This is my 300th and last show.of The Advocates, which was inaugurated in August of 2007. I want to thank Bill O’Shaughnessy, the President of WVOX-VIP radio and the driving force behind the 50 year success of this most independent of stations. Bill, who is one of our greatest advocates of freedom of speech and the press, is responsible for my having the opportunity to host the Advocates for these almost six full years. I also want to thank Don Stevens and all the support staff at WVOX-1460 AM radio.

         
                                                    The Last Shows in May, 2013

Some of the topics to be discussed on this last show: Immigration, taxes, the markets, the housing bust, education, politics, healthcare, Eurocentrism, and the future of America.

1)  Which Party has really increased jobs and the Stock Market?
2)  How did the housing bust really come about, and whose was at fault?
3)  Tax Cuts, who they helped and didn't?
4)  Immigration how it built America.
5)  Healthcare, if it isn't reformed Medicare and Medicaid will be threatened.
6)  Is the day of Eurocentric hegemony on the way out?
7)  Why a house divided against itself cannot stand!

A lifelong New Yorker, I was raised in Mount Vernon, New York and was educated in the Mount Vernon public schools and graduated from Boston University with a BA in American History.

            
                                              My daughter Dana guests on The Advocates

After spending a year on Wall Street as a research analyst with Bache & Co., I joined a manufacturing and importing firm, where over the next twenty-five years I rose to the position of chief operating officer. After the sale of that business, I entered into the financial services field with Metropolitan Life and for 15 years I was a Registered Representative, basically affiliated with Acorn Financial Services, a John Hancock Life Insurance Company Agency.  During that period I specialized and focused on asset preservation through planning and long term care insurance.

In recent years my main interest was encouraging communities to seek ways to incorporate “sustainability and resiliency” into their future infrastructure planning with my late partner, and frequent guest on The Advocates, John Berenyi.

                    

After a lifetime in politics, with many years working as a district leader, which involved party organizational work, campaign chair activity and numerous other political tasks, I have been involved with numerous civic and social causes. I served in 2005, as the campaign coordinator of the Re-Elect Paul Feiner Campaign in Greenburgh, NY and again chaired Supervisor Feiner’s successful landslide victory in 2007. With regards to local and national politics, I still keep an active interest.

I served as an appointed Deputy Supervisor of the Town of Greenburgh, with responsibilities regarding the town’s “liaison program,” and I also was a member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board of the Town of Greenburgh, NY. I have spent many years lecturing on FDR, The New Deal and 20th century American history in: the Mount Vernon schools, at the Westchester Council of Social Studies annual conference in White Plains, and at many senior citizen groups, which include appearances at the Old Guard of White Plains, the Rotary Clubs of Elmsford and White Plains, and various synagogue groups around Westchester. In the winter of 2006, I was the leader of the VOCAL forum, sponsored by the Westchester County Office of Aging, which addresses the concerns of Westchester County’s Intergenerational Advocacy Educational Speak-out forums for senior citizens. I have given lectures for the Active Retirement Project, which is co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Center on the Hudson, the Greenburgh Hebrew Center, and other groups around Westchester County.

I was the founder and Chairperson of the Jon Breen Memorial Fund, that judged and granted annual prizes to students at Mount Vernon High School who wrote essays on public policy themes. The Fund also sponsors the Henry M. Littlefield History Prize for the leading MVHS history student. I currently serve on the Student College Scholarship Committee of Mount Vernon High School. In past years I chaired and moderated the Jon Breen Fund Award’s cablecast program with the Mayor and local and school officials. I was a member of the Blythedale Children’s Hospital’s Planned Giving Professional Advisory Board, and was a founding member of the committee to re-new the FDR Birthday Balls of the 1930’s and 1940’s with the March of Dimes’ effort to eliminate birth defects. Their renewal dinner was held at Hyde Park on January 30, 2003. I have been an active contributor to the Roosevelt Institute, which is involved in many pursuits which included the opening of the Henry A. Wallace Center at Hyde Park, and the Eleanor Roosevelt – Val-Kill Foundation.  I am married to the former Linda Rosen and this July 27th we will celebrate our 44th anniversary. We have two children, Dana, who is married to Craig Sonis, and Jon, who is married to Dr. Jocelyn Soffer.

