Private Management Promised to Fix Public Housing, Yet Violations Linger

by Mia Hollie and Greg B. Smith

This article was originally published on December 10 at 5 a.m. EST by THE CITY

When a New York City landlord fails to address serious housing code violations, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is forced to step in. Using taxpayer dollars, HPD hires a contractor to do the job the landlord didn’t, then bills the landlord for the work — plus fees.

Such has been the case again and again at 807 Schenck Avenue in East New York. Nine times in the last three years, HPD had to hire vendors to do more than $15,000 in repairs there, including fixing faulty fire-safety doors. Sometimes the contractors couldn’t even do the work because, HPD alleges, the building owner refused access to properties where a violation had occurred.

What’s unusual about this is that the landlord who owns the Schenck Avenue building is actually the public. It’s part of the Boulevard Houses, a development 100 percent owned by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).

But while Boulevard is owned by NYCHA, its buildings are managed and maintained day to day by a private company brought in by the authority under a federal program known as RAD, for Rental Assistance Demonstration.

Since 2017, NYCHA has touted RAD as the solution to its problems, placing more and more of its public housing apartments in the hands of private-sector managers. More than 40,000 units are now under RAD, with another 22,000 set to head that way in the next three years. 

And though NYCHA has from the start vowed to carefully monitor developments managed and maintained by private entities, the authority has never publicly disclosed the existence of thousands of housing code violations in RAD developments since they went under private management.

A first-of-its kind investigation by THE CITY found more than 14,200 housing code violations in RAD developments since January 2021. That included nearly 400 cases where HPD was forced to hire contractors to address the most serious violations with repairs that, under normal circumstances, should have been performed by the agent NYCHA designated to manage the property.

NYCHA is the nation’s biggest housing authority, overseeing more than 350 developments across all five boroughs that collectively house some 450,000 tenants — more than the population of New Orleans.

Living conditions in its aging portfolio — most of which was built before 1965 — have steadily declined over the years, due to reductions in federal assistance and years of mismanagement and neglect that ultimately resulted in the imposition in 2019 of a federal monitor.

Ten years ago, facing a backlog of more than 400,000 unresolved repair requests, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio decided the solution to NYCHA’s problems was RAD, a program that originated in the administration of President Barack Obama. Under RAD, private developers commit to putting millions of dollars into repairs and then they get to manage the buildings, pocketing the publicly subsidized rent.

From its inception the program has attracted controversy, with some tenants and left-leaning advocates claiming RAD’s end goal was to privatize public housing. Nevertheless NYCHA tested the waters in February 2016, seeking bids on the first RAD conversion at the Ocean Bay Houses in Far Rockaway. By November 2018, de Blasio was all in, announcing plans to convert to RAD more than a third of NYCHA’s 175,000 households — 62,000 in all — within 10 years.

“This is a turning point for tens of thousands of NYCHA residents,” he proclaimed.

Since then, however, NYCHA has never publicly reported on how its version of RAD, dubbed PACT or Permanent Affordability Commitment Together, has played out for the thousands of tenants occupying RAD households in 101 developments across the city. Only once since the program began has NYCHA replaced a building manager, records show.

THE CITY decided to take a look at one crucial metric that sheds light on living conditions: housing code violations imposed by the HPD, a city agency, on all of NYCHA’s RAD properties. (With limited exceptions, violations in apartments NYCHA continues to manage itself are not tracked by HPD.)

We examined violation records between January 2021 and late September 2025, discovering more than 14,281 housing code violations for everything from collapsed ceilings to lead paint to vermin infestation across 564 RAD addresses citywide containing just over 25,000 apartments. Three in four of those addresses received at least one violation HPD inspectors deemed “immediately hazardous.”

NYCHA questioned the data, asserting that there were actually 11,163 violations, discounting 4,829 that HPD labeled “dismissed.” But these violations were still violations, dismissed only after the building manager fixed the problem after missing required deadlines: 24 hours for immediately hazardous violations, 30 days for hazardous issues, and 90 days for less serious problems. HPD allows building owners to apply for a dismissal designation if they miss a deadline but can still certify they performed the required repairs.

