This week for the Sunday Story: Melina Nath explores the reporting process behind the firing of the Housing Development Fund Corporation Resource Center director with Spectator reporter Grace Kaste. Nath and Kaste break down the complaints of the former director regarding the organization, including financial concerns and reports of a toxic work environment.

[Vince Morgan]: Remember, I was on the board for five years. Some of the stuff that came out of his mouth was like, just unbelievable.

[Melina Nath]: This is Vincent Morgan, a graduate of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. When this recording was taken, Morgan had recently been fired from his job as the director of the Housing Development Fund Corporation, or HDFC, Resource Center. Here, he describes interactions he had with Zead Ramadan, the Executive Director at the West Harlem Development Corporation, or the WHDC, which is the umbrella organization of the HDFC.

[Vince Morgan]: So really, I started recording him, because I was like, I don’t think people would believe me if I said this, one. Two, all he has to do is deny it.

[Melina Nath]: This clip is from a conversation between Morgan and Spectator’s Grace Kaste, a city news reporter. Here, they discuss a series of recordings of Ramadan, which Spectator received. After getting a tip in September 2024 about conflicts within the WHDC, Grace spent around 5 months investigating this issue. What did these recordings contain, and what did Grace discover about this organization?

[Melina Nath]: Welcome to the Sunday Story, a series breaking down Spectator’s top enterprise stories. In this episode, we explore Grace’s piece entitled “HDFC Resource Center director fired amid community dissatisfaction with parent organization.” I’m your host, Melina Nath. Stay tuned to learn more about Grace’s journey reporting this story.

[Melina Nath]: So let’s start with the basics; what is the WHDC? And, within this organization, what is the HDFC Resource Center? In 2009, Columbia University and the then-called West Harlem Local Development Corporation signed the West Harlem Community Benefits Agreement. This agreement allocated money to this partner organization, setting up what is now the WHDC.

[Grace Kaste]: The main provision is $76 million to what would become the West Harlem Development Corporation, and that’s an organization that this agreement brought into existence. Their purpose is to facilitate economic development and community programming in West Harlem. And they have, obviously, $76 million is a lot of money. Within the WHDC, a clause in the community benefits agreement calls for the establishment of an HDFC Resource Center.

[Melina Nath]: Grace writes in her article, HDFCs specifically “are a unique type of housing co-op in which residents, who are low or middle income, are responsible for the building’s upkeep. West Harlem has the most HDFCs of any neighborhood in New York City.” So, what was going on with the HDFC Resource Center?

[Melina Nath]: When did you start working on the story?

[Grace Kaste]: I first started September 28th of 2024.

[Melina Nath]: (Phone line ringing) On this date, Grace received a tip from an anonymous source about conflicts in the WHDC, who could not disclose themselves due to potentially jeopardizing their employment. From there, she started reaching out to other WHDC board members to figure out what was going on in the organization.

[Grace Kaste]: As I quickly learned, the board members didn’t want to talk to me, or also they weren’t allowed to talk to me, as in their capacity as board members about what was going on at the WHDC.

[Melina Nath]: Throughout the end of 2024, Grace had little success with getting in contact with WHDC members. That led to a standstill in the investigative process. She attempted to write a story with mostly anonymous sourcing in November, but the story did not make it to publication.

[Grace Kaste]: So I had basically given up on the story, because I, in my mind, I didn’t have a way to fully get the truth unless people would talk to me on record.

[Melina Nath]: This brings us to the beginning of 2025. Remember Morgan, from earlier? Well, on January 22nd, he contacted Grace, requesting to call.

[Melina Nath]: He told her that he had been fired from the WHDC, just a few days earlier on January 15th.

[Grace Kaste]: He said, because he’s been fired, he would go on the record with me.

[Kaste/Morgan]: (Phone line rings)

[Morgan]: Hello?

[Kaste]: Hi Vince. This is Grace.

[Morgan]: Hi Grace. How are you?

