New fuel in NYCHA battle
City’s bad ‘faith’ letter to Cuomo
CITY HALL staffers hoping to exorcise Gov. Cuomo from NYCHA affairs recently passed around a draft letter ripping him for playing “political games,” attributing the burn to nonexistent “faith” leaders.
The letter — sent in an internal email chain that included some of Mayor de Blasio’s top staffers and accidentally sent to the Daily News — tears into Cuomo, accusing him of holding NYCHA funds hostage. It wasn’t immediately clear who authored the dismissive epistle.
The communication claims to come from a group who “collectively represent the residents of public housing through faith guidance, spiritual counseling and advocating for the vulnerable,” but no names are included at the close of the searing takedown.
Cuomo’s recent emergency order turning control of NYCHA’s repairs over to an independent monitor “takes a broad stroke at fixing a complex problem,” the letter reads.
It also “holds the money hostage, threatens projects already underway and insults the very advocates who have long been on the ground working to improve public housing in our city.”
Addressing Cuomo directly, the scathing missive ends by encouraging the governor to “play your political games all you want, but do not do it with long overdue, and committed, money for our vulnerable populations.
“Public housing residents are not a pawn, they have a voice, and they have those who will fight on their behalf,” the letter concludes. “It is time for you to show you truly are concerned with effecting real change at NYCHA and not just holding media availabilities.”
The biting language echoes critiques de Blasio expressed last month when he called Cuomo a hypocrite looking for a “photo op” after he made a trio of trips to to decrepit NYCHA developments.
The email was sent by NYCHA
communications officer Robin Levine just after 6 p.m. Friday to a group of City Hall staffers.A News reporter was accidentally included on the chain.
“Draft below— pls add anyone I may have left off. Thanks to Jasmine for the super fast turn around,” Levine wrote to her colleagues, presumably tipping her hat to NYCHA press secretary Jasmine Blake.
Levine sent the letter to several top aides in the mayor’s office, including senior communications adviser Wiley Norvell and Jon Paul Lupo, the mayor’s director of intergovernmental affairs.
De Blasio’s press secretary, Eric Phillips, denied that the mayor, Norvell or Lupo were involved in the actual drafting of the letter.
“Of course the mayor wasn’t personally involved in this,” Phillips told a News reporter Saturday. “There were also city buses that the mayor didn’t drive today, and people were arrested by city employees who weren’t the mayor, and yesterday kids got taught by city employees who weren’t the mayor.”
A second spokesperson declined to name any of the alleged faith leaders, would not comment on whose idea the letter was or say who actually wrote the damning dispatch.
Earlier this month, Cuomo officially declared a state of emergency regarding NYCHA, calling for the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee expedited repairs at public housing facilities.
The order bars the housing authority from involvement in the spending of $550 million from the state and any unspent city funds steered toward NYCHA repairs going forward.
The independent emergency manager must select an independent contractor within 30 days of being installed before the state can release the $550 million.
A spokeswoman for Cuomo shot back at the de Blasio team.
“There is no surprise that the Mayor is incompetently attempting a Nixonian dirty political trick,” Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever said in a statement. “The Mayor’s legacy will be that he has done everything possible to avoid responsibility for NYCHA tenants’ health and safety.”
De Blasio and other critics have questioned Cuomo’s election-year interest in the problemplagued public housing authority.
The mayor has openly pushed back against the order, warning Thursday of the “unforeseen consequences” it could have on the city budget.
The bitter back-and-forth over funds for fixing NYCHA is the latest example of the years-long feud between the mayor and governor.
Both have increasingly steered money to NYCHA over the past three years as Cuomo resumed state aid to the authority in 2015 that had been cut off in the 1990s.
De Blasio has forgiven annual city charges to NYCHA, promised $1 billion over 10 years for roof repairs and $200 million for new boilers.
Earlier this month, de Blasio’s beleaguered pick to run the authority, Shola Olatoye, resigned amid several scandals.
Olatoye faced a growing wave of criticism for her handling of widespread heat outages this winter and the agency’s failure to comply with lead paint inspections.
While no religious leaders who were ready to sign off on the letter were forthcoming, some openly questioned the political intentions behind the message.
“The mayor should spend less time begging clergy to join his fight with the governor and more time fixing NYCHA,” said the Rev. David Brawley, a housing advocate and the pastor at St. Paul Community Baptist Church in East New York, Brooklyn.
Public housing residents are not a pawn, they have a voice, and they have those who will fight on their behalf. Excerpt from letter