New York-based Camber Property Group is celebrating a decade in business this year, and Rick Gropper, principal and co-founder of the firm, said it’s the company’s busiest year yet.

Founded in 2016 by Gropper and Andrew Moelis, the real estate development and management firm specializes in building and preserving affordable, mixed-use and transitional multifamily housing.

Camber’s name was at the forefront of two major housing announcements this summer. One of them was the start of construction for the $167 million redevelopment of Chelsea Beacon, where 131 affordable units, supportive housing, and community spaces will replace the former Bayview Correctional Facility at 550 West 20th Street. Plus, Camber was one of the developers selected for the $62 million modernization of NYCHA’s Unity Towers in Coney Island.

The firm is also growing its national portfolio, bringing its experience in turning around distressed assets and building new housing to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey and Ohio.

Commercial Observer sat down with Gropper in July to discuss the two headline-making projects, what it took for Camber to get there, and the challenges ahead.

Tell us about your background. What brought you into the affordable housing space, and how’d that lead to Camber?

I’ve been in the affordable housing industry for about 20 years. I started right out of graduate school from Columbia University’s real estate development program as an intern at L&M Development Partners. The market was terrible, because it was 2008. I interned for a year before they finally hired me. I worked my way up from an assistant project manager to a project manager, and I was able to learn all aspects of the development process. I’m very operationally focused, and I like solving problems and trying to be creative to accomplish deals that are challenging but really necessary.

So at L&M, I learned how to put all the pieces together — from the acquisition of land or buildings, to the financing, construction and design of a building, and getting through the complicated web of governmental approvals that are required for a closing. I really fell in love with the industry. I kind of grew up in the affordable space in New York City, and I think that everyone’s really collegial, friendly and willing to jump in and help solve problems. A lot of my best friends are in the industry as well.

I started Camber in 2016, after about 10 years at L&M Development Partners. This is our 10th year of being in existence, which is a big milestone. We’re really proud of the company that we’ve built. My co-founder Andrew and I started in the closet in someone else’s office, basically, and now we’ve put together a team of over 100 people that I think is one of the best in the business at being tenacious, creative and dedicated problem solvers who are willing to do what’s right, whatever it takes.

Camber Property Group has been front and center of two major projects announced this summer, Chelsea Beacon and Unity Towers. Is it something in the air?

This is definitely our busiest year so far, and I think a lot of things have come together both for us as a firm and in the city. There’s such a focus on affordable housing, both preserving and creating units. I think that the Mamdani administration has put a lot of really strong housing leaders in place who have decades of collective experience. They just released the Block-by-Block housing plan, and have some really ambitious goals to create 200,000 units of new housing and to preserve another 200,000 units of existing housing.

For us at Camber, we’ve spent 10 years building the company, its infrastructure and team, and a lot has come together. We now have a portfolio of 13,000 units, and we’re vertically integrated so that we can control all parts of the development process, from site or building acquisition to the financing, construction and property management. That’s really important for us, not only having a really strong team, but also being able to run and control all parts of the process, so that we can take out as much of the uncertainty as possible, because real estate is inherently risky. The more that we can control and do ourselves in-house, the more effective we’re going to be as a firm.

I think that the projects we’ve done have spoken for themselves, and that’s one of the reasons that people turn to our firm to take on some of the most complicated and challenging projects out there. I think Chelsea Beacon and the Unity Preservation Trust are two examples of projects that we were awarded that definitely have their challenges, but we’ve been able to execute on similar projects previously.

Chelsea Beacon is a huge undertaking. What are some of the unique challenges of that project?

Chelsea Beacon is the restoration of an existing, historic building. It was built as a YMCA in the early 1900s, and then in about 1970 it was converted to a women’s correctional facility. That facility was ultimately abandoned right after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It has sat empty since then.

ESD did a request for proposals to find a developer to convert it into affordable housing, and we responded with the Osborne Association. They manage affordable housing, as well as focus on re-entry from the criminal justice system. It seemed like a great match for this site. We also brought in CookFox as the architect.

It’s a really beautiful building. We’re adding about 10 floors on top of it, with 131 units of supportive housing and 20,000 square feet of community facilities.

It’s a challenging construction project because we’re restoring and building upon an existing building, but we’re also confident in our team. First, there’s the design of the restoration and the overbuild. It involves abating hazardous material inside the building, converting the existing building, and getting it ready to accommodate the additional floors we’re putting on top of it. There’s also a brownfields component. This is a brownfield project, because it was a natural gas generating site, so we have to clean it up.

The second part of it is just the complicated layers of financing to put together the $131 million that we needed to complete the project. We did that alongside our partners at the state, New York City Homes and Community Renewal and the New York State Office of Mental Health and Hygiene. They’re providing capital so that the nonprofit can actually own the short-term transitional residence. Our partners at Wells Fargo are providing debt and equity.

It’s a tough time to build a multifamily from the ground up. How do you balance new construction alongside preservation projects?

I think that projects in New York City have gotten more and more complicated, as we look to add in sustainability and green features. The projects have also gotten a lot bigger, in both units and dollars and building size. There’s such a need for affordable housing that we’ve added units and density wherever possible.

There are other components now, too, like in the case of Chelsea Beacon, where we have about 20,000 square feet of community facility space. We’re always looking to find new ways to create a better product, and keep sustainability front of mind.

Our new construction and preservation pipeline is split about 50-50, so we have about 1,500 new construction units in our pipeline. One of the most exciting projects that we’re working on is called Stevenson Square. It’s 1,000 units of new housing that we’re building on a site that includes an existing 1,000 units of housing that we preserved. We just finished the first two phases of the project. And we’re about to start construction on the third phase.

So we’ve got about 1,500 units of new construction and another 1,000 units of preservation projects in our pipeline. We’re always trying to split the product types, and to do as much as we can.

