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.
“Just because you were born into it [Projects] doesnt mean you will stay there forever”
But the vast majority WILL stay in the projects and/or Government assistance forever.
You can ignore the issues or call people who bring them up elitist or racist all you want – but the projects (and other areas) are filled with a (more or less) permanent underclass.
Until people start to deal with that issue – all this other stuff is rhetoric
Thats not what 1:26 meant, just that people move here from the middle of no where and all of the sudden know everything about and how to change this city.
to 1:26 -Kansas is not down south
The smartest thing Bloomberg ever did was to start that program to pay ‘at-risk’ kids to go to school.
If all Government welfare for families was tied to school attendance and achievement the underclass in this society would be wiped out in a generation.
Its amazing how everyone knows so much about the projects and what life there is like. “EVERYONE THERE IS DUMB”??? Listen to yourselves. Public housing is necessary in this city. I know a lot of people who live in the projects, do they like it? NO. Cheap rent, but they will be more than happy to move out once they get the opportunity. Just because you were born into it doesnt mean you will stay there forever. And this “move down south”, does it ever occur to you that many people are born and raised here and the city is what they know and love?? Not everyone is from the middle of Kansas who moved here and knows all, like you apparently!! Suckers.
“The What” utilizes the worst form of argument known – its called diversion and distraction….
This is how it works – point is made that GENERALLY the population that lives in the projects are not well educated and their children are on a similar path,
Now rather then address this point he says…
“In projects you have working class people too. ”
Which of course is true but is totally irrelevant to those (majority) in the PJs that do not have such jobs and are severely undereducated.
Another example:
“How can people who have never worked a steady job in their lives and who can’t read, write or speak effectively; going to be helped by more NYC jobs?”
So rather than address the point, “The What” goes on to talk about how dumb President Bush is – which again is probably true but totally irrelevant to the question at hand.
But my favorite “The What” line in this thread is this one:
“Is Stuy Town and Cooper Village projects? Was they built to help people coming back from war?”
I don’t have any idea what relevance this line has whatsoever but I love how the grammar makes my point about the need for education perfectly clear.
btw – here is a great article published in City Journal a few years ago. It’s about federal block grants, which usually go to the really depressed places like Buffalo or Rochester and not really NYC, but the principles are the same. Giving money to government agencies and not people doesn’t help the poor.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/
15_2_urban_program.html
Montrose Morris:
You are totally off your rocker.
YOU are the one who wants to force people to stay in these projects. Benson and I advocate giving them cold hard cash to decide where in the country they want to live.
Why are you so insistent that these people be forced to live in your little paradise operated by the NYCHA?
The real issue here is you have no respect for the poor and want to force them to live an idealized life that YOU personally find appealing.
This thread is not about economic policies that have resulted in the loss of jobs. This thread is about a failed, byzantine system of aiding the poor that has failed utterly, totally, and miserably. Do-gooders like yourself have HURT these people with your programs over the past half century. Why on earth would we trust YOU to figure out what to do next?
You want to take money from Peter and give it to Paul? Fine – but just give it to him! Don’t funnel it through the NYCHA, HUD, and the myriad number of other city, state, and federal agencies failing to help the poor!
Montrose;
Logic is really not your strong point, is it?
You talk about the quality of housing in the South being generally inferior in quality. On what basis do you make this statement? I’d also like to know how you consider the NYC projects to be of superior quality. Is is the graffitti-covered hallways that do it for you? How about the NYCHA regulations that prohinit residents from making any improvements to the fabulous apartments? How about that battleship gray linoleum tile? Yes, how can a small ranch house with a backyard for the kids compare to these magnificant structures? What benefit is there to someone to have a place of their own, when Montrose and company deem these buildings to be far superior?
You cite the horrors of a person moving hundreds of miles away to improve their lives. Somehow, as the grandson of immigrants who relocated thousands of miles away to improve their lives, your tearjerker doesn’t move me. This city is teeming with immigrants who have done just that: move away from what was comfortable in order to improve their lot. Who then, Montrose, are the folks in the projects that, according to your “logic” are to be spared this fate? Do you consider the folks in projects to be some type of caste that should be spared this “horror”?
Finally, your logic seems to think that I am patronizing the poor. You are so damn clueless. You tell me what is more patronizing: pointing out other possibilities, choices and horizons to folks who are caught in a dead-end dependency, or just continuing the same old way,so that you can demonstrate that you “care”.
I don’t know why I continue to debate you, as you are so trapped in your mindset. I think the only benefit of doing so is that your posts demonstrate the intellectual bankruptcy of those who want to posit policy for the purpose of demonstrating that they “care” more than the rest of us mere mortals.
Benson