NYCHA Funding Shortfall Could Mean Dark Days for Projects
City Hall News reports that the New York City Housing Authority is looking at a $200 million budget shortfall this year, which some officials say is likely to result in worsening conditions at public housing. You see the conditions they’re living in and the problems they’re going through, says Council Member Rosie Mendez (D-Manhattan), who…
City Hall News reports that the New York City Housing Authority is looking at a $200 million budget shortfall this year, which some officials say is likely to result in worsening conditions at public housing. You see the conditions they’re living in and the problems they’re going through, says Council Member Rosie Mendez (D-Manhattan), who chairs the Council’s Public Housing Committee, and you’re sort of helpless in trying to rectify the situation. Last year NYCHA had a $168 million budget deficit. As federal funding for the projects has dried up, so too have city and state dollars. In recent years NYCHA has laid off thousands of employees and cut hundreds of millions of dollars from its operating budget. Some public housing advocates say that the city uses the projects as a “cash cow,” collecting millions every year for things like police services. Although there have been rumors that some of the city’s public housing stock would be sold off to private developers, Nicholas Dagen Bloom, an assistant professor at the New York Institute of Technology and author of “Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century,” says that’s probably not going to happen. It’s not likely the program will be privatized, he says, but there will be structural changes in the way it operates to reflect current conditions, which is higher costs. The are currently more than 400,000 residents of public housing in the city, and rent averages $320 a month for tenants who earn, on average, $20,000 a year.
The City’s Own Looming Housing Crisis [City Hall]
HUD Official Speaks the Unspeakable: Selling The Projects [Brownstoner]
Politicians Can’t Back Sell-The-Projects Idea [Brownstoner]
Photo by bondidwhat.
Well look at what the british policy did – gave birth to America and Australia! seems it worked fine, give people a fresh start where things are affordable.
the problem IS the people in them. there are, in this very city, housing projects with mostly chinese/asian residents. These projects are basically a success in many measured terms and show how it should be done. They don’t get any “preferential treatment” (the tired and worn argument of the irresponsible) and they work as places to live safely and cheaply.
“Well here is a question – if the average income is 20Gs why is the average rent only $320- that works out to be less than 20% of income – seems too low.”
Not considering the high number of average dependants. Count the number of windows on a project that doesn’t have child bars.
At no time or place did I state that the projects, or project living, is preferable to living in one’s own home. Benson writes as if the poor are going down South to live in some lovely cheap ranch home with a yard and umbrella table on the patio. If you move down South with next to nothing, income wise, to a place that is economically depressed, as most of the South is, you are moving to someplace arguably worse than your average depressing, battleship grey cinderblock project apartment. New York City subsidized housing may not be pretty, but at least there are standards. There are no such standards in most of the South, including in the urban areas. Why do you think hurricanes, floods and tornadoes cause such immense damage down there? Because they tend to cut a swath through substandard poor housing in poor neighborhoods.
Benson and Polemicist’s “choice†is a false choice. It is the modern equivalent of the old British system of Transportation – shipping the undesireables to a place far away, out of sight, out of mind, and out of financial and moral responsibility. If someone chooses to relocate, fine, more power to them, and good luck. But that should be THEIR choice, made for their reasons, and their situation. It should not be public policy, or even public suggestion.
The problems in public housing are great, and include many thorny issues of race, personal responsibility, public responsibility and the ever present allocation of decreasing funds. Let’s have a real discussion of what can be done. Suggesting that people get out of Dodge solves nothing.
Montrose Morris
BxGrl – it didnt take years to improve PS 107 or PS 8 or anymore $ – all it took was to have parents who were focused on education to send their kids there – they “system” didnt change, the $ didnt change….the people did.
The “means” to do something about poor education is available to everyone (especially the under or un employed) – its called time, effort and books.
Please do not try and tell me that the underclass (made up of all races in this country – but more so Black and P.R. in NYC) are as dedicated to education as say the Jewish immigrants were 75 years ago or the Korean immigrants are today.
Sure racism and history may be the cause of some (or even all) of these cultural differences today – BUT – until you change the culture in these underclass communities – all the subsidies in the world will do basically nothing
Bxgrl – you are mixing issues – sure Welfare to the rich (like your accurate portrayl of Goldman’s deal) is wrong but unless you believe that diverting that money to the poor will eliminate the cycle of poverty and under-education of this societies underclass (for which you have little evidence, history or expert support) – the counter argument to a failed (poor) welfare/assistance programs, is not to cite unnecessary (rich) welfare programs.
1:40- you obviously have no first hand experience with the projects or with anyone who lives in them so I find it hard to take your rhetoric seriously. the fialure is not the people in the projects- its the system that consistently fails to give them the means to do something about it. And trust me when I say that it is intentional because people like Bloomberg would much rather have moeny for his beloved Manhattan projects than put real money and work into an education system that may take years to show a return on that investment. He would rather put an orchestra (and I say this as an artist) in a firehouse, than keep a unit in the neighborhood. After all, a rig is not nearly so refined as a piece of classical music. And this same Mayor and cronies would rather give billions to help a second rate developer and his crap architect build a travesty in Brooklyn than pay a NYPD probie a decent beginning salary. Elitist is Polemicist who many times has ranted over the need for huge apartment complexes because we need housing but I guess he really means housing for “his kind” of people. Sounds a little too Adolf to me.
Bxgrl
Wow- I see Polemicist has once again exposed just how uneducated, shallow and ethically bankrupt HE is. Obviously all the tax abatements and breaks, all the public funding thrown at the rich corporations and developers cannot be construed as welfare for the rich? It is in my book. Yes- lets toss billions of dollars at ratner, lets help poor Goldman Sachs build a new office building while they blackmail the city for more- if you were not so ignorant and incapable of seeing the big picture, you would clearly see that what we spent on public housing is not what is bankrupting us. But no- you are just not smart enough.
Insofar as knowing what the history of projects in NYC is-once again Poley and Benson show how little they know. the initial projects were built from severtal premises- one as a means of providing civil servants and soldiers decent housing. Another was an architectural/utopian vision of city life (whether or not it was fulfilled is another story). Yet another factor was the historical evolution of giant apartment complexes from such buildings as the Dakota and other enormous, luxury apartment buildings which were often mini complexes in themselves. In the 60’s many apartment complexes were built strictly with the middle class in mind.To assume that projects were merely a development of the City trying to warehouse the poor is true ingnorance on your part.
as far as the City’s failure with the poor- it is in fact the City’s failure with the middle class and, judging by the collapse of several major sevelopment projects, and the lack of anchor tenants in others, a failure with the rich because our City Government is not licking their asses enough (hard to believe, huh?).
The What is perfectly correct to bring up Bush and his cronies- the hemmorhaging of money in this country is not because they are spending it on the poor or on immigrants. It’s because our government would rather piss it away in a war we should have never gotten into, or pay it out to their friends at Halliburton, or give it away to billionaires who don’t want to pay for the air rights over the rail yards. They are not funding or even creating effective programs that will educate people, or create real jobs- in NYc, the Midwest, the South or the West.
And an even more glaring piece of moronic commentary is the fact that while polemicist says “I really don’t see what is so controversial about giving people the choice to live wherever they want.” he fails to explain what the choice is other than saying they can move down South. Move or what? certainly by your low standards choice is telling people move or else. Your big problem with Montrose is that you have no intelligent argument or fact to offer in rebuttal so you simply insult. Give it up boys, you are out of your intellectual league.
Bxgrl
its not this city, public housing has failed all over. And whats wrong with outsiders giving a new perspective. Clearly the people here haven’t changed anything for 30 years.