The Advocates’  topics have ranged from the following:

1)     Separation of Church and State, the Magna Carta- The Christian Right
2)    The Supreme Court and FDR with Noah Feldman, Jeff Shesol, Burt Solomon
3)    Healthcare in America-Doctors, oncologists, cancer clusters
4)    Education Reform-educators, PhD programs
5)    The New Deal and its impact - WPA, Frances Perkins, CCC
6)    Voting Reform and new ballot machines
7)    Alternate energy and sustainability, clean air and clean water
8)    Libertarian views on government’s future
9)    Big time sports in America, the First Olympics, The First Black Olympian
10)    FDR: Jonathan Alter, William vanden Heuval, Chris Breiseth and many authors
11)     Foreign policy: James Bradley, the Marshall Plan, Albert Wedemeyer and China
12)    Religion- the role of mysticism , the meaning of the holidays
13)    Wall Street-Goldman Sachs and Washington Reform
14)     Media Bias, freedom of speech
15)    Politics: Conventions, political parties: Doug Garr, Milt Hoffman, Alfred Zacher
16)    2nd Amendment – the NRA gun control, the Miranda Decision
17)    Justice in America, legal aid, the courts,
18)    Foreign policy: Burma, Middle East, Leon Blum in pre WWII France
19)     Global Aging
20)     Clean air, clean water, the Hudson River, Indian Point, climate change
21)    Trusts, taxation and the enduring rights of the individual
22)    JFK’s Enduring  Legacy- Tom Putnam, head of the Kennedy Library
23)    Markets and regulation, Jeff Madrick, Hedrick Smith
24)    Child Abuse and Cover-ups and human trafficking
25)    Planned Parenthood and family planning

Some of My Guests: Gail Collins, James Bradley, Charles Rangel, Professor Charles Perrow of Yale, Michael Curtis of Rutgers, Jonathan Alter, Bill vanden Heuval, Noah Feldman, Jeff Shesol and Burt Solomon (The Supreme Court), Adam Cohen (NY Times), Amy Bach, Tony Rudell, the birth of modern radio, Tom Nesi, and VIOXX, Jean Bodin, Ralph Branca, James Bradley, Professor Ray Madoff, Jeffrey Lyons, Andrew Roberts, Linda Fairstein, Deborah Lipstadt, Jeff Madrick, Hedrick Smith, Professor Yale Kamisar and many others.

Meanwhile the mission of The Advocates is to bring to the public differing views on current “public policy” issues. “Public policy,” therefore, is what we as a nation legally and traditionally follow.

Download | Duration: 00:51:22

John Loftus was scheduled to be on the Advocates, but due to unforseen circumstances he was unable to participate.

                                     

My guest is John Loftus and we are going to discuss “VE Day and the day that the European civil wars ended and the modern world began. John J. Loftus is a former Army Officer, former Federal Prosecutor and noted historian. He is included among the few ever to have held COSMIC security clearances, including code word, NATO, and nuclear Top Secrets.  For decades he has worked without pay as an attorney to help other law abiding intelligence agents blow the whistle on government corruption.  He is the author of seven books, two of which were international best sellers and one was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.   
 
Loftus is a graduate of Boston College (BA, 1971) and Suffolk University (JD, 1977). He served in the U.S. Army from 1971 to 1974, attaining the rank of First Lieutenant. He began working for the US Department of Justice in 1977 and in 1979 joined their Office of Special Investigations, which was charged with prosecuting and deporting Nazi war criminals in the US.

