The LOEB Fellowship

Deborah Helaine Morris is an urban planner and urban designer. Her work centers at the nexus of climate adaptation and social equity: more specifically, on how cities manage housing opportunity in geographies facing substantial physical risk. She advises community anchor institutions in how to incorporate climate risk and resiliency initiatives into healthy community development and revitalization plans. Deborah has extensive experience in public administration, disaster recovery initiatives spanning from 9/11 through COVID-19, and the facilitation of climate change adaptation in affordable housing. Deborah is the currently the Senior Director of Real Estate and Land Use Planning for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. In prior public service, as the Executive Director of Resiliency Policy, Planning, and Acquisitions at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Deborah created a new team, focused on the development of programs to lead aggressive climate change adaption in affordable housing including the recovery of housing damaged by Hurricane Sandy; climate-risk focused community planning initiatives; and the management of a property buyout program.

Morris had prior experience working in planning and economic development, both as a senior consultant for Appleseed and with the Alliance for Downtown New York. She received a Master’s in City Planning and Urban Design from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan. She was raised in Queens but currently calls Brooklyn home.

See Deborah’s Fall 2019 “Meet the Loeb” address here.