 96^th Street, though the upward pressure in the market continues to be strong.

“Even with the downturn in the market, we are seeing Mitchell-Lamas in East Harlem and affordable properties in central Harlem that are being looked at as a conversion to market-rate housing,” he says. “CPC’s mission is about providing capital to owners who are interested in maintaining those properties as housing for hardworking New Yorkers. That’s where we will focus our energy, and that’s where we will focus our resources.”