Chelsea Beacon and Unity were both announced within a month of each other this summer, but such complex plans and capital stacks must take a long time to get to closing. What’s the typical timeline you’re looking at on these projects?

It can take affordable housing in New York City years to get to the point where you’re ready to close on construction. We’ve had projects that have taken as long as five years in planning and pre-development in order to get to a project closing, especially when you have a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.

For Unity Towers in Coney Island, we spent about a year working with NYCHA to get to the point where they designated us as the design-build contractor.

Unity was the second project that we’re working with with the New York City Public Housing Trust as the design-build contractor. We execute the renovation of the property, and NYCHA continues to own and manage. When we’re done, NYCHA will have recapitalized a fully restored and preserved building that will be affordable and accessible to residents for decades to come.

The Chelsea Beacon project is one that we spent about three years designing and planning in order to get to a closing, and then it’ll be about a three-year construction period until we’re ready to welcome our first residents into the building.

The Schneps Media 2026 Bronx Power List recognizes the business leaders, civic champions, and elected officials who move the region forward and embody influence, innovation, and inspiration — including Camber’s own Onelis Ramirez, who leads community engagement initiatives across affordable housing communities in the Bronx and throughout New York City.

“I’ve always had a passion for building community,” says Camber senior community affairs manager Onelis Ramirez. “People think my job is all meetings and events, but it’s really about relationships. I love seeing real change in people’s lives.”

Finding an affordable place to live continues to be a challenge for many as widespread housing shortages persist across the U.S. Rising home prices and high interest rates have made homeownership inaccessible for a large portion of the population. Meanwhile, as rental demand increases, the number of renters facing affordability challenges is also growing.

New York State awarded $1 billion in housing bonds and subsidies in the latest push from Gov. Kathy Hochul as part of her broader $25 billion five-year housing plan.

The funds were awarded by New York State Homes and Community Renewal to 12 housing development projects that aim to create or preserve 2,754 apartments across the state.

Seven of those projects are in New York City, including the preservation and rehabilitation of two existing structures in Harlem and on the Upper West Side, the adaptive reuse of a former correctional facility in Chelsea and new construction across four different sites in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn.

The New York City projects claim a total of $652 million in combined bonds and subsidies from the overall $1 billion.

More than $193 million will go into demolishing four former hospital buildings to make way for a new 14-story building at Vital Brooklyn’s Kingsbrook Estates. The complex, located on a portion of the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center site in East Flatbush,  is slated to deliver 402 affordable apartments allocated to residents earning 70 percent of area median income or below. Supportive services for older tenants and veterans will be offered across 142 apartments in the new build, slated for development by Monadnock Development and CB Emmanuel Realty.

Vital Brooklyn, an initiative launched in 2017 aimed at creating a new model for community development across Central Brooklyn, has already identified at least 9 sites, selected development partners and started construction on five projects. The state has already allocated $578 million toward the goal of building 4,000 affordable housing units through the initiative.

“Today’s announcement marks another significant step forward in fulfilling the promise of the Vital Brooklyn initiative and building on the momentum of recent investments in our community,” Assembly member Monique Chandler-Waterman said in a statement. “Together, we are transforming underutilized spaces into thriving community assets and creating stronger, healthier, and more resilient neighborhoods for generations to come.”

Another project comprising part of that initiative, Vital Brooklyn Alafia Phase 3, involves two new six-story buildings with 273 affordable apartments for residents at or below 70 percent AMI and will be built by Apex Real Estate Development and L+M Development Partners. HCR will invest $124 million in the project on the former Brooklyn Developmental Center campus in East New York, adding to the $387 million Alafia Phase 1 project completed in December with 576 affordable units and Alafia Phase 2, which received $326 million in state bonds and subsidies last year.

The largest Manhattan investment, $63.9 million for the Chelsea Beacon project, broke ground last week, with Gov. Hochul announcing that the project would create up to 131 permanently affordable homes for residents earning at or below 80 percent AMI, including at least 79 supportive housing units on the site of the former Bayview Correctional Facility.

In addition to funding from New York State Homes and Community Renewal, Empire State Development chipped in $20 million from its NY RUSH program for redeveloping the underutilized Chelsea Beacon site and the state Office of Mental Health added nearly $14 million in capital funding. Bayview Reentry Owner LLC, a joint venture between Camber Property Group and The Osborne Association, will develop the site.

Additional Manhattan preservation and rehabilitation projects receiving state bonds and subsidies include the Narragensett on the Upper West Side, developed by Housing and Services Inc., and Columba Kavanagh in East Harlem, to be developed by Sisters of Charity Housing Development Corporation.

The St. Joseph Apartments in the Bronx will receive more than $147 million in HCR funding to build a new eight-story building with 251 affordable units for residents at or below 70 percent AMI, with 125 apartments offering supportive services, to be developed by Catholic Homes New York and affiliate New York Institute for Human Development.

“These investments represent another major step forward in our mission to expand housing opportunities in every corner of the state and make New York more affordable,” Hochul said in a statement.

Construction is underway on Chelsea Beacon, a residential conversion and expansion of the former Bayview Correctional Facility at 550 West 20th Street in Chelsea, Manhattan. Designed by COOKFOX and developed by Camber Property Group and the Osborne Association, the project will involve the construction of an addition within the existing structure’s inner courtyard that will extend seven stories above the current roofline. The $167 million development will yield 131 permanently affordable apartments, including at least 79 supportive housing units, as well as a 15-bed short-term transitional residence program and community facility space.

The property is located at the southeast corner of West 20th Street and Eleventh Avenue, directly across from Chelsea Piers.

The renderings show the new levels rising above the southern edge of the existing Art Deco brick structure. The addition will feature a light beige brick façade surrounding floor-to-ceiling windows with black frames, and will culminate in a tall bulkhead with curved corners, matching the geometry of the levels below. The former roof will be topped with an expansive terrace featuring an urban garden.

