Things will get better, we promise

“I REMEMBER when public housing was a beautiful place and people were proud to live here.”

I heard that refrain at dozens of developments when I started last March at the New York City Housing Authority.

The deteriorated state of the NYCHA we inherited — 178,000 apartments that are home to roughly half a million New Yorkers — needs to again be a source of quality, affordable housing and pride.

Steady federal disinvestment since 2001 has left a staggering $1 billion deficit and significant capital needs, from fixing roofs to bolstering security. We cannot continue this way.

It’s time to make innovative, practical, difficult choices about how we operate, how we are financed and the ways we rebuild and rehabilitate our properties. Creating clean, safe and connected communities has to start from the ground up.

Unlike in other American cities, we will not tear down public housing, or privatize it. NYCHA is far too important to our tenants, and to the future of New York City as a place where working families, seniors and vulnerable residents can live in dignity.

Mayor de Blasio asked me to reset relationships with all our stakeholders, especially residents, so that together we can confront reality–and change it.

NYCHAh as held a series of successful “visioning” sessions around the city, gathering valuable insights from those who spend their hardearned dollars to live in public housing. Their ideas will guide our work going forward as we craft the plan for Next Generation NYCHA, a strategy to preserve and protect public housing for the future.

We will improve customer service by reorganizing operations, decentralizing some of our management to more directly respond to site-based needs. We will be more available to residents for maintenance and repair. Residents will be better connected to the many capable service providers already embedded in the communities surrounding our developments.

NYCHA buildings will be rehabilitated to modernize outdated design and infrastructure; we will work to better serve residents, 40% of whom will be seniors by 2025. Olatoye is the chairwoman and CEO of the New York City Housing Authority.