Judge Rejects $2 Billion Deal to Overhaul City’s Public Housing

Turning total overall operational control of NYCHA to a federal agency under the control of Trump and other Republicans is a very bad funding and management plan in these times.

NYCHA has 175,636 apartments with over $32 billion in unmet capital needs. That amounts to over $182 thousand per apartment. Based on that and on the facts in my previous Posting, I conclude that the present management of NYCHA is incompetent and should be discharged. A different form of management should be instituted outside of the Taylor Law and outside of the Civil Service Law.

The Feds will be absentee landlords just like the City, only farhr away. It won't happen (sigh) but a whole new approach needs to be taken built upon the fact that what was wrong with the system was known within a year or two of it being built — read Jane Jacobs. The dysfunction of inserting high-rise low-frills warehouses for the poor in the middle of the urban fabric is caused by their complete divorce from commerce and capitalism. The buildings are too expensive to be torn down, but their footprint in neighborhoods where they eclipse everything around them has to be radically redesigned. Replace some of them with low rise housing, inserting office and store space into the first two stories of the taller towers, demiolishing some to combine the decorative strips of lawn into a real park. Eliminate the parking spaces everywhere for the poor and incorporating those parking lots into retail, park, recreation, business, housing for the homeless etc. In short massively and creatively diversify. Don't evict long term residents, but come up with a rent to buy lease that will eventually make the units the property of some of the residents. Place the responsibility for managing each building into that building's residents like a coop or condo board, as many of the buildings owned by NYHA already have been. Involve the residents in their own economic fate. Too many families have stayed in NY as perpetual wards. This isn't normal. City economies don't work like that.

1) What is the NYCHA's per apartment operating costs per year (i.e., aggregate operating costs divided by the number of apartments owned)? What is the comparable figure in privately owned middle-class apartments? I suspect that NYCHA's costs are higher than that of middle class private apartments but I find NYCHA's financials to be opaque. 2) Why are NYCHA buildings falling apart while middle-class private buildings built about the same time remain in good condition? Do the NYCHA tenants abuse the building? Do NYCHA maintenance employees fail to do their jobs? Are they protected by civil service law?

Does de Blasio know what he's doing? Is the housing authority completely corrupt? Can anyone be fired? Or, is this progressive government at work?

According to an NBC news investigation since Ben Carson has been in charge of HUD there has been an increase in health & safety violations along with failing inspections at HUD housing.

Instead of giving Amazon 2B dollars which does nothing for the people of New York, use the money to fix public housing

Why is Cuomo handing over billions in tax breaks to Amazon when the city desperately needs money for housing and transportation infrastructure?

Are the many "progressive" and socialist members of Congress, Democrats all, unaware of what government ownership of productive housing resources hath wrought? (See the "Related Coverage" just below the bottom of this article for a sample of what the NYT has found in the decrepit public housing of the city.) The key principle of socialism is government ownership and/or control of a nation's productive resources. The result has always been the creation of a dependent class beholden to politicians but especially to anonymous bureaucrats who wield enslaving control over the lives of those dependents. Even with the best intentions, the methods of bureaucratic management invariably results in _iss-poor services and, in this case, "public" housing facilities even a good rat would be loath to inhabit, although, like the poor human residents, many of the rats have no other choice because private-sector apartments won't let them in. When the productive resources are left in private hands but controlled by the state, that is a type of democratic or despotic socialism best known as fascism. It is the socialism practiced in Germany and Italy before WW II until those countries were conquered by the Allied Forces. What has possessed the Democrat Party that it would embrace socialists. Some estimate that 80 or more socialists are to be included in the next Congress. Are Dems completely blind to the history of what happens to nations that embrace socialism? Have they no shame?

Surely while everyone decides, or not, what the long term and ongoing solutions are, isn't it just plain common sense to AT LEAST dispatch contractors to fix leaky roofs and to replace defective boilers?

End this farce. Give away the titles to the apartments. Unload them. All of them. Create a new class of home owners in NYC. The government simply is incapable of managing housing.

NYCHA is an endless, endless drain on NYC's financial resources. I think it beyond repair or reform at this point.

Mayor De Blasio's leadership in this housing "crisis" is laudable and important. However, Judge Pauley is correct to demand all parties take more comprehensive actions at all levels in response toto what resident shared as previously in the courtroom, reported by the Times: "The hearing quickly became an emotional town-hall forum for residents, who vented their anger and frustration with the mismanagement of the housing authority and budget cuts that have left them with a litany of problems, including broken elevators, busted locks, leaky plumbing and unhealthy conditions created by mold and lead paint." Conditions such as these have existed for years in cities throughout this country bringing a variety of "solutions," including demolitions, scattered sites, etc Yet ,HUD is a shadow of the agency it once was while the housing for very low income people has become a national epidemic. It's someone else problem until you see and complain about growing homelessness or blame the poor for not having proper housing. Public Housing started with President Roosevelt in the New Deal as a step in slum clearance and now the "projects" have become the "slums." Housing for low-income people is big cities throughout this country must be addressed by elected officials at all levels and local leaders along with housing advocates and the private sector. The quality of the lives of all persons is affected by the lack of decent housings for our neighbors.