Originally built in the early 1930s as the Seamen’s House YMCA, the building later operated as the Bayview Correctional Facility before closing in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The redevelopment will preserve architectural features, including the building’s chapel, while incorporating all-electric building systems and other sustainability and resiliency upgrades.

Apartments at Chelsea Beacon will be affordable to households earning up to 80 percent of the area median income (AMI). The project’s approximately 8,500 square feet of community facility space will serve youth recreational and educational programming. The 15-bed transitional residence will provide intensive mental health support over a 120-day period for individuals preparing to move into more independent housing. Financing includes federal and state Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, tax-exempt bonds, and capital support from New York State Homes and Community Renewal, Empire State Development, and the New York State Office of Mental Health.

The closest subways from the property are the C and E trains at the 23rd Street station along Eighth Avenue.

Apartment construction in the U.S. has been declining sharply for years and fell to a 15-year low earlier this year. But in New York City, it is booming.

The city added 38,682 units to its housing stock last year—the most new apartments completed in a single year for the city since 1965, according to the Department of City Planning, when developers rushed to complete buildings before a new zoning resolution.

The city’s residential push shows no sign of slowing down. New application filings indicate a robust pipeline, with 16,815 new units across 281 buildings proposed in this year’s first quarter, a recent Real Estate Board of New York report shows. That’s a glimmer of good news for a city in the midst of an acute housing shortage, and where a rent freeze on nearly half the rental apartment stock came after rents hit record highs. In both recent completions and proposals for new apartments, New York is ahead of every other big city in the country.

A combination of steady job growth, in sectors such as tech and finance, and the highest rents in the country are encouraging developers to break ground on new projects. New zoning and tax incentives in the city are also playing a role.

“People want to be here and they want to work here and therefore there will continue to be a very significant demand for housing,” said Rick Gropper, principal at Camber Property Group, an affordable and mixed-use housing developer.

These forces help explain why many New York developers are undeterred by the soaring construction costs and high mortgage rates that have squashed construction activity in other parts of the country. Last week, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to approve a rent freeze for the roughly one million apartments in New York City’s rent-regulated stock. The freeze was one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promises, despite pushback from landlords who argued that they would struggle to keep their properties afloat without rent increases. But, outside of the rent-regulated market, developers say it is still an encouraging time to build in New York City.

“Despite the threat of a rent freeze in the rent-stabilized space, you still have a very significant sector of the market that is not rent-stabilized,” Gropper said, and with sustained rent growth, that area of the market remains a strategic investment.

Still, the New York City boom may not last, especially after some of the tax benefits burn off. And don’t expect that wave of new, unregulated apartments to slow rent growth in the city soon. The city’s new supply is still dwarfed by the 400,000 or more homes Zillow estimates are needed in the metropolitan area to relieve unmet demand. Costs will continue to rise until the supply of new apartments added to the market can meet the staggering demand to live in New York City, developers and economists say. If the city added 40,000 new apartments to the market each year—about 2,000 more than it did last year—it would take 10 years to close that 400,000-unit deficit.

In May, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in New York City was $4,000, an all-time high for the city, according to the most recent data from the listings website StreetEasy. And a budget of $1,500 would rent 210 square feet of space in Manhattan, according to RentCafe, the smallest amount of the 200 markets ranked.

For Michele Wu, 20, finding an apartment she could afford in Manhattan meant choosing to share a room with a set of bunk beds with a friend. Wu, a student at City College who grew up in Queens, and her roommate each pay $400 a month, Wu said. “I definitely feel really fortunate to have this living arrangement, even though it may not be like my ideal living situation,” Wu said.

Kenny Lee, a senior economist at StreetEasy, said he thinks zoning reform across the city has been the most significant driver of multifamily housing development. He pointed to rezoning in neighborhoods like Mott Haven in the Bronx, Brooklyn’s Gowanus district and Long Island City in Queens. In these three neighborhoods alone, thousands of new units have been added to the market, Lee said.

Developer Domain Companies said zoning reform made possible a recently finished 360-unit building in Gowanus and a 499-unit building in Long Island City, where 30% of the units are affordable and there is a pool and a dog park on the roof.

“The rezonings are necessary because the demand is there, and the city is meeting the need by effectuating these rezonings,” said co-chief executive Matt Schwartz.

Some of what motivated last year’s development push doesn’t look sustainable, according to New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

The center attributed the surge to a rush of developers scrambling for permits before a longstanding tax break expired. So long as developers met certain requirements by June 15, 2022, they were eligible for the tax exemptions offered by the program, which applied to new multifamily projects that contained at least 20% affordable units. And, developers noted that for about two years, between the expiration of the old tax break and the implementation of a new tax incentive, multifamily development lulled.

Permit applications have picked back up since a new tax abatement program, known as 485-x, was implemented in 2024. The new program offers tax incentives for multifamily projects but requires more affordable housing and higher wages for construction workers than the previous tax break did.

Data from the Real Estate Board of New York shows that proposals for new apartments were at their highest level in the first quarter of this year since the 2022 spike, and the number of those proposals has been steadily increasing since 2024.

A representative of Camber Property Group discussed changes that could take place if the company is able to buy the housing development.

New York City-based Camber Property Group hosted a “resident listening session” Wednesday for residents of Mon View Heights housing development in West Mifflin.

The gathering, which fueled about 30 residents with pizza and refreshments, was held at Morningstar Baptist Church, in the shadows of the controversial complex.

According to its website, Camber Property Group is “a developer and owner of affordable housing in NYC and beyond. In just a few years, our team has made a far-reaching impact by building and preserving over 12,000 residential units, totaling $3.4 billion of market value. Whether constructing a new property or preserving an existing one, our goals are the same: To strengthen the local community by doing what’s right.”

Sponsored by Camber, the meet and greet was moderated by Pittsburgh-based advocacy group Neighborhood Allies. West Mifflin Councilwoman Carla Payne-Harrison, who made advocating for residents of Mon View Heights a key issue of her campaign last year and continues to speak on their behalf, was on hand to facilitate discussion between possible landlords and more than 300 residents.

