Rachel D. Jaffe’s practice largely consists of affordable housing and community development, not-for-profit law, real estate finance, and Housing Development Fund Corporations (HDFCs).

Prior to joining Goldstein Hall, Rachel was a Senior Vice President and Counsel for a New York title insurance underwriter for five years.  Prior to practicing in the private for-profit world, Rachel maintained a transactional legal practice as the Community Economic Development Attorney at Housing Conservation Coordinators (HCC) for six years.  Her HCC legal practice included co-op share transfers, including HDFC limited equity co-op transfers, co-op corporate governance matters, contract negotiations, tenant relocation agreements, matters related to eminent domain, basic wills, elder law and rent-regulated tenancy issues.  She also had an administrative law practice that included client representation at real estate-related hearings before various New York State and New York City agencies and a special proceedings practice in civil court (Article 81 guardianship proceedings, Article 78 appeals of administrative hearings).

Immediately after moving to New York in 2006, Rachel was a project manager at a real estate development corporation in Brooklyn.  During her second and third years of law school, she worked in the corporate real estate practice group of a mid-sized law firm in Philadelphia.

Rachel earned her J.D. from Temple University where she was the Executive Editor of the Temple Journal of Science, Technology, and Environmental Law and published an article about urban growth boundaries entitled Stopping Sprawl in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (24 TEMP. J. SCI. TECH. & ENVTL. L. 143 (2005)).  Rachel also wrote an award-winning paper on individual property rights entitled Balancing Community Needs and Individual Property Rights Post- Kelo: A State Legislature’s Guide to Drafting Urban Planning-Based Statutes (Kranzel Award recipient for best law school paper about government regulation. Second Place Award recipient of the American Planning Association, Planning & Law Division 23rd Annual Smith-Babcock-Williams Writing Competition).   At graduation, Rachel received the Lena L. Hale Memorial Prize for outstanding contributions to the law school.

She also has a Master in Urban Planning degree from Harvard University and a B.A. in Growth & Structure of Cities from Haverford College.  Rachel currently resides in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.