Member WMW Steering Committee

Allen Blitz was born in the Bronx to a father from Austria-Hungary and a mother whose parents emigrated from Lithuania. He retired in 2014 after a 30-year career in the nonprofit affordable housing sector, working with three citywide organizations: Neighborhood Housing Services, the Community Services Society, and the Urban Assistance Homesteading Board. His professional expertise includes low-income real estate finance as well as construction and project management.

He is currently a member of the Community Loan Fund of Habitat for Humanity of New York and Westchester. Earlier in his career, he worked as a labor organizer in North Carolina and Virginia and served as a program director at the Colony House–South Brooklyn Settlement House Senior Center.

Allen holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from Long Island University and a B.A. from the City College of New York. He also had the unique opportunity to serve as company manager for the Afro-American Traditional Jazz Dance Theater, including participating in a 1969 U.S. State Department tour of Africa.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and is the father of two adult daughters and grandfather to a nine-year-old grandson.