His 60 Minutes expose of Nazis war criminals working for US intelligence won the 1982 Emmy Award for outstanding investigative journalism.  Since then he has been a frequent intelligence contributor for network television including CNN, ABC, and Fox.  Several of his books have been made into television movies.  American Secrets, a documentary film about his research into America’s finest families who funded Hitler, will soon be released in movie theaters nationwide. Now that the classification clock has expired after thirty years, Mr. Loftus’ most recent book, America’s Nazi Secret, reveals for the first time what the US Justice Department has been censoring from the view of the American people.  He rips the lid off the US connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

Mr. Loftus currently lives in St. Petersburg, Florida and writes a weekly intelligence column, Spyview, for Ami Magazine in New York.  He is the President of the international Intelligence Summit, and is the past President (and first Irish Catholic President) of the Florida Holocaust Museum.  

Download | Duration: 00:51:25

My guest is Dr. Chris Breiseth, the Chairman of the Board of the Frances Perkins Center, of Damariscotta, Me.

                

Dr. Christopher N. Breiseth is the immediate past president and CEO of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, which is located at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York. He served in that position from 2001 to 2008. He was president of Deep Springs College in California from 1980 to 1983 and of Wilkes University from 1984 to 2001. He earned his B.A. in history at UCLA, a Masters of Literature in Modern British History from Oxford and a Ph.D. in European History from Cornell.

While at Cornell, he lived at the Telluride House, where Frances Perkins was a guest for the last five years of her life. During that period she taught at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Together, Breiseth and Miss Perkins organized two seminars for house members, one with Henry A. Wallace, the other with James Farley. Following Miss Perkins's death in 1965, Breiseth wrote an article, "The Frances Perkins I Knew," which provides some of the material on Frances Perkins's life at Telluride House for Kirstin Downey's book, "The Woman Behind the New Deal." The article is available on line. He also served for a year and a half in 1967 and 1968 as Chief of Policy Guidance for the Community Action Program which was part of the Office of Economic Opportunity, President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. He is the husband of the late Jane Morhouse Breiseth and he has three daughters and two grandchildren.

Download | Duration: 00:51:09

My guest is frequent guest, author and baseball enthusiast Bruce Fabricant.


Bruce has been the author of two interesting books about baseball in his home town of Mount Vernon in the 1950’s. His current book, Baseball Boys: Rediscovering 1950s Little League Baseball in Mount Vernon, NY was published in November of 2012. One can find Baseball Boys at amazon.com.

                                              

Bruce Fabricant who grew up in Mount Vernon has spent more than four decades in marketing and advertising.  Nearly 25 of those years were with Grey Advertising in New York City where headed up the agency’s public relations department’s sports marketing group.

He began his career at Grey promoting Getty Oil’s New York Yankees Honorary Batboy campaign. Through the years he promoted everything from General Foods’ Box Tops for Fun ‘N Fitness School Program, to the Mennen Company’s NFL Fastback of the Week Award to Cracker Jack’s Baseball Card Collectibles and Kenner Toys’ Starting Lineup baseball figurines.

In the late ‘60s he helped produce the first annual Major League Baseball Highlight film sponsored by Investors Diversified Services.   He has written five made for television sports films sponsored by Panasonic.  They include “The Heisman Trophy – The Possible Dream”, “Bullpen – The Story of Baseball’s Relief Pitchers”, “Tennis Everyone” and “Soccer -- New Game in Town”. He currently heads his own Westchester-based public relations firm.  He most recently has written two books about Mount Vernon.  The first, “That Perfect Spring” is about growing up in Mount Vernon during the 1950s and playing baseball for the city’s championship A.B. Davis High School team.  In 2011 he edited a book titled “Remembering Mount Vernon – The Place We Called Home” that features essays about the city of the ‘40s and ‘50s.  Both are available at www.lulu.com.

