Giving NYCHA a hand Report eyes billions from air rights, sharing of obligations

The New York City Housing Authority could raise billions of dollars in much-needed revenue if the city loosened zoning rules to let more neighboring developers buy air rights from NYCHA so they can build higher.

That suggestion is one of several outlined by the Regional Plan Association in a new report to be issued Tuesday.

The report calls on the city to examine the possibility of NYCHA sharing its responsibilities with other agencies, the adoption of a more ambitious air-rights plan and handing over control of NYCHA construction projects to the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

It comes as the Housing Authority struggles to meet goals imposed by a federal monitor regarding mold and lead abatement, and repairing elevators and heat and hot water systems.

“We’re very much at the point where the deferred maintenance of NYCHA properties is starting to compound and really spiral,” said Moses Gates, the Regional Plan Association’s vice president of housing and neighborhood planning. “If you don’t renovate buildings and keep them in a state of good repair, they eventually fall down.”

To do that, NYCHA needs money it doesn’t have.

Gates stressed the Regional Plan report is intended as a longterm framework to help the Housing Authority map out how it can more efficiently operate moving forward.

He said the transferable development rights program proposed by the Regional Plan Association could raise anywhere between $4 billion and $9 billion for the cash-strapped Housing Authority. As it currently stands, NYCHA developments can sell air rights, which are the zoning rights that let neighboring landlords build higher.

The Regional Plan report calls on the city to consider zoning rule changes that would expand the areas in which NYCHA could sell those rights. So instead of just being able to sell them to a landlord on a neighboring lot, the Housing Authority might sell them to landlords within a half-mile radius.

The city should also consider having other agencies share in the Housing Authority’s burden, such as having the Parks Department assume some of the its groundskeeping responsibilities, Gates said.

He noted the impetus behind suggesting HPD and the city Housing Development Corp. become more intertwined with NYCHA is those agencies’ budgets could free up more money.

De Blasio spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie said the city is “leveraging every tool available to deliver top-to-bottom renovations for 175,000” apartments. “This administration has made an unprecedented $6 billion investment in NYCHA to reverse decades of neglect,” she said.