westfaironline.com February 13, 2023 Part of the Mafair Apartments in Greenburgh.
ADDITIONAL AFFORDABLE SENIOR HOUSING SOUGHT IN GREENBURGH
BY PETER KATZ Pkatz@westfairinc.com The developer who successfully transformed a former WESTHELP site on the grounds of Westchester Community College in Greenburgh into a 74-unit affordable housing complex for seniors age 62 and older wants to add another 62 units. Developer Mark Soja of the Marathon Development Group in Peekskill has gone to the Greenburgh Town Board seeking to work with it on the environmental review for the proposed expansion, with the Town
Board acting as lead agency for the review. The land is owned by Westchester County and is located within the Town of Greenburgh. Greenburgh’s approval of the site plan is not necessary because of the county’s jurisdiction. Greenburgh supported Soja’s first senior housing plan at the site. When the Mayfair Apartments development first opened in September 2021, Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner said, “The lucky seniors who live here will be able to take advantage of Greenburgh programs and services and be within walking distance
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Dawning of DEI: A new strategy for workforce diversity BY PHIL HALL Phall@westfairinc.com
T
he pursuit of diversity in the workforce is hardly a new concept, but it gained a new urgency in the aftermath of the protests sparked by the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Today, many companies and organizations are giving the subject a greater priority by creating executive positions
focused primarily on diversity — or to be more precise, on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). But will this new DEI environment achieve the results it desires? Amri B. Johnson, founder and CEO of the consultancy Inclusion Wins and author of the recently published book “Reconstructing Inclusion: Making DEI Accessible, Actionable, and Sustainable,” explained that DEI goes beyond the facile incorporation of dif-
ferent demographics into a single setting. “Diversity is any mixture of similar and different attributes and their respective tensions and complexities,” Johnson said. “Equity is about fairness and access to information and context. And inclusion is about creating the conditions for people to thrive and contribute their best at work.” Johnson recalled the initial aim for greater workplace diversity in the 1970s, when the civil
rights movement and women’s movement started to dismantle the racial and gender barriers in many companies and organizations. But two generations later, Johnson acknowledged there is still an ongoing effort to dismantle those barriers. “I think the answer is that we’re human — and in our humanity, we’re f lawed,” he explained. “And because we’re f lawed and human, we have preferences, we have certain traditions that we follow, and
there are things that are convenient to us. If somebody that we encountered doesn’t necessarily match that, sometimes — depending on your orientation, your levels of exposure, who you are exposed to — it leads you to being in a place where you might unintentionally not necessarily want to interact with somebody.” Johnson added that this biased knee-jerk reaction is “usually not a conscious
DAWNING OF DEI
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