Download | Duration: 00:54:15

My guests are historians Professor Richard Breitman and Distinguished Professor Allan Lichtman. Our subject is the FDR record regarding: immigration, the Holocaust, isolationism, the bombing of Auschwitz, the War Refugee Board, Yalta and Palestine.

                               Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman

Richard Breitman is the author or co-author of ten books and many articles in German history, U. S. history, and the Holocaust.   He is Distinguished Professor at American University and is also editor of the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies.  

Breitman’s book The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York: Knopf, 1991) won the Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History and was translated into five languages.  Another book Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), has also appeared in five foreign languages.  

Breitman served as lead editor of the first two volumes of the diaries and papers of James G. McDonald (League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1933-35, and chairman of President Roosevelt’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, 1938-1945), part of a four-volume series published by Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

                                                

Breitman’s 2011 book Hitler’s Shadow, co-authored with Norman J. W. Goda, dealt with the fate of Nazi war criminals and collaborators in the postwar period.  It was based largely on newly declassified documents from the United States National Archives.

Breitman served as director of historical research for the Nazi War Criminal Records and Imperial Japanese Records Interagency Working Group, which helped to bring about declassification of more than eight million pages of U.S. government records under a 1998 law.  

FDR and the Jews (March 2013), co-authored with Allan J. Lichtman, is the product of more than twenty-five years of research and thinking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Allan Lichtman was born in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School. He received his B.A. degree from Brandeis University in History in 1967, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude while also running track and wrestling for the school. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University as a Graduate Prize Fellow in 1973, also in history.

He began teaching at American University in 1973, rising to chair of the History Department, and was named Scholar/Professor of the Year in 1993. Outside of the classroom, He has testified as an expert witness on civil rights in more than 70 cases for the U.S. Department of Justice and for civil rights groups such as the NAACP, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund and Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also consulted for Vice President Al Gore and Senator Edward Kennedy. He assisted the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigation into voting irregularities in Florida during the 2000 election, submitting an extensive report of his statistical analysis of balloting problems. Lichtman concluded "there were major racial disparities in ballot rejection rates".

Alan Lichtman has received numerous awards at American University during his career. Most notably, he was named Outstanding Scholar/Teacher for 1992-93, the highest faculty award at that school. Other honors include:

•    Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Visiting Scholar, California Institute of Technology, 1980–81
•    Top Speaker Award, National Convention of the International Platform Association, 1983,  1984, 1987
•    Selected by the Teaching Company as one of America's "Super Star Teachers"

Also, in the early 1980s while living in California as a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology, He is the author or co-author of eight books and more than 200 articles. He is best known for the "Keys" system, presented in his books The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency and The Keys to the White House. The system uses thirteen historical factors to predict whether or not the popular vote in the election for President of the United States will be won by the candidate of the party holding the presidency (regardless of whether the President is the candidate). The keys were selected based on their correlations with the presidential election results from 1860 through 1980, using statistical methods adapted from the work of geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok for predicting earthquakes. The system then correctly predicted the popular vote winner in each of the elections of 1984 through 2012, including 2000. Lichtman has provided commentary for networks and cable channels. He was the regular political analyst for CNN Headline News.

Download | Duration: 00:50:57

Ben G. Frank, author, journalist, is considered one of this country’s most distinguished travel writers and commentators on Jewish communities around the world. With the publication of The Scattered Tribe, Traveling the Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond, he breaks new ground in reporting on far-flung exotic Jewish outposts. He is the author of A Travel Guide to Jewish Europe 3rd edition, A Travel Guide to Jewish Russia and Ukraine and A Travel Guide to the Jewish Caribbean and South America. (Pelican Publishing Company.)
 
                     

Frank, a noted Jewish travel writer, traveled through Russia and the Ukraine, Siberia and the Russian Far East, China and Japan, as well as Canada, before writing this historical novel. The telling of the story, the secrets of the Rasputnis family, the deadly struggles of a young girl to find her father, the characters who seek fulfillment in overcoming jealousy and sibling rivalry, make Klara’s Journey, a read about human destiny.

