Save NYCHA now

For hundreds of thousands of NYCHA residents, leaks and mold and lead paint and rodents and broken boilers and broken elevators and broken entry doors are infuriating daily reminders that the government is unable or unwilling to guarantee the basics of a safe and livable home. It’s a funding problem and it’s a management problem, and arguing over which is bigger is a fool’s game. The systematic disinvestment from the feds, who were supposed to support public housing, stretches back decades. Current capital needs total about $40 billion. Meantime, the dysfunction of the bureaucracy in charge is incalculable, which means that even if all that money started flowing, far too much of it would be spent unwisely.

There is a brilliant way to kill both birds with a single stone, leveraging current funding streams to generate revenue while making the authority more accountable: creating a Public Housing Preservation Trust, a separate but still publicly owned entity that would be subject to the same standards and legal agreements as NYCHA but could apply for federal protection vouchers to raise capital for repairs. Along with it would come a more effective procurement process that would speed renovations and repairs.

NYCHA residents, holding on as they are to a lifeline in a city with ever-increasing rents and cost of living, are understandably wary of anything that will fundamentally transform NYCHA’s management and unit ownership structure. But this is not a sell-off. Public housing would stay entirely public. In their strong legislation — which has a chance of passage this session — state Sen. Brian Kavanagh and Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz have built in critical protections for tenants.

Albany politicians are practiced at lamenting the deteriorating condition of NYCHA as emblematic of how Washington or city bureaucracy or both have failed the poor and working class. They should take a break from these lamentations and do something real: Pass this bill, and give the nation’s largest public housing system, a vital institution on the brink of definitively failing its residents, a fighting chance at survival.