Ismene Speliotis
Ismene came to NY ACORN in 1995 to run the Mutual Housing Association of NY (MHANY), the affordable housing development and mortgage counseling organization that NY ACORN established as an outgrowth of NY ACORN’s mid-1980s squatting/homesteading campaigns. Ismene still runs MHANY, which has become one of the largest and most successful non-profit housing developers in NYC. In this interview, Ismene talks about her early years in NYC as a college student, where she first got involved in housing and organizing in low income communities; her early post-college years where she worked for the City of NY on housing issues and for various non-profit housing developers; and her decision to come work with NY ACORN and MHANY. She describes the synergies between NY ACORN’s organizing and MHANY’s development projects. She also talks about the attacks on ACORN (some of the misleading Project Veritas videos were filmed at the MHANY office), and her subsequent work to help create NY Communities for Change (NY ACORN’s successor organization), and her work to build MHANY into the successful organization it is today.