[Kaste]: I’m good. How are you?

[Morgan]: I’m okay.

[Grace Kaste]: He was like, this has basically turned into a much larger conflict, and he was right. More people were willing to talk to me after that. That’s when the story got a new wind and also became, in my opinion, hopefully also in the reader’s opinion, more balanced, because he was on the record, I got people who disagreed with him to come into the story as well.

[Melina Nath]: With this interview, Grace now had a story. Along with Morgan, Grace spoke to former WHDC employees, as well as HDFC residents, who provided their insight on the organization’s programs. For Morgan specifically, his issues with the organization had two components. First, Morgan proposed the creation of a financial program during his time at the HDFC. However, he argued he could not carry out his vision for the center because he couldn’t get approval from the WHDC to secure financial resources to do so. This led to a larger question about WHDC funding. Morgan says,

[Vince Morgan]: “For whatever reason, they’re trying to stockpile that money.”

[Melina Nath]: Where is the money going? To answer this, Grace analyzed the operating expenses of the WHDC. She explained in her piece that the endowment was $55 million at the end of 2023, $21 million less than the initial amount. This also speaks to Morgan’s financial concerns, more broadly to the longevity of the organization’s existence.

[Vince Morgan]: “If you’ve got a piggy bank of $50 million, wouldn’t you figure out some plan of action to leverage that money to raise additional money for specific programming moving forward? If not, then the organization just ceases to exist after 10 years.”

[Melina Nath]: Finances aside, there’s a second part to Morgan’s complaint.

[Grace Kaste]: His main complaint was that his boss, Executive Director Zead Ramadan of the WHDC, had created a toxic work environment.

[Melina Nath]: Morgan specifically cited Ramadan’s use of offensive and antisemitic statements.

[Vince Morgan]: Remember, I was on the board for five years. Some of the stuff that came out of his mouth was like, just unbelievable. So really, I started recording him, because I was like, I don’t think people would believe me if I said this, one. Two, all he has to do is deny it.

[Melina Nath]: Ramadan’s comments from these recordings are included throughout the piece.

[Grace Kaste]: The recordings, I think, were probably also my biggest ethical dilemma, whether to include them, whether to include the names of the people that Ramadan was saying these things about. I ultimately decided that if I were to leave them out or to summarize them, and refer to them but not actually include them, that could be more biased because then I would have to make some sort of decision about how I interpreted these recordings, rather than just letting the audience interpret them.

[Melina Nath]: Though tensions remain within the WHDC, Grace feels it important to emphasize the potential of the HDFC Resource Center.

[Melina Nath]: What’s going on now?

[Grace Kaste]: What’s going on now? I’m wondering that, too. I mean, Morgan’s been fired. I think it’s important to me, for the sake of the story, to focus on what the HDFC Resource Center could become, and not get just caught up in the personal politics here. I talked to, I didn’t include them all in my story, there are too many, I talked to about seven HDFC residents of different buildings all, and they all told me what they would hope to see out of a resource center or what they would gain, what they could use as West Harlem residents living in this type of co-op. People want legal advice. I think people are interested in a grant or a loan program.

[Grace Kaste]: I think all of these things are provisions that we should look to see if WHDC will implement now. Will they allow the HDFC Research Center to become that, if there is a change in leadership? So, I think that’s the biggest question.

[Melina Nath]: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Sunday Story. This episode was reported and produced by me, Melina Nath. The original music in this episode was composed by Eva Scholz-Carlson and Matthew Lucia. Follow us on Instagram at @Spectatorpodcasts and subscribe to The Sunday Story on Spotify to get notified when we release new episodes. You can find more Spectator podcast episodes with full transcripts at columbiaspectator.com/podcasts.

• Edited by Luisa Sukkar and Nicole Sandrik-Arzadi

• Produced by Melina Nath

• Music from Eva Scholz-Carlson and Matthew Lucia

• Illustration by Shanying Liu

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