NYCHA to get cash, monitor
PUBLIC HOUSING residents got some good news from the newly approved state budget Saturday, including $250 million to upgrade apartments and a special procurement work-around to get the job done faster.
But the big fixup comes with a big catch. Gov. Cuomo won’t just hand over the loot to NYCHA’s managers. He is set to create an independent entity that will oversee the construction that the money pays for.
In the past few weeks Cuomo has laid down a steady stream of invective against his favorite targets — Mayor de Blasio and NYCHA — charging both with failing to efficiently address the authority’s many woes.
On Saturday, Cuomo continued the barrage, insisting that the only way to turn things around is to take the job away from NYCHA itself.
“The NYCHA management is incompetent. That’s not me. That’s the City Council, that’s editorial boards, that’s the NYCHA tenants mostly,” he said. “They’ve sued NYCHA and they came to the state and said: Will you please step in and help and appoint an independent monitor to come in and actually get things done at NYCHA?”
The budget gives NYCHA permission to use a design-build protocol that allows it to hire one entity to do both design and construction, thus dramatically speeding up the work.
NYCHA spokeswoman Jasmine Blake declined to discuss how NYCHA will deal with the influx of new state money, the designation of design-build and the expected monitor. She promised a “formal response” on Monday.
On Saturday, Cuomo also noted the revelation Friday that the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, the agency that provides most of NYCHA’s funding, recently began requiring the authority to submit for approval all invoices for big-ticket projects.
The crackdown came after the feds rejected NYCHA’s proposed plan to settle a two-year investigation by the Manhattan U.S. attorney into whether the authority has lied about the conditions of its housing.
“That says there is an incompetent local administration and now there’s federal control, and that is a problem,” Cuomo said.De Blasio's spokeswoman Melissa Grace took expressed doubts about the governor’s promises, Saturday saying, “Governor Cuomo’s obsession with Mayor de Blasio is great when it means the Governor lives up to his promises to public housing tenants. We’ll see if he follows through.”