FELONS WELCOME
NYCHA fails to keep out evicted tenants who commit serious crimes
THE HOUSING Authority is asleep at the switch when it comes to evicting tenants who commit serious crimes on NYCHA grounds, a city Department of Investigation report released Tuesday charged.
The Housing Authority has the right to bounce tenants if they or their children are charged with committing drug or violent crimes either on or near NYCHA property.
But DOI found the agency’s efforts to use evictions to keep developments safe are a joke.
“NYCHA continues to allow criminals, including gang members, drug traffickers and violent offenders, to reside in public housing,” the report states.
The agency often won’t evict the tenant of record, instead excluding only the person charged. But DOI found excluded felons often return and live openly in units from which they are allegedly barred.
Then they commit even more crimes without fear of eviction, according to Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters.
In response, Jean Weinberg, spokeswoman for NYCHA, said the agency “works closely in partnership with the NYPD to ensure public housing residents have safe, stable homes,” and noted that some of DOI’s reform recommendations “highlight the progress we’ve made in improving communication between our agencies.”
The city’s 328 public housing projects shoulder a disproportionate share of crime. While overall crime fell 4% citywide last year, it rose 2% in NYCHA developments.
The biggest problem was NYCHA’s tendency to try to exclude the charged criminal instead of evicting the tenant of record, DOI said. That allows these “permanently excluded” to return and live openly in NYCHA apartments, DOI found.
“NYCHA overlooks even blatant and repeated violations of permanent exclusion,” the report found. DOI pointed to a tenant the agency dubbed “Tanya Jones” and her son Christopher.
NYCHA moved three times to evict Tanya from her Van Dyke Houses apartment in Brooklyn after Christopher was repeatedly arrested for committing crime after crime in the development.
Each time, NYCHA agreed to exclude only the son, but DOI discovered the son never left the apartment.
While living at Van Dyke, he attacked a man in the subway at 16, shot a woman at Van Dyke and choked his girlfriend inside his mother’s apartment. In 2015, he was charged with federal bank fraud in a takedown of the Van Dyke Money Gang.
“Remarkably,” DOI noted, “NYCHA found indications that (the mother) had moved out of her NYCHA apartment years earlier and turned it over to family members” — including Christopher.