Karen Hu, head of development of the Camber Property Group, previewed the meeting by saying they wanted to meet with residents. However, the New York landowner has not yet obtained the property, and it’s not a guaranteed Camber will be able to buy Mon View Heights.

“That’s why we are not introducing ourselves as the new owners,” Hu said. “We don’t own the property.”

A bankruptcy hearing will take place July 9 in Pittsburgh before Common Pleas Court Judge Chelsa Wagner involving the current owner, Merchant Bank of Indianapolis. There are legal obstacles that would need to be cleared before Camber Property Group can purchase the property.

Those include Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala, who has threatened legal action over alleged deteriorating, deplorable and uninhabitable conditions at the complex. He says Merchant collects more than $400,000 a month from Housing and Urban Development for the 300 tenants in Mon View and claims that money has been diverted from the property.

For years, residents have complained of animals living within the walls, damage to windows and doors, failure to maintain the complex’s roads and other problems.

There are also thousands of dollars in outstanding, severe code enforcement violations and fines that need to be satisfied before any financial resolution can be made.

However, Camber might be able to extend a lifeline, as Hu said, “We specialize in the preservation and development of affordable housing.”

The company works primarily in New York City, but also has developments in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Jersey. This would be the first one in the Pittsburgh area. Hu said Camber has renovated a hotel that is now used for senior affordable housing in Erie.

“We’re actually doing a lot of capital repair work there and protecting the people who actually live there,” she added.

Camber’s interest in Mon View Heights came about because the developer already has a relationship with the lender of the note, Merchants Bank. Hu said Merchants has funded a lot of other largescale preservation projects in New York.

“We do this type of work because we have a lot of experience preserving large-scale, severely distressed properties,” she said.

She explained that Camber is nearing completion of work on Edenwald Houses, a 50-acre New York City Housing Authority development that comprises of 42 buildings and 2,036 units.

As for Mon View Heights, Hu says compared to other Camber projects, “the level of distress is actually pretty similar, and I think the level of stress that the people have been living under, and the level of disrepair is actually quite similar.”

She added that Camber is “particularly equipped to manage that, because we have experienced successfully preserving these types of projects and turning them around,” and they would support residents through “a very difficult time so that they can actually go back to really repaired homes and safe housing.”

Camber was recently named one of the Top 50 Affordable Housing Owners of 2025 by Affordable Housing Finance. As of this year, Camber owns 45 properties and 13,158 units.

If the bankruptcy court hearing goes in Camber’s favor, the company would still need clearance from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency and others.

“It’s a multi-step process,” Hu said. “We won’t know for a while.”

If Camber is able to acquire Mon View Heights, the deal could close by the end of 2026, with construction and renovations beginning early next year.

The New York City Public Housing Preservation Trust has selected Fifth Avenue Builders, LLC, as the design-build team for the modernization of Unity Towers, a 193-unit NYCHA development located at 2007 Surf Avenue in Coney Island, Brooklyn. The selection, approved by the Trust Board on June 10, marks a significant milestone in the renovation effort following residents’ August 2024 vote to join the Trust program. Fifth Avenue Builders is a joint venture between Urban Atelier Group and Camber Property Group.

The property is located between West 20th and 21st Streets.

Modernization efforts will deliver comprehensive upgrades throughout the property, including full kitchen and bathroom renovations, window replacements, façade repairs, plumbing and ventilation improvements, heating system optimization, and safety and security enhancements. Additional work will address environmental hazards, pest control, waste management, and landscaping improvements. The development will remain 100 percent publicly owned while transitioning to the federally funded Project-Based Section 8 program under the Trust model.

The procurement process included a Request for Qualifications followed by a Request for Proposals issued in October 2025. Residents played a central role in shaping the project through workshops, meetings, and ongoing engagement efforts that informed the final scope of work. The Trust said the design-build delivery method is intended to streamline construction, improve coordination, and accelerate project completion. Design, financing, and construction are expected to be completed by the end of 2028.

Unity Towers includes the Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue station, served by the D, F, N, and Q trains.

HELP Women’s Center received a 2026 Big Apple Brownfield Award for Community Space and Support Services, a recognition of transforming the original East New York site — contaminated and underutilized, formerly occupied by a lighting manufacturer, and requiring over a year of extensive remediation — into a state-of-the art, sustainable 200-bed facility for women entering the homeless shelter system.  

Click here to learn more about the brand-new intake and assessment center, the first in the nation designed and built specifically for this purpose.

YIMBY recently visited three new residential developments across Bushwick, Brooklyn. All are located between Wyckoff and Irving Avenues in close proximity to the DeKalb Avenue station, served by the L train, and will add nearly 150 units to the developing neighborhood.

Construction is finished on 1601 DeKalb Avenue, a nine-story, two-building residential complex with frontage on both DeKalb Avenue and Hart Street. Designed by Aufgang Architects and developed by Camber Property Group and RiseBoro Community Partnership, the structure yields 127 affordable housing units in studio to three-bedroom layouts, with 45 reserved for stable housing. The $75 million project also includes on-site supportive services for young families.

Façade installation finished since our last construction update last September, when hoists were still attached to each of the reinforced concrete buildings. All scaffolding has been removed, revealing the finished look of the gray brick exterior, which includes sections with a decorative rough-hewn texture.

1601 DeKalb Avenue was the first project to take shape under a rezoning initiative by local elected officials, Brooklyn Community Board Four, and various community stakeholders. Units are divided into 33 studios, 52 one-bedroom, 24 two-bedroom, and 18 three-bedroom units. The project was engineered to meet the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria and features all-electric heating and cooling systems. Amenities include 24/7 security, bike storage, community rooms, and an open landscaped courtyard between the two structures.

New York-based Camber Property Group is celebrating a decade in business this year, and Rick Gropper, principal and co-founder of the firm, said it’s the company’s busiest year yet.