A former newspaper reporter with the New Haven Register and Elizabeth Daily Journal, he has published articles in Hadassah Magazine, Reform Judaism Magazine, National Jewish Monthly of B’nai B’rith, Jewish Frontier, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jewish Press, Jewish Exponent, Jewish Week, as well as The New Haven Register, Inside Chappaqua Magazine, and Inside Magazine, Philadelphia, PA.

His books have been cited and reviewed in the New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune, Associated Press, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post, andFt. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel.

Frank has given talks at Jewish Book Fairs, synagogues and temples. His many lectures include, “Tolerance and Identity: Jews in Early New York, 1654–1825,” at the Museum of the City of New York, as well as a talk at the 92nd Street Y. He has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV talk-shows.

He is a B.A., cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and an M.A. graduate of the Center of Israel and Jewish Studies, Columbia University. He has been active in such professional organizations as the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Overseas Press Club, the American Jewish Public Relations Society and the Pacific Area Travel Association.
Frank is president of The Frank Promotion Corp., a public relations firm, specializing in radio-tv talk-shows. He lives with his wife Riva in Palm Beach County, Florida. The couple has two sons, Martin and Monte, and four grandchildren.

About the Book:
Klara’s Journey: A Novel
ISBN 9781936863471
Pub Date: June 1, 2013
http://bit.ly/WyVSWq

Download | Duration: 00:51:29

My guest is author and historian Dr. Ellen Chesler and we will be talking about “Women’s reproductive health and rights: the opportunities and obstacles.”


Dr. Chesler is author of the critically celebrated Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America.  A finalist for PEN's 1993 Martha Albrand award in nonfiction, the book was released in a new paperback edition in 2007. With over thirty years of experience in government, philanthropy, and academia, Ellen Chesler is widely respected for the practical and intellectual perspectives she brings to public policy.

                                     

Dr. Chesler is currently a Senior Fellow at the Four Freedoms Center of the Roosevelt Institute, an innovative New York City- based think tank that promotes ideas, influences policy and nurtures young talent, all by way of creating a living legacy for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, whose presidential library in Hyde Park, the institute also supports. She is shaping the institute’s new policy program on human rights while also helping to expand overall public programming.

From 2007-2010,  she was Distinguished Lecturer and Director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Initiative on Women and Public Policy at Roosevelt House, the new public policy institute of Hunter College of the City University of New York.  She played a central role in defining the institute’s three part mission: engaging students through the development of policy courses; supporting the faculty in applied policy research and advocacy; and sponsoring lectures, seminars, and conferences, most prominently “Aspen at Roosevelt House,” a discussion and lecture series in collaboration with the Aspen Institute that attracted large and enthusiastic audiences.

For nearly ten years prior, Dr. Chesler served as a senior fellow and program director at the Open Society Institute, the international foundation started by George Soros, where she helped develop and execute the foundation's multi-million dollar global investments in reproductive health and women’s rights and advised on a range of other program initiatives.  Her work with women combined support for policy research and advocacy, public education, and litigation with strategic investments in new birth control products and model service innovations that promise long-term benefits in public health in the United States and in many countries around the world.

She is the co-editor of Where Human Rights Begin: Health, Sexuality and Women in the New Millennium, Rutgers University Press, 2005, and she has written numerous essays and articles in academic anthologies and in newspapers and periodicals including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, the New Republic, the American Prospect, and the Women's Review of Books. She has written blogs for New Deal 2.0, the on-line publication of the Roosevelt Institute, for the Huffington Post and other web-sites.

Dr. Chesler has extensive experience as a voluntary leader with non-governmental organizations.  She currently chairs the nominating committee of the board of directors of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. And she serves on the Advisory Committee of the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, which she chaired for six years. From 1997 to 2003, she chaired the board of the International Women's Health Coalition. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  In 2009 and 2010, she served as a U.S. public delegate at meetings of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.  She has also long been active in Democratic politics, especially on behalf of women candidates, most recently New York Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Hillary Rodham Clinton.    

