Kudos to soon-to-be-ex-Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen for offering real hope for the city Housing Authority.
This past frigid weekend saw 10,000-plus public-housing tenants shivering without heat and/or hot water. Meanwhile, the case that’s to determine NYCHA’s fate is itself “frozen” by the federal shutdown. So Glen’s ray of sunshine is welcome indeed.
No, she wasn’t echoing management talk about how NYCHA’s getting better at restoring the heat. Nor was she commenting on the case before Judge William Pauley III, who may put the agency into receivership.
Instead, Glen told The Real Deal that much of NYCHA’s holdings “really need to be converted into Section 8 housing projects and run by other people.” And while the concept “took a while to get . . . socialized and accepted,” she said, “it’s gaining a lot of momentum.” Let’s hope so.
If NYCHA goes on as it has, its buildings are going to fall apart. Even with new billions in funding, the numbers just don’t work.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has (finally) admitted as much by embracing the feds’ Rental Assistance Demonstration, which eases conversion to Section 8 projects: It’s now a key part of his plan for fending off receivership, along with other changes that activists have long denounced as “privatization.”
Yet it’s a win for low-income residents. For example, the RAD deal to convert 722 units at the Baychester and Murphy houses in the Bronx brings in $90 million for renovations.
Who’d object? Well, the building-maintenance union, 32BJ, wants the City Council to impose “prevailing wage” rules on RAD sites. That would undo key gains — and suggest the city will roll back any other reform.
And if New York City can’t show that it’s fully committed to making realistic changes, the judge will have little choice but to put NYCHA in someone else’s hands.