‘An assault on public housing’

THE BUDGET PLAN unveiled Tuesday by President Trump is even tougher on New York public housing tenants than originally thought.

The plan not only would cut up to $340 million from the Housing Authority’s already teetering budget, it would also make tenants pay more.

For the first time since 1981, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department proposed raising the amount of income tenants must pay towards rent from 30% to 35%.

Some tenants predicted the hike — which needs congressional approval — would have a devastating effect on their already tenuous ability to pay their bills.

“There have been many people in the past who have felt the 30% should be lower,” said Damaris Reyes, a longtime resident of Baruch Houses and director of the nonprofit Good Old Lower East Side. “For people making minimum wage, it’s crazy that they're thinking of” raising it to 35%.

NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye called it “an assault on public housing and affordable housing as we know it” and predicted the increase “will mean that families barely making ends meet, as it is, will be forced to choose between putting food on the table and paying the rent.”

The hike would hit senior citizens and tenants with disabilities receiving housing subsidies in 2018, followed by tenants living in public housing or getting subsidies to private apartments called Section 8 in 2019.