Founded in 2016 by Gropper and Andrew Moelis, the real estate development and management firm specializes in building and preserving affordable, mixed-use and transitional multifamily housing.

Camber’s name was at the forefront of two major housing announcements this summer. One of them was the start of construction for the $167 million redevelopment of Chelsea Beacon, where 131 affordable units, supportive housing, and community spaces will replace the former Bayview Correctional Facility at 550 West 20th Street. Plus, Camber was one of the developers selected for the $62 million modernization of NYCHA’s Unity Towers in Coney Island.

The firm is also growing its national portfolio, bringing its experience in turning around distressed assets and building new housing to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey and Ohio.

Commercial Observer sat down with Gropper in July to discuss the two headline-making projects, what it took for Camber to get there, and the challenges ahead.

Tell us about your background. What brought you into the affordable housing space, and how’d that lead to Camber?

I’ve been in the affordable housing industry for about 20 years. I started right out of graduate school from Columbia University’s real estate development program as an intern at L&M Development Partners. The market was terrible, because it was 2008. I interned for a year before they finally hired me. I worked my way up from an assistant project manager to a project manager, and I was able to learn all aspects of the development process. I’m very operationally focused, and I like solving problems and trying to be creative to accomplish deals that are challenging but really necessary.

So at L&M, I learned how to put all the pieces together — from the acquisition of land or buildings, to the financing, construction and design of a building, and getting through the complicated web of governmental approvals that are required for a closing. I really fell in love with the industry. I kind of grew up in the affordable space in New York City, and I think that everyone’s really collegial, friendly and willing to jump in and help solve problems. A lot of my best friends are in the industry as well.

I started Camber in 2016, after about 10 years at L&M Development Partners. This is our 10th year of being in existence, which is a big milestone. We’re really proud of the company that we’ve built. My co-founder Andrew and I started in the closet in someone else’s office, basically, and now we’ve put together a team of over 100 people that I think is one of the best in the business at being tenacious, creative and dedicated problem solvers who are willing to do what’s right, whatever it takes.

Camber Property Group has been front and center of two major projects announced this summer, Chelsea Beacon and Unity Towers. Is it something in the air?

This is definitely our busiest year so far, and I think a lot of things have come together both for us as a firm and in the city. There’s such a focus on affordable housing, both preserving and creating units. I think that the Mamdani administration has put a lot of really strong housing leaders in place who have decades of collective experience. They just released the Block-by-Block housing plan, and have some really ambitious goals to create 200,000 units of new housing and to preserve another 200,000 units of existing housing.

For us at Camber, we’ve spent 10 years building the company, its infrastructure and team, and a lot has come together. We now have a portfolio of 13,000 units, and we’re vertically integrated so that we can control all parts of the development process, from site or building acquisition to the financing, construction and property management. That’s really important for us, not only having a really strong team, but also being able to run and control all parts of the process, so that we can take out as much of the uncertainty as possible, because real estate is inherently risky. The more that we can control and do ourselves in-house, the more effective we’re going to be as a firm.

I think that the projects we’ve done have spoken for themselves, and that’s one of the reasons that people turn to our firm to take on some of the most complicated and challenging projects out there. I think Chelsea Beacon and the Unity Preservation Trust are two examples of projects that we were awarded that definitely have their challenges, but we’ve been able to execute on similar projects previously.

Chelsea Beacon is a huge undertaking. What are some of the unique challenges of that project?

Chelsea Beacon is the restoration of an existing, historic building. It was built as a YMCA in the early 1900s, and then in about 1970 it was converted to a women’s correctional facility. That facility was ultimately abandoned right after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It has sat empty since then.

ESD did a request for proposals to find a developer to convert it into affordable housing, and we responded with the Osborne Association. They manage affordable housing, as well as focus on re-entry from the criminal justice system. It seemed like a great match for this site. We also brought in CookFox as the architect.

It’s a really beautiful building. We’re adding about 10 floors on top of it, with 131 units of supportive housing and 20,000 square feet of community facilities.

It’s a challenging construction project because we’re restoring and building upon an existing building, but we’re also confident in our team. First, there’s the design of the restoration and the overbuild. It involves abating hazardous material inside the building, converting the existing building, and getting it ready to accommodate the additional floors we’re putting on top of it. There’s also a brownfields component. This is a brownfield project, because it was a natural gas generating site, so we have to clean it up.

The second part of it is just the complicated layers of financing to put together the $131 million that we needed to complete the project. We did that alongside our partners at the state, New York City Homes and Community Renewal and the New York State Office of Mental Health and Hygiene. They’re providing capital so that the nonprofit can actually own the short-term transitional residence. Our partners at Wells Fargo are providing debt and equity.

It’s a tough time to build a multifamily from the ground up. How do you balance new construction alongside preservation projects?

I think that projects in New York City have gotten more and more complicated, as we look to add in sustainability and green features. The projects have also gotten a lot bigger, in both units and dollars and building size. There’s such a need for affordable housing that we’ve added units and density wherever possible.

There are other components now, too, like in the case of Chelsea Beacon, where we have about 20,000 square feet of community facility space. We’re always looking to find new ways to create a better product, and keep sustainability front of mind.

Our new construction and preservation pipeline is split about 50-50, so we have about 1,500 new construction units in our pipeline. One of the most exciting projects that we’re working on is called Stevenson Square. It’s 1,000 units of new housing that we’re building on a site that includes an existing 1,000 units of housing that we preserved. We just finished the first two phases of the project. And we’re about to start construction on the third phase.

So we’ve got about 1,500 units of new construction and another 1,000 units of preservation projects in our pipeline. We’re always trying to split the product types, and to do as much as we can.

Chelsea Beacon and Unity were both announced within a month of each other this summer, but such complex plans and capital stacks must take a long time to get to closing. What’s the typical timeline you’re looking at on these projects?

