Blaz: Poor get what’s affordable

MAYOR DE BLASIO argued the New York City Housing Authority ought to be graded on a curve — and that its tenants deserve whatever standard of living the city can afford to provide them.

“People in public housing deserve the very best living standard we can give them with the money we have,” de Blasio said of NYCHA tenants, who pay rent, when the Daily News asked whether they deserve the same standard of living as private tenants.

De Blasio’s remarks, made at a press conference at Police Headquarters, came as his NYCHA head Shola Olatoye was being grilled by the City Council across Park Row during a hearing on the authority’s failing boilers and heating systems.

“You say, do I want to see a society in which everyone has as much equality in their housing, in their income as possible? Yes, that’s my worldview,” de Blasio continued. “But do I think we in the public sector could achieve everything that the private sector can achieve with much greater resources in the private sector? No, I don’t have that illusion. Our job is to constantly do better with what we have.”

Despite de Blasio’s implication that a tenant’s standard of living is subject to what his or her landlord can afford, the city has laws requiring landlords to provide basic levels of service — including heat when it’s cold. But while the city has levied fines against private landlords who can’t get their heat running, it has struggled to keep its own tenants warm: More than 320,000, or 80% of NYCHA residents, have lost heat or hot water this winter.

But de Blasio bristled when asked if he’d find that acceptable from a private landlord, urging The News to “think a little more deeply about that question” — saying the “private sector profit motive” leaves it with more resources than the public sector, which is struggling to serve “working people, low-income people.”

“We’re going to serve them, come hell or high water. We’re going to serve them whether it’s easy or not. Whether the federal government sends us money or not. We’re going to do the best way we can with what we’ve got,” he said. “It’s a very different reality than the private sector faces. A very different reality than buildings that are built for upper-middle-class people, for example, or the well off. I reject that notion that we should make that comparison.”