NYCHA’s tally including dismissed violations pushed the total even higher than what THE CITY analysis found — to 15,992.

Outside Help

Authority leadership did not address another finding by THE CITY: In 59 of the 85 RAD developments with at least one violation, HPD was forced to hire vendors to perform repairs the development didn’t do on at least one occasion. That’s happened 369 times between January 1, 2021 and September 25, 2025  — at some buildings such as 807 Schenck Avenue, repeatedly.

Questioned about this, NYCHA management admitted that they do not monitor HPD violations in general and have never tracked which managers have a history of forcing HPD to intervene.

“HPD rarely makes emergency repairs. It’s reserved for the most egregious cases. That’s a real indictment,” said Representative Ritchie Torres (D-The Bronx), who grew up in a NYCHA development. “None of these developments should involve emergency repairs. RAD is supposed to have recapitalized repairs.”

Torres, a longtime backer of RAD, said the issue is lack of oversight, asserting that NYCHA appears to take the word of the building manager for circumstances in RAD developments without adequately verifying conditions on the ground.

“The public partner of the public/private partnership is an absentee. NYCHA absolves itself of oversight,” he said. “If a developer refuses to share information and refuses to fix violations, there’s no recourse.”

“I’m supportive of RAD in principle, I’m supportive of RAD in practice,” he added. “But the implementation of RAD varies widely from development to development, and without accountability, what’s the incentive for performance?”

Saadiya Robinson, a leader with the community organizing group Metro IAF and a tenant at Boulevard Houses, a RAD development in East New York, said, “Ignoring independent data like violations tracked by HPD means missing clear warnings about what isn’t working. NYCHA needs to change this policy so tenants can finally see real improvement.”

Across all RAD/PACT developments, most code violations — such as mold, pests, and peeling paint — get addressed within a year. But at 10 developments, more than half of violations take longer than that to resolve, and at five of those 60 percent or more of violations are still open after one year. 

That included two where more than 70 percent of violations weren’t closed within a year: Manhattan’s Marshall Plaza (76 percent) and Brooklyn’s Fenimore Lefferts (74 percent).

In response to THE CITY’s questions, NYCHA spokesperson Michael Horgan defended the RAD program, stating, “NYCHA maintains a clear oversight role for all PACT properties by collecting and analyzing monthly data reports on maintenance and repairs, tenancy proceedings and construction, conducting site visits to monitor PACT partners, and tracking the status of work orders from opening to resolution, and comparing these to resolution standards established by” federal housing officials.

“The PACT program is a vital tool in addressing the extensive capital needs behind many HPD violations at NYCHA properties, which the Authority would not otherwise have the funding to comprehensively resolve,” Horgan said.

NYCHA blamed most of the violations on disruption that occurred during reconstruction of properties once the developer takes over. They provided their own internal analysis during the same 2021 to 2025 time period — prompted by THE CITY’s inquiry — that found RAD developments averaged 37 violations per 100 units during construction and 25 violations per 100 after.

“We expect HPD violations to occur during the two- to four-year construction period following conversion, as millions of dollars of capital needs are inherited and addressed,” Horgan asserted. “These violations are primarily cured over that time, as large-scale renovations are made and new property management begins working closely with residents to address day-to-day repair needs.”

‘311 Has Become Our Maintenance’

But THE CITY found that at certain developments, tenant complaints about managers failing to address repair requests continued to persist years after their buildings entered the program.

Examining public data, THE CITY found that at some developments, tenants continued to call 311 requesting HPD inspections years after entering the program, complaining that private-sector managers still weren’t addressing crucial repairs. 

A look at some major developments that have been in the program for years shows most had  more violations during their latest full year in the program than during their first full year in RAD.

Take Ocean Bay, the NYCHA development in the Rockaways managed by Wavecrest Management Group that went into RAD nine years ago — the first NYCHA property to enter the program. Its construction phase ended years ago.