It can take affordable housing in New York City years to get to the point where you’re ready to close on construction. We’ve had projects that have taken as long as five years in planning and pre-development in order to get to a project closing, especially when you have a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.

For Unity Towers in Coney Island, we spent about a year working with NYCHA to get to the point where they designated us as the design-build contractor.

Unity was the second project that we’re working with with the New York City Public Housing Trust as the design-build contractor. We execute the renovation of the property, and NYCHA continues to own and manage. When we’re done, NYCHA will have recapitalized a fully restored and preserved building that will be affordable and accessible to residents for decades to come.

The Chelsea Beacon project is one that we spent about three years designing and planning in order to get to a closing, and then it’ll be about a three-year construction period until we’re ready to welcome our first residents into the building.

The Schneps Media 2026 Bronx Power List recognizes the business leaders, civic champions, and elected officials who move the region forward and embody influence, innovation, and inspiration — including Camber’s own Onelis Ramirez, who leads community engagement initiatives across affordable housing communities in the Bronx and throughout New York City.

“I’ve always had a passion for building community,” says Camber senior community affairs manager Onelis Ramirez. “People think my job is all meetings and events, but it’s really about relationships. I love seeing real change in people’s lives.”

Finding an affordable place to live continues to be a challenge for many as widespread housing shortages persist across the U.S. Rising home prices and high interest rates have made homeownership inaccessible for a large portion of the population. Meanwhile, as rental demand increases, the number of renters facing affordability challenges is also growing.

New York State awarded $1 billion in housing bonds and subsidies in the latest push from Gov. Kathy Hochul as part of her broader $25 billion five-year housing plan.

The funds were awarded by New York State Homes and Community Renewal to 12 housing development projects that aim to create or preserve 2,754 apartments across the state.

Seven of those projects are in New York City, including the preservation and rehabilitation of two existing structures in Harlem and on the Upper West Side, the adaptive reuse of a former correctional facility in Chelsea and new construction across four different sites in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn.

The New York City projects claim a total of $652 million in combined bonds and subsidies from the overall $1 billion.

More than $193 million will go into demolishing four former hospital buildings to make way for a new 14-story building at Vital Brooklyn’s Kingsbrook Estates. The complex, located on a portion of the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center site in East Flatbush,  is slated to deliver 402 affordable apartments allocated to residents earning 70 percent of area median income or below. Supportive services for older tenants and veterans will be offered across 142 apartments in the new build, slated for development by Monadnock Development and CB Emmanuel Realty.

Vital Brooklyn, an initiative launched in 2017 aimed at creating a new model for community development across Central Brooklyn, has already identified at least 9 sites, selected development partners and started construction on five projects. The state has already allocated $578 million toward the goal of building 4,000 affordable housing units through the initiative.

“Today’s announcement marks another significant step forward in fulfilling the promise of the Vital Brooklyn initiative and building on the momentum of recent investments in our community,” Assembly member Monique Chandler-Waterman said in a statement. “Together, we are transforming underutilized spaces into thriving community assets and creating stronger, healthier, and more resilient neighborhoods for generations to come.”

Another project comprising part of that initiative, Vital Brooklyn Alafia Phase 3, involves two new six-story buildings with 273 affordable apartments for residents at or below 70 percent AMI and will be built by Apex Real Estate Development and L+M Development Partners. HCR will invest $124 million in the project on the former Brooklyn Developmental Center campus in East New York, adding to the $387 million Alafia Phase 1 project completed in December with 576 affordable units and Alafia Phase 2, which received $326 million in state bonds and subsidies last year.

The largest Manhattan investment, $63.9 million for the Chelsea Beacon project, broke ground last week, with Gov. Hochul announcing that the project would create up to 131 permanently affordable homes for residents earning at or below 80 percent AMI, including at least 79 supportive housing units on the site of the former Bayview Correctional Facility.

In addition to funding from New York State Homes and Community Renewal, Empire State Development chipped in $20 million from its NY RUSH program for redeveloping the underutilized Chelsea Beacon site and the state Office of Mental Health added nearly $14 million in capital funding. Bayview Reentry Owner LLC, a joint venture between Camber Property Group and The Osborne Association, will develop the site.

Additional Manhattan preservation and rehabilitation projects receiving state bonds and subsidies include the Narragensett on the Upper West Side, developed by Housing and Services Inc., and Columba Kavanagh in East Harlem, to be developed by Sisters of Charity Housing Development Corporation.

The St. Joseph Apartments in the Bronx will receive more than $147 million in HCR funding to build a new eight-story building with 251 affordable units for residents at or below 70 percent AMI, with 125 apartments offering supportive services, to be developed by Catholic Homes New York and affiliate New York Institute for Human Development.

“These investments represent another major step forward in our mission to expand housing opportunities in every corner of the state and make New York more affordable,” Hochul said in a statement.

Construction is underway on Chelsea Beacon, a residential conversion and expansion of the former Bayview Correctional Facility at 550 West 20th Street in Chelsea, Manhattan. Designed by COOKFOX and developed by Camber Property Group and the Osborne Association, the project will involve the construction of an addition within the existing structure’s inner courtyard that will extend seven stories above the current roofline. The $167 million development will yield 131 permanently affordable apartments, including at least 79 supportive housing units, as well as a 15-bed short-term transitional residence program and community facility space.

The property is located at the southeast corner of West 20th Street and Eleventh Avenue, directly across from Chelsea Piers.

The renderings show the new levels rising above the southern edge of the existing Art Deco brick structure. The addition will feature a light beige brick façade surrounding floor-to-ceiling windows with black frames, and will culminate in a tall bulkhead with curved corners, matching the geometry of the levels below. The former roof will be topped with an expansive terrace featuring an urban garden.

Originally built in the early 1930s as the Seamen’s House YMCA, the building later operated as the Bayview Correctional Facility before closing in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The redevelopment will preserve architectural features, including the building’s chapel, while incorporating all-electric building systems and other sustainability and resiliency upgrades.