Early in her professional career, Dr. Chesler was chief of staff to New York City Council President Carol Bellamy, who was the first woman ever elected to city wide office in New York. An honors graduate of Vassar College, Chesler earned her masters and doctoral degrees in history at Columbia University.  She is married to New York lawyer, Matthew Mallow, and they are the parents of two adult children.
    

Download | Duration: 00:51:10

My guest is businessman and author Stanley Chao and our subject is “Will China Own the World?”


Stanley Chao is a Chinese-American, who is the author of Selling To China: A Guide to Doing Business in China for Small- and Medium-Sized Companies. He has worked in China for more than twenty years for big and small companies and he has now compiled the knowledge he’s gained from his unique hands-on experience and has written it into his new book, Selling To China: A Guide to Doing Business in China for Small- and Medium-Sized Companies. www.AllInConsult.com and www.SellingToChina.net

China is the world’s fastest growing economy, with growth rates averaging 10% over the past 30 years. But he answers how small and medium sized businesses in the U.S. jump into this lucrative market. “Twenty years ago, China was a place only for large corporations,” Chao explains. “Today, opportunities exist for small- and medium-sized companies in the $5M to $500M sales revenue range. China is not difficult to handle, it just has a different set of rules that Westerners must learn to follow.”

Websites: www.AllInConsult.com and www.SellingToChina.net

Download | Duration: 00:51:25

I have the sad duty to report to you the passing away of my great friend and colleague John Berenyi. John succumbed to cancer after a long struggle. He was not a complainer and did not burden his friends with worry and angst about his condition. John was a frequent guest on my radio show, The Advocates and for the last six years starred on my year end show. He was always there when I needed a quick replacement and his insightful understanding of economics, financing, energy and the world in general was always spot on. Over the past few years, John and I worked together advising cities and towns on renewable and alternate sources of energy. He had boundless personal energy and was always on the go. Whenever I could pin him down, we always discussed history, politics and the current state of affairs, inside and outside, the Beltway.


He was a frequent guest of ours at our annual Chinese New Year Party and we even lunched in Chinatown with John and Eileen, on Dim Sum on one New Year’s morning. Linda and I were also astounded by all of his connections and by the fact that he was friendly with some of our friends. He was a wonderful husband and a father of three accomplished and wonderful daughters. To say the least, that Linda and I will miss him terribly is an understatement.



John Berenyi currently he advises governments, corporations and non profit organizations from Mt. Vernon, NY to South Carolina and cities in South Florida on sustainability, risk management and strategic planning related to alternative energy. Internationally, he is an adviser on these matters to companies and public entities in Israel, New Zealand, Hungary and other areas.


He has over 25 years of experience as financial advisor, technology and economic consultant and investment banker.  His work has been at the intersection of engineering, business law, urban planning, management, economics and finance.

John has undergraduate and graduate degrees in industrial engineering, management sciences and applied economics and public finance from Columbia University and was named a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at Harvard University. He worked as the Co-Chairman of the NY State Task Force of business and economic leaders and citizens established   to support the amendment to the NY State Constitution which now allows “Tax Increment Financing” by communities throughout NY.

Appearances: All these shows are archived and the can be found on the schedule on the left.

My guest is Alexander Roberts, Executive Director of Community Housing Innovations and our subject is “Public and Work- force Housing: Solutions to a Worsening Crisis.”

           
                            
                                                Richard Garfunkel and Alexander Roberts
 As Executive Director of Community Housing Innovations (CHI) since its inception, Alexander Roberts has overseen the acquisition of 500 houses and apartments in Westchester, Ulster, Nassau and Suffolk Counties, with a budget of $20 million a year.  CHI was cited in 2002 as one of the nation’s fastest growing housing nonprofits by the consulting firm of McKinsey and Company.

