House that, Bill?
Must reveal NYCHA plan, as fed control looms
On Friday, Mayor de Blasio will have to tell a judge just how he intends to fix the city’s troubled housing authority — capping off a week of intense backroom campaigning among politicos and community leaders to keep NYCHA from falling into federal receivership.
Publicly, the mayor announced his latest plan to fix the authority, along with a new contract to expand the hours of NYCHA workers at developments.
Behind the scenes he’s been soliciting support for his position that appointing a federal receiver to oversee the authority would be a disaster.
On Thursday, a de Blasio aide said the mayor’s position will be spelled out in the letter to Manhattan Federal Judge William Pauley by end of business Friday.
“The mayor has been very open about his views on receivership. What matters are reforms that will improve residents’ lives. We hope to keep working with our federal partners to deliver on that,” a City Hall spokeswoman said in a statement emailed to the Daily News.
De Blasio, (left photo) NYCHA and Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman entered into a consent decree agreement in June that stipulated the appointment of a federal monitor to make sure the authority obeys laws regarding to keep its 176,000 apartments safe and healthy.
That agreement came after Berman’s civil division filed a brutal 80-page complaint detailing how NYCHA management had for years failed to perform required lead paint inspections, neglected a growing mold problem and spent countless hours covering up and lying about its many failures.
But last month, Pauley (right photo) shot down that plan. The judge has not taken a position on what he wants them to do, but has twice brought up the idea of placing the authority into some form of receivership. A receiver would have much more power than a monitor, including the ability to hire and fire, renegotiate labor agreements and bring in contractors to more aggressively address NYCHA’s mountain of needed repairs.
Pauley ordered all sides to produce a “joint status report” by Friday “detailing their respective positions on how they wish to proceed.”
De Blasio has made clear he’s against receivership, arguing against it during a meeting last week in Washington, D.C., with U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and then again this week in “talking points” sent to HUD. He’s repeated his opposition in several public appearances over the last two weeks.
The problem is both HUD and Berman could live with some form of receivership, according to several sources familiar with ongoing behindthe-scenes negotiations over how to address Pauley’s concerns in the Friday letter.