Apartments at Chelsea Beacon will be affordable to households earning up to 80 percent of the area median income (AMI). The project’s approximately 8,500 square feet of community facility space will serve youth recreational and educational programming. The 15-bed transitional residence will provide intensive mental health support over a 120-day period for individuals preparing to move into more independent housing. Financing includes federal and state Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, tax-exempt bonds, and capital support from New York State Homes and Community Renewal, Empire State Development, and the New York State Office of Mental Health.

The closest subways from the property are the C and E trains at the 23rd Street station along Eighth Avenue.

Apartment construction in the U.S. has been declining sharply for years and fell to a 15-year low earlier this year. But in New York City, it is booming.

The city added 38,682 units to its housing stock last year—the most new apartments completed in a single year for the city since 1965, according to the Department of City Planning, when developers rushed to complete buildings before a new zoning resolution.

The city’s residential push shows no sign of slowing down. New application filings indicate a robust pipeline, with 16,815 new units across 281 buildings proposed in this year’s first quarter, a recent Real Estate Board of New York report shows. That’s a glimmer of good news for a city in the midst of an acute housing shortage, and where a rent freeze on nearly half the rental apartment stock came after rents hit record highs. In both recent completions and proposals for new apartments, New York is ahead of every other big city in the country.

A combination of steady job growth, in sectors such as tech and finance, and the highest rents in the country are encouraging developers to break ground on new projects. New zoning and tax incentives in the city are also playing a role.

“People want to be here and they want to work here and therefore there will continue to be a very significant demand for housing,” said Rick Gropper, principal at Camber Property Group, an affordable and mixed-use housing developer.

These forces help explain why many New York developers are undeterred by the soaring construction costs and high mortgage rates that have squashed construction activity in other parts of the country. Last week, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to approve a rent freeze for the roughly one million apartments in New York City’s rent-regulated stock. The freeze was one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promises, despite pushback from landlords who argued that they would struggle to keep their properties afloat without rent increases. But, outside of the rent-regulated market, developers say it is still an encouraging time to build in New York City.

“Despite the threat of a rent freeze in the rent-stabilized space, you still have a very significant sector of the market that is not rent-stabilized,” Gropper said, and with sustained rent growth, that area of the market remains a strategic investment.

Still, the New York City boom may not last, especially after some of the tax benefits burn off. And don’t expect that wave of new, unregulated apartments to slow rent growth in the city soon. The city’s new supply is still dwarfed by the 400,000 or more homes Zillow estimates are needed in the metropolitan area to relieve unmet demand. Costs will continue to rise until the supply of new apartments added to the market can meet the staggering demand to live in New York City, developers and economists say. If the city added 40,000 new apartments to the market each year—about 2,000 more than it did last year—it would take 10 years to close that 400,000-unit deficit.

In May, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in New York City was $4,000, an all-time high for the city, according to the most recent data from the listings website StreetEasy. And a budget of $1,500 would rent 210 square feet of space in Manhattan, according to RentCafe, the smallest amount of the 200 markets ranked.

For Michele Wu, 20, finding an apartment she could afford in Manhattan meant choosing to share a room with a set of bunk beds with a friend. Wu, a student at City College who grew up in Queens, and her roommate each pay $400 a month, Wu said. “I definitely feel really fortunate to have this living arrangement, even though it may not be like my ideal living situation,” Wu said.

Kenny Lee, a senior economist at StreetEasy, said he thinks zoning reform across the city has been the most significant driver of multifamily housing development. He pointed to rezoning in neighborhoods like Mott Haven in the Bronx, Brooklyn’s Gowanus district and Long Island City in Queens. In these three neighborhoods alone, thousands of new units have been added to the market, Lee said.

Developer Domain Companies said zoning reform made possible a recently finished 360-unit building in Gowanus and a 499-unit building in Long Island City, where 30% of the units are affordable and there is a pool and a dog park on the roof.

“The rezonings are necessary because the demand is there, and the city is meeting the need by effectuating these rezonings,” said co-chief executive Matt Schwartz.

Some of what motivated last year’s development push doesn’t look sustainable, according to New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

The center attributed the surge to a rush of developers scrambling for permits before a longstanding tax break expired. So long as developers met certain requirements by June 15, 2022, they were eligible for the tax exemptions offered by the program, which applied to new multifamily projects that contained at least 20% affordable units. And, developers noted that for about two years, between the expiration of the old tax break and the implementation of a new tax incentive, multifamily development lulled.

Permit applications have picked back up since a new tax abatement program, known as 485-x, was implemented in 2024. The new program offers tax incentives for multifamily projects but requires more affordable housing and higher wages for construction workers than the previous tax break did.

Data from the Real Estate Board of New York shows that proposals for new apartments were at their highest level in the first quarter of this year since the 2022 spike, and the number of those proposals has been steadily increasing since 2024.

A representative of Camber Property Group discussed changes that could take place if the company is able to buy the housing development.

New York City-based Camber Property Group hosted a “resident listening session” Wednesday for residents of Mon View Heights housing development in West Mifflin.

The gathering, which fueled about 30 residents with pizza and refreshments, was held at Morningstar Baptist Church, in the shadows of the controversial complex.

According to its website, Camber Property Group is “a developer and owner of affordable housing in NYC and beyond. In just a few years, our team has made a far-reaching impact by building and preserving over 12,000 residential units, totaling $3.4 billion of market value. Whether constructing a new property or preserving an existing one, our goals are the same: To strengthen the local community by doing what’s right.”

Sponsored by Camber, the meet and greet was moderated by Pittsburgh-based advocacy group Neighborhood Allies. West Mifflin Councilwoman Carla Payne-Harrison, who made advocating for residents of Mon View Heights a key issue of her campaign last year and continues to speak on their behalf, was on hand to facilitate discussion between possible landlords and more than 300 residents.