             

Mr. Roberts founded CHI in 1991, after spending nearly 20 years as a television news correspondent.  He was a reporter and anchor for WVIR-TV in Charlottesville, Virginia, WRGB-TV in Albany, and WPIX-TV in New York City.  He won numerous awards for his reporting, including two Emmy Nominations and the Associated Press Broadcasters Award for General Excellence in Individual Reporting.  

After covering the welfare hotel scandals in the late eighties in New York City, Mr. Roberts decided to leave broadcasting for a career in affordable housing development and human services.

In 1991, Suffolk County, New York faced a crisis in which nearly 500 families were homeless--the majority in unsupervised welfare hotels.   Children were living in crowded, vermin-infested rooms, with drugs freely available.    Working with the Suffolk County Department of Social Services, Mr. Roberts developed a supervised motel model.  He negotiated agreements with motel owners that established on site CHI offices, with caseworkers to assist the homeless in finding housing and services.   CHI monitored health and safety standards and families were required to execute “self-sufficiency contracts” with CHI social workers.   CHI relocated thousands of families into permanent and transitional housing, ultimately resulting in the closure of the welfare hotels by 1996.

In 1994, Roberts proposed an emergency housing strategy to Westchester County that allowed the agency to acquire multi-family buildings. Leveraging tens of millions of dollars in grants, low interest loans, and bank mortgages, Roberts negotiated the acquisition of nearly 500 units of housing for the poor and those with special needs in Westchester County and Long Island.

In 1996, under Roberts’ guidance, CHI began developing partnerships with services organizations that lacked the housing development expertise to compete for federal HUD Supportive Housing Program grants.    With these organizations providing the case management for individuals with special needs--such as the developmentally disabled and mentally ill--CHI obtained grants totaling over $9 million to develop supportive housing for these populations. CHI received Best Practices recognition from HUD in 2000.

Also in that year, Mr. Roberts started a division to assist families in realizing the dream of home ownership.   Called “Renters into Owners,” the program included CHI’s purchase and renovation of more than 100 homes for sale for as little as no money down to first time home buyers.  Since then, Mr. Roberts has established a nonprofit brokerage subsidiary catering to first time homebuyers, as well as a management and development company.  CHI’s home ownership division annually administers about $1 million in grants to first time home buyers under contract with the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the New York State Affordable Housing Corporation, and the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. To date, as Local Program Administrator for NYS Homes and Community Renewal, the agency has enabled 450 households to become homeowners with down payment assistance and free counseling.  The agency’s grant recipients have had a default rate far below the national average.

Mr. Roberts came to the energy efficiency movement early and completed the Energy Management Certification course sponsored by the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal in January 2002.  He has utilized the NYSERDA Multifamily Performance Program for nine of CHI’s existing buildings, coupling it with Weatherization.  In 2009, CHI developed and built a 14-unit condominium in White Plains that was the first to meet all of the requirements of the New York State Energy $mart Low Rise Multifamily Performance Program and the first to utilize geothermal heat pumps for heating and cooling in White Plains. CHI has also authorized energy audits and retrofits for dozens of its residential properties under the National Grid and New York State Weatherization programs.

Mr. Roberts is active in volunteer community efforts, serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the Supportive Housing Network of New York.  He sits on the Tarrytown Moderate Income Housing Board and Tarrytown Environmental Advisory Council.  Mr. Roberts served as president of the Westchester Symphony Orchestra from 1996 to 1998. He is married to Barbara G. Roberts, a First Vice President and Senior Financial Advisor for Merrill Lynch, named in 2011 by Registered Rep magazine among the top 50 women in the nation among advisors in brokerage firms and banks ("Wirehouse Women”).  

Mr. Roberts is a lifelong tennis player, currently ranked #4 in the USTA Eastern Division for his age group.   

Download | Duration: 00:51:10