And in other news, on Tuesday night, a 50 year old man committed suicide by leaping to his death from 80 Amsterdam Avenue, an UWS public housing complex. He jumped in front of his family and was pronounced dead on impact. From every angle the housing system is a mess but at the end of the day, it’s comforting that most of us don’t have to actually live in it.

Very telling about the moral fiber of NYC that a place of such absurd wealth cannot find a solution to provide minimally acceptable housing for those who struggle to survive in a place of such wealth. While, on the surface $1.2 Billion seems significant, it is roughly .07% (1/1400th) of the annual GDP of the NYC metro region. The ineptitude of City government is very real but it only serves to mask the real issue, which is one of values and morals.

The funding arrangement included in the Housing Acts of 1937 and 1949 had demonstrably failed by the late 1960s. The subsidies provided by the federal government were inadequate to maintain public housing properly. The reforms enacted by Congress in the 1970s were advertised as a cure for this problem. They were supposed to provide local housing authorities with increased subsidies, particularly for building renovation and repair. The problem, whose consequences we are seeing in NYC, is that the Congress and successive administrations did not appropriate anywhere near the funds required. And thus we have the NYCHA with $32 billion in deferred maintenance and other authorities with comparable amounts. (Much the same is true of the Section 8 housing vouchers program. Funds are available to provide only about a quarter of eligible families with vouchers.) The solution is quite simple. Congress and the administration need to honor the commitments embedded in federal housing legislation and make sufficient money available to all local housing authorities.

Mayor deBlasio lied to New York City residents - he has covered up the deteriorating conditions of New York City public housing since he took office. He was a public advocate in 2010 and became Mayor in 2014. He's consistently lied about funding and repairs - he recently was quoted as saying "...only 4 kids in public housing tested positive for lead paint..". It's reprehensible. His handpicked NYCHA chairwoman, Shola Olatoye, lied under oath about lead paint testing, and resigned in disgrace. The estimated cost to repair the city's housing epidemic is $32 billion - the city's allocated only a fraction of that money towards desperately needed repairs and capital improvements. We're heading into the winter Mr. Mayor, and we'll be watching thousands of residents go without heat and having to live in delapidated conditions again because of your Administration's ineptitude and dishonesty about maintaining and caring for NYCHA residents.

While he or she is at it, a federal judge might issue a ruling addressing the deplorable level of racial diversity in public housing, a ritualistic concern on the part of our leaders and civil rights advocates when it comes to public schools but somehow evaporates when it comes to government subsidized apartments in the middle of town.

I seriously doubt that HUD has any interest in taking on this burden.

$32 BILLION in unmet capital needs.....boilers that don't work and leaky roofs.....$1.2 BILLION over 5 years for PATCHES....and the Judge is worried about replacing management or breaking union contracts....what a joke!!! Politics in large Democrat controlled cities and public housing really works well...check the:list:NYC,Chicago,Detroit,Los Angeles,DC,San Francisco.....great news, keep on exploiting the poor and congratulating yourselves!

And Cuomo and deBlasio have the audacity to cut billion dollar deals with Amazon to add more stress to the available rental space as transportation system. What were you voters thinking?

Sounds like there is trouble on the Plantation. The liberals' well meaning plans often go astray. Create jobs and let the market provide the better (than public) housing.

If you want income equality you need to do away with public housing. First, everywhere it is created it soon becomes a blight and a center for criminal activity, second, it subsidies companies that need these lower wage employees by using tax dollars to effectively subsidize their income. If the companies had to pay their employees more because it was the only way to get them they would have to adjust their pay scales across the company. The unemployed or unemployable should be treated as a separate problem. Amazon will love it that they can pay their janitors less because they will then be eligible for public housing and the tax payer further subsidizes their bottom line.

It is strange that the Mayor who ran as a "champion of public housing tenants" could not get this right. Lack of funding is not the problem it is the incompetent leadership that was put in charge. There must be an overhaul of the whole system as it is evident that there is plenty of waste and poor hiring practices.

If oversight goes to HUD, what guarantees will their be that changes will be made? Their is little evidence that the federal gov’t agencies act in the people’s interest. Especially a city like NYC that is outspoken in it’s criticism of the current administration.