Karen Hu, head of development of the Camber Property Group, previewed the meeting by saying they wanted to meet with residents. However, the New York landowner has not yet obtained the property, and it’s not a guaranteed Camber will be able to buy Mon View Heights.

“That’s why we are not introducing ourselves as the new owners,” Hu said. “We don’t own the property.”

A bankruptcy hearing will take place July 9 in Pittsburgh before Common Pleas Court Judge Chelsa Wagner involving the current owner, Merchant Bank of Indianapolis. There are legal obstacles that would need to be cleared before Camber Property Group can purchase the property.

Those include Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala, who has threatened legal action over alleged deteriorating, deplorable and uninhabitable conditions at the complex. He says Merchant collects more than $400,000 a month from Housing and Urban Development for the 300 tenants in Mon View and claims that money has been diverted from the property.

For years, residents have complained of animals living within the walls, damage to windows and doors, failure to maintain the complex’s roads and other problems.

There are also thousands of dollars in outstanding, severe code enforcement violations and fines that need to be satisfied before any financial resolution can be made.

However, Camber might be able to extend a lifeline, as Hu said, “We specialize in the preservation and development of affordable housing.”

The company works primarily in New York City, but also has developments in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Jersey. This would be the first one in the Pittsburgh area. Hu said Camber has renovated a hotel that is now used for senior affordable housing in Erie.

“We’re actually doing a lot of capital repair work there and protecting the people who actually live there,” she added.

Camber’s interest in Mon View Heights came about because the developer already has a relationship with the lender of the note, Merchants Bank. Hu said Merchants has funded a lot of other largescale preservation projects in New York.

“We do this type of work because we have a lot of experience preserving large-scale, severely distressed properties,” she said.

She explained that Camber is nearing completion of work on Edenwald Houses, a 50-acre New York City Housing Authority development that comprises of 42 buildings and 2,036 units.

As for Mon View Heights, Hu says compared to other Camber projects, “the level of distress is actually pretty similar, and I think the level of stress that the people have been living under, and the level of disrepair is actually quite similar.”

She added that Camber is “particularly equipped to manage that, because we have experienced successfully preserving these types of projects and turning them around,” and they would support residents through “a very difficult time so that they can actually go back to really repaired homes and safe housing.”

Camber was recently named one of the Top 50 Affordable Housing Owners of 2025 by Affordable Housing Finance. As of this year, Camber owns 45 properties and 13,158 units.

If the bankruptcy court hearing goes in Camber’s favor, the company would still need clearance from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency and others.

“It’s a multi-step process,” Hu said. “We won’t know for a while.”

If Camber is able to acquire Mon View Heights, the deal could close by the end of 2026, with construction and renovations beginning early next year.

The New York City Public Housing Preservation Trust has selected Fifth Avenue Builders, LLC, as the design-build team for the modernization of Unity Towers, a 193-unit NYCHA development located at 2007 Surf Avenue in Coney Island, Brooklyn. The selection, approved by the Trust Board on June 10, marks a significant milestone in the renovation effort following residents’ August 2024 vote to join the Trust program. Fifth Avenue Builders is a joint venture between Urban Atelier Group and Camber Property Group.

The property is located between West 20th and 21st Streets.

Modernization efforts will deliver comprehensive upgrades throughout the property, including full kitchen and bathroom renovations, window replacements, façade repairs, plumbing and ventilation improvements, heating system optimization, and safety and security enhancements. Additional work will address environmental hazards, pest control, waste management, and landscaping improvements. The development will remain 100 percent publicly owned while transitioning to the federally funded Project-Based Section 8 program under the Trust model.

The procurement process included a Request for Qualifications followed by a Request for Proposals issued in October 2025. Residents played a central role in shaping the project through workshops, meetings, and ongoing engagement efforts that informed the final scope of work. The Trust said the design-build delivery method is intended to streamline construction, improve coordination, and accelerate project completion. Design, financing, and construction are expected to be completed by the end of 2028.

Unity Towers includes the Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue station, served by the D, F, N, and Q trains.

HELP Women’s Center received a 2026 Big Apple Brownfield Award for Community Space and Support Services, a recognition of transforming the original East New York site — contaminated and underutilized, formerly occupied by a lighting manufacturer, and requiring over a year of extensive remediation — into a state-of-the art, sustainable 200-bed facility for women entering the homeless shelter system.  

Click here to learn more about the brand-new intake and assessment center, the first in the nation designed and built specifically for this purpose.

YIMBY recently visited three new residential developments across Bushwick, Brooklyn. All are located between Wyckoff and Irving Avenues in close proximity to the DeKalb Avenue station, served by the L train, and will add nearly 150 units to the developing neighborhood.

Construction is finished on 1601 DeKalb Avenue, a nine-story, two-building residential complex with frontage on both DeKalb Avenue and Hart Street. Designed by Aufgang Architects and developed by Camber Property Group and RiseBoro Community Partnership, the structure yields 127 affordable housing units in studio to three-bedroom layouts, with 45 reserved for stable housing. The $75 million project also includes on-site supportive services for young families.

Façade installation finished since our last construction update last September, when hoists were still attached to each of the reinforced concrete buildings. All scaffolding has been removed, revealing the finished look of the gray brick exterior, which includes sections with a decorative rough-hewn texture.

1601 DeKalb Avenue was the first project to take shape under a rezoning initiative by local elected officials, Brooklyn Community Board Four, and various community stakeholders. Units are divided into 33 studios, 52 one-bedroom, 24 two-bedroom, and 18 three-bedroom units. The project was engineered to meet the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria and features all-electric heating and cooling systems. Amenities include 24/7 security, bike storage, community rooms, and an open landscaped courtyard between the two structures.

Proud to be named one of Affordable Housing Finance’s Top 50 Affordable Housing Owners of 2025 for the third year in a row, after closing out the year owning 13,158 affordable units across 45 projects.