Bill’s $32B scandal
COST TO FIX NYCHA:
Already embroiled in a scandal after being forced to admit that as many as 820 public-housing kids were poisoned by lead, the de Blasio administration on Monday was hit with the bill to fix everything else crumbling in the city’s housing projects — totaling nearly $32 billion.
That’s almost double the $16.6 billion estimate from the New York City Housing Authority’s 2011 assessment of its 326 developments citywide, which are now 60 years old on average.
But in announcing the tab, NYCHA officials also admitted they were a little short of cash — by some $24.9 billion.
“The clear implication is that not everything that NYCHA wants to do, ought to do, has a resource base to accomplish all of that,” said Stanley Brezenoff, whom Mayor de Blasio brought in as interim chair of the embattled Housing Authority in April.
“We can’t escape the enormity of the number or the enormity of the unmet gap in the funding,” Brezenoff said, adding, “It is a call to action, a call to prioritizing.”
The repair bill ballooned, he said, because older buildings need more maintenance, many of the projects identified in the 2011 assessment were never funded, and labor costs soared because of the city construction boom.
The new assessment, com- pleted in March, found that, among other outlays, NYCHA needs $5.6 billion to fix kitchens and bathrooms; $2.9 billion for apartment floors; $3.1 billion to repair mechanicals like boilers, pipes and radiators; and $1.5 billion to fix elevators.
Budget watchdogs and affordable-housing advocates decried the funding gap.
“NYCHA is New York City’s primary provider of deeply affordable housing and the ongoing deterioration of its developments is putting that housing at grave risk,” said Carol Kellermann, president of the Citizens Budget Commission. “Without dramatic change, by 2027, 90 percent of NYCHA’s housing units will have declined to the point at which they are at risk of no longer being cost-effective to repair.”
There was a bit of good news: NYCHA officials said they now plan to have roof replacements completed by 2025, five years ahead of schedule.
De Blasio dodged reporters Monday — opting for a nonconfrontational call-in to NY1 before starting a July 4 family vacation.
But the stakes for fixing New York’s crumbling public housing could not be higher.
More than 400,000 New Yorkers live in NYCHA’s 2,413 buildings and many have endured horrific conditions — like freezing temperatures because of boiler failures, roach and rodent infestations and widespread mold problems.
The $32 billion shock came as questions mounted over City Hall’s failure to disclose that the Department of Health found 820 positive lead tests from children living in NYCHA homes between 2012 and 2016. “There is no question that someone or some agency is misleading the public,” said city Comptroller Scott Stringer, who a day earlier ordered his staff to start a full probe of the crisis.
In his NY1 interview, de Blasio insisted his administration was on top of the problem.
“We want to make sure kids get the care they need. We are going to track each individual case,” he said. “We are sending out inspectors from this point on.”