“I don't want to use a floor cleaner where we have to put up signs telling residents not to touch the floor for 24 hours.” Another big thing she learned, she said, was how to maximize and program social space within a complex to help alleviate loneliness, which is heavily linked to depression and anxiety. “Or getting maintenance to buy cleansers with less ammonia or chemicals with strong smells that will make people sick,” she said. She means the fact that many common spaces within a complex, such as the laundry room at the complex where she works, are sufficiently lit by daylight and can save the complex money by not using lightbulbs until dusk or dark. “I learned how little decisions we have to make every day play a big part in the overall health of our residents – for example, daylighting,” she said. She said that even though she was already working in the day-to-day setting of property management, the certifications opened her eyes. (The other two are in landlord/tenant law and healthy housing.) The certifications together would have cost her $525 if she’d done them on her own BCC also gave her and the other fellows a $1,000 stipend to reflect their time spent in the program. “I respected that the program focused on both physical and mental health and how much we can improve people’s quality of life.” Perkins took the program up on two of four certifications it offered – one in property management and one in green construction management. “It was an easy choice” to do the fellowship, she said. This includes mold and debris removal to help prevent asthma and other respiratory diseases, maintaining certifications and building inspections, working with vendors to fix plumbing and electric issues, and making improvements in sanitation, waste management and security. That means she now knows even more about things she was already learning in her job. Now, she is an official East New York property management and stewardship of the built environment fellow. That’s why when she heard, through her local community board, about a New York state property management certification fellowship with a focus on community health that was being offered by Brooklyn Communities Collaborative, a nonprofit within Maimonides Medical Center, she jumped at the chance. “I want to be this company’s regional manager by the time I’m 32,” she said.īut she’s not just ambitious – she also wants to help her tenants live their best, healthiest lives. But she also often manages small repairs, including pilot lights going out and broken door knobs. The core of her job is managing people’s rentals, including pulling together the documentation that the New York City Housing Development Corp. Quetuwrah (pronounced “Katara”) Perkins, 28, is a rental manager for RY Management, which owns properties including the 568-unit affordable housing complex she works at in East New York – the very neighborhood where she grew up in the New York City Housing Authority’s Louis Pink Houses.
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