Totally rad

We don’t see this often, but we should: Nine Brooklyn public housing developments where more than 6,000 people live will Friday celebrate rehabbed kitchens and bathrooms and windows and floors, elevators, lobbies, fire systems, community spaces, playgrounds and boiler rooms — courtesy of the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration/Permanent Affordability Commitment Together program, a mouthful that’s shorthanded as RAD-PACT. Opponents who dismiss it as unacceptable privatization should tour the overhauled facilities, then ask themselves whether their demagoguery and ideological rigidity is worth blocking progress for some of the neediest and most neglected New Yorkers.

The program began a decade ago, and it lets agencies choose to get federal funding through the Section 8 voucher financing rather than Section 9, which means they can convert to private management, under long-term leases, while remaining public housing in every way that matters. The developments will still be owned by NYCHA; tenants will continue to be covered by federal laws that among other things cap rent at a third of a household’s income.

Unfortunately, Mayor Bloomberg stalled on RAD at the end of his third term, then Mayor de Blasio continued with the sluggish implementation; 166 housing authorities converted about 50,000 units to the RAD program before NYCHA inked its first deal under the program, on the way to the last administration finally ramping up plans to renovate 62,000 units this way.

Friday’s ribbon-cutting, the culmination of a deal struck in February 2020, is the result of the city’s single biggest RAD-PACT plan to date, $434 million worth of work on more than 2,600 apartments and common areas by four development companies. If the improvements are well maintained, families at nine public housing sites will finally be able to live without being plagued daily by mold, rodents, leaks, broken-down elevators and all the other indignities, large and small, that have become synonymous with New York City public housing. Not that this should prevent other creative solutions, like a sensible NYCHA trust.

It doesn’t have to be this way anymore. The only thing NYCHA residents have to fear is fear itself.