Dan Cohen is a native New Yorker and an affordable housing advocate.
Daniel Marks Cohen is a 2021 candidate for City Council in the 7th District of Manhattan, to succeed incumbent Mark Levine, who is term-limited. Dan is a housing advocate with over 20 years of experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Since 2014 he has been Vice President of the nonprofit Housing Partnership, assisting in the creation and preservation of over 5,000 affordable housing units each year. Before joining the Housing Partnership, Dan started an affordable housing consulting firm, prior to that he was a mortgage officer at a nonprofit affordable housing lender, and before that he had advised on the city’s allocation of federal aid for the 9/11 recovery. Dan began his housing career after receiving his MBA from NYU in 1999. His experience in affordable housing has made the subject a priority in his campaign, and Dan’s longstanding participation is the community has shown him the urgency of many other issues:
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Affordable Housing: An appointed member of Community Board 9, Dan is working to create 200+ units of affordable housing and a community arts center in West Harlem and another 300+ units of affordable senior housing in Manhattan Valley to ensure that more of us can have a space we can afford and to build connections
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Public Schools: As a proud NYC public-school graduate, and public-school parent serving on the school PTA, Dan knows many of the struggles our schools face and why tackling them is so critical. He will work for schools to have smaller classes, increased teacher pay, expanded second language instruction, and better technology that they need.
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Climate Change: The biggest threat we face as a city, a country and a planet. Dan is committed to making NYC the high standard for responding to global warming, it will touch on every aspect of our lives, housing, schools, transportation, everything. We cannot have climate justice without fundamental changes in the way we operate.
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Racial Equity & LGBTQ Justice: In 2021, virtually the entire city government is changing – new leadership must hold police accountable, advocate for racial equity and LGBTQ justice, and protect the most vulnerable among us. Black Lives Matter and Trans Lives Matter, when the protests have receded, we must still press for structural change.
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Criminal Justice Reform: Giving our community space to thrive, however, means little without also committing to building a restorative criminal justice system with alternatives to incarceration that helps people repair their lives instead of continuing to tear them down. Closing Rikers was the first step, but the journey to reform has just begun.
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Health Care: As a member of the community advisory board of Mt. Sinai, Dan understands that expanding the capacity of hospitals to meet the needs of our neighbors and extending medical assistance to all through community health clinics are crucial to our community’s future well-being and furthering the healing from the pandemic.
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Small Businesses: As a Board Member of the Columbus-Amsterdam Business Improvement District, Dan knows the importance of supporting local small businesses. He will work to provide capital to help small companies start and restart as part of COVID-19 recovery, with targeted investment in minority & women-owned businesses.
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Dan is the son and grandson of union members. Since 2010, Dan has been re-elected five times as the Democratic State Committeeman in the 69th Assembly District and is a founder of the Progressive Caucus of the NYS Democratic Committee, a leading voice against the IDC in the State Senate. A three-time NYC Marathon finisher, he is the son of a Cantor and an attorney. Dan and his family are members of Congregation Rodeph Sholom, and he was raised in rent-regulated housing in Upper Manhattan in the same neighborhood where he lives with his wife and young son today.
Dan on his first campaign for Democratic State Committee back in 2010.
Dan, Jill, and their exuberant son, Caleb, age 8