Saving the New York City Housing Authority

Over 400,000 New Yorkers throughout all five boroughs call New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings their home. There are 325 NYCHA developments throughout the city that intend to provide affordable public housing for low-income New Yorkers. Apart from its developments, NYCHA also oversees Section 8, a Housing Choice Voucher program that shares part of the costs for low-income families in private housing. All in all, NYCHA houses approximately seven percent of the city’s population. However, NYCHA has consistently faced issues in providing adequate heat amenities, repairing dilapidated infrastructure, and providing basic lead inspections. NYCHA barely avoided a complete takeover by the federal government on January 31, 2019, by agreeing to be monitored by a federal appointee, accepting deadlines to resolve many of its massive infrastructural problems, and dedicating $2.2 billion of the city’s budget to building repairs over the next 10 years.

Since its creation, NYCHA’s tenants have had to deal with a plethora of issues. Recently, mainly due to poor management and a lack of funding, many spent the winter without any heat or hot water for days at a time. Others had lead leaks left unrepaired for decades. All the while, there’s virtually no tenant involvement in any policy or decision-making. It is no wonder that after all of this, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) thought that it was necessary to intervene, especially following the resignation of NYCHA chairwoman Shola Olatoye. Despite the steps HUD has required NYCHA to take, more needs to be done if substantive, long-term changes are to be made. With $32 billion needed for NYCHA repairs in the next five years alone, NYCHA is in need of a dependable source of funding and responsible management to guide it.

NYCHA was created under Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1934, and it quickly grew to be the largest public housing authority in all of North America. It is also one of the only public housing authorities in a large city that maintains high-rise projects. Apart from its 326 developments throughout the city, NYCHA runs a citywide Leased Housing Program that subsidizes the rent for over 235,000 New Yorkers. NYCHA’s leadership is made up of a board with seven members (three being residents of the buildings), with each member appointed for three-year terms by the mayor.

In the past 20 years, NYCHA buildings have slowly deteriorated, and the NYCHA budget has fallen further and further behind without adequate state and city funding. This strained budget has contributed to one of NYCHA’s largest problems: lead paint in thousands of apartments that received spotty inspections up until 2012, after which NYCHA stopped inspections altogether. This has resulted in a total of 1,160 children with elevated levels of lead in their blood since 2012 alone. Even when residents call for inspections from the Health Department, NYCHA’s response is to challenge the veracity of the alarming lead-level results, causing the Health Department to back down in 158 of 211 cases between 2010 and July of 2018. This saved NYCHA millions of dollars. This kind of conduct—challenging Health Department lead findings—is unheard of amongst private landlords, and it explains why NYCHA was number one on former Public Advocate (and newly elected Attorney General) Letitia James’s 2018 NYC Landlord Watchlist.

NYCHA had 240,000 open work orders (requests for repairs and maintenance) as of October 2018. Apart from those concerning lead inspections, many work orders were filed as a result of a lack of heating and hot water, dilapidated and unsanitary rooms and hallways, and elevators that barely functioned. Despite having 13,000 employees, NYCHA hasn’t been effective at lowering the number of open work orders—and that’s not just because of its low budget. Only last August, the entire staff of the Throggs Neck Houses, a complex of 29 buildings with 2,500 residents in the Bronx, was reassigned after city investigators found that they had been drinking on the job. They also found the presence of a “culture of misconduct, employee mistreatment, and favoritism,” said Luis Ferré-Sadurní, a writer for the New York Times.

On a larger scale, federal prosecutors released a civil complaint in 2018 that accused NYCHA of neglecting the safety and health of its tenants through cover-ups, failed inspections, and management failures akin to those at Throggs Neck. As a result of this complaint, NYCHA negotiated a settlement with the US Attorney’s Office that was rejected by the judge, who set a deadline (January 31) for a final agreement before NYCHA would be taken control of by the federal government. Narrowly avoiding the government takeover, de Blasio negotiated a deal wherein $2.2 billion of the city’s budget would go to funding repairs and agreed to deadlines on certain changes, such as a 20-year timeline for complete lead removal.

For the city to meet these agreements—and more importantly, for NYCHA to thrive—a lot of work must be done beyond small budget increases. To establish a consistent budget that can meet the billions of dollars NYCHA buildings need, a funding compromise between the city, state, and federal governments must be reached. Currently, the Cuomo-de Blasio rift has impeded adequate state funding of NYCHA. Cuomo gave hope to a funding solution in April of 2018 by pledging $250 million of state funding for NYCHA—hopefully, more will follow if NYCHA’s structure and organizational management improve. A better but less reliable source of funding would be HUD, but HUD has consistently cut funds for NYCHA. This year was an anomaly after President Trump approved Congress’ Omnibus Budget, which increased NYCHA’s budget by $190 million. This, however, isn’t a trend that will likely last. In fact, Trump’s initial budget proposal would have given the NYCHA a budget cut of 66 percent for capital projects and a cut of 11 percent for operational costs.

The most effective way for NYCHA to increase state and federal funding is by demonstrating that it is functional, efficient, and cost-effective. NYCHA is hopefully at the end of months-long turbulence following the resignation of Chairwoman Olatoye, who is under pressure for covering up NYCHA’s failed inspections and the degradation of its infrastructure—among other issues. A week prior to her resignation, Governor Cuomo declared a state of emergency in NYCHA because of the health and environmental hazards of lead and mold. De Blasio appointed a new interim Chairwoman in February 2019. She is the current city’s sanitation commissioner, Kathryn Garcia. While it is commonly agreed that Garcia’s history as an effective manager of the city’s sanitation department will make her a stable force for NYCHA, stability can only come with an official—and not interim—new chair.

Apart from a chair, NYCHA board needs to gain more trust from both tenants and external stakeholders. Currently, all board members are appointed by the Mayor, which is troubling when combined with the fact that only three members of the seven people on the board need to be tenants. If future changes would require four members who are tenants (which would constitute a majority), tenants would have greater trust in the board, as it would better represent them and their interests. Stakeholders would be satisfied to learn that the board is being run by tenants themselves rather than by wealthy businessmen and mayoral cronies. They are motivated by their situation to improve NYCHA as a whole.

There are also many less orthodox means by which NYCHA can acquire funding. These include selling the “air-rights” (the rights to the unused potential building space) to neighboring private developments as well as a potential $600 million-plan to build private housing on empty and underused public housing sites. Another source of funding can be found in re-negotiating union contracts for NYCHA employees. Many contracts are outdated and have absurd regulations regarding unscheduled overtime, which can cost NYCHA up to $150 million every year. Other old regulations make it difficult for repairs and work orders to be addressed in a timely way. Re-negotiating union contracts is a big hassle for any agency—nonetheless one that employs 13,000 people—but it may be worth it if the costs continue to add up in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Given the appropriate structural changes, NYCHA can secure the trust of its constituents and state and federal governments, which will get it further funding. It can also establish a transparent, quality, and affordable housing experience for low-income New Yorkers.