The three-fifths New Yorkers
Those of us who have the honor of serving the NYCHA tenants in our congregations, and who have worked with them and their fellow residents to force NYCHA and City Hall to treat them fairly and humanely, have finally realized the heart of the problem.
NYCHA residents — nearly 500,000 of them — are not considered real New Yorkers. They are three-fifth New Yorkers and therefore, in the eyes of many of the powers that be, not deserving of the kind of response, investment, and respect that real New Yorkers receive and, if they don't receive it, demand.
How else can you explain how two mayors who couldn't be more different — Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio — would treat NYCHA and its tenants in exactly the same way?
We learned last week, from a report by the incomparable Greg Smith of the Daily News, that Bloomberg's promise to cut the backlog of repairs inspired NYCHA managers to manufacture repair reports that had no basis in reality.
We learned from the same reporter that de Blasio knew about the devastating and dangerous lead issue long before he acknowledged that more than 800 kids, not the 19 he originally cited, had been exposed to that toxin. Then came news that NYCHA executives admitted that other claims made to the federal department of Housing and Urban Development cannot be trusted.
So one mayor's minions simply made up higher numbers of repairs, and the other mayor's minions simply concocted a lower number.
Public officials don't lie this cavalierly and this irresponsibly about the things that matter in New York — subway times, homicide rates, test scores, even the rate of snow removal. Those lies could get you thrown out of office someday or embarrass you in the eyes of an elite or national audience.
But mayors, deputy mayors, NYCHA chairpersons and others have done just that when it comes to NYCHA; they have lied repeatedly, outrageously, persistently, about the service provided to its residents, because in their minds those residents don't deserve the kind of full service five-fifths New Yorkers receive, because those residents should just be happy with what little they have and whatever service they grudgingly get.
Who can change this situation? Well, NYCHA tenants who attend our congregations, through Metro IAF, have laid the groundwork for fundamental change. They have spent thousands of hours documenting many of these abuses, photographing the shoddy work of NYCHA staff and managers and executives, and forcing both Bloomberg and de Blasio to answer to a federal court.
Building off this work, both Gov. Cuomo and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, Geoffrey Berman, have emerged as effective and forceful agents of change. They and their colleagues toured dreadful NYCHA apartments, saw firsthand the leaking pipes, the toxic mold, the holes broken by NYCHA workers and left unfilled, in one instance, for 12 years.
They heard the stories of NYCHA tenants who submitted work order after work order; who stayed home so that NYCHA teams could enter their apartment, only to be stood up; who complained to managers who never responded.
Berman has already extracted a $2.2 billion commitment from City Hall, but, as Federal Court Judge William Pauley recently said, that's not nearly enough. Berman should press for more. And he should indict those involved — from local managers to political power brokers — who exposed NYCHA residents to conditions that crippled their ability to enjoy full, healthy, dignified five-fifths New Yorker lives.
Treat NYCHA tenants fairly