In its first year under private management, Ocean Bay received just 23 housing code violations across its 1,393 units. That number continued to rise until the development was receiving over 100 violations a year. During its latest full year in the program, Ocean Bay received 219 violations, and it had 129 open violations as of late August, including 42 classified as immediately hazardous. (A Wavecrest spokesperson said that number was down to 60 by mid-October.)

One building at 56-10 Beach Channel Drive recorded the most violations at the development — 132 since 2021. Across the street at 56-16 Beach Channel Drive, HPD has billed Wavecrest $8,164 since 2021 for repairs made by hired vendors when Wavecrest didn’t do the repairs itself, records show.

The Wavecrest spokesperson said the firm had removed more than 1,000 violations cited by HPD since 2021 at Ocean Bay.

Another RAD development with a persistently high number of code violations is Boulevard Houses in East New York.

Under RAD, Hudson Companies partnered with Property Resources Corp. (PRC) to promise $483 million in renovations at Boulevard and two nearby developments, Fiorentino Plaza and Belmont-Sutter. PRC then became manager at all three developments.

Boulevard converted to RAD on December 28, 2021. Since then HPD has issued 977 violations there, including 379 it deemed “immediately hazardous.” The number of violations rose from 152 in 2022, the first full year of RAD, to 385 in 2024, three years in. Tenants there say construction wrapped up in April, but 311 calls to HPD have continued unabated. 

James Yolles, a spokesperson for Boulevard Together, the joint venture of Hudson Companies and PRC, said the developer had inherited 12,000 open repair requests when it took over and attributed much of the subsequent citations to reconstruction and a New Year’s Eve 2023 fire at one building that caused extensive damage.

“Today, after thousands of repairs and complete renovations, there are just 106 open Class C [immediately hazardous] violations across the entire property, the vast majority of which have actively been resolved and are just awaiting the clearance of the final paperwork,” Yolles stated.

Also included in the track record at Boulevard: According to PRC, HPD has been forced to hire vendors to perform work PRC did not address 80 times, billing the company for thousands of dollars in reimbursement. In contrast, THE CITY found that most RAD properties with violations had fewer than nine violations requiring HPD intervention during the time they’ve been in the program.

Some buildings in another development managed by PRC, Fiorentino Plaza, have a similar track record. Fiorentino’s 330 Miller Avenue has racked up 202 violations in the last five years including three work orders where HPD had to hire vendors to perform $3,733 worth of work. Fiorentino also has a high percentage of violations (68 percent) that took more than a year to close.

Yolles said that discovery of a “serious mold issue” at Fiorentino necessitated vacating apartments, resulting in delays. “Today the fully renovated units at Fiorentino Plaza are among the nicest in NYCHA’s portfolio, complete with overhead lighting and in-unit washer dryers,” he said.

He added that the trend of HPD bringing in its own crews to do repairs again and again at the development “is predictable at a complex undergoing full-scale rehabilitation.”

Records also show that, in some cases, PRC alleged that PRC staff had blocked city-hired vendors from gaining access to properties where HPD had issued “immediate hazard” violations. THE CITY found four occasions between February 2023 and February 2025 where HPD alleged that the “owner or owner’s representative refused” crews hired by HPD access to 807 Schenck Avenue when they arrived to perform repairs. That included an effort to replace defective self-closing doors essential to keeping buildings safe in the event of a fire.

Yolles, the spokesperson for PRC — which recently changed its name to People Restoring Communities after fielding waves of tenant complaints — confirmed that, in fact, there were 14 instances where HPD claimed “owner refused access.” But PRC blamed tenants or claimed there was not enough information on record to know what had happened.

“In these cases, Boulevard Together did not refuse access,” the PRC spokesperson stated. “Our staff has no record of any HPD vendor ever being denied entry, and we are formally requesting HPD to provide the correspondence or appointment logs that would verify that access was actually scheduled.”

During a recent visit, THE CITY spoke to Boulevard tenant Yolanda Moore, 58, a retired Department of Environmental Protection sergeant, about her experiences there under both NYCHA and PRC. She’s lived there since 1993, and despite NYCHA’s notoriety for poor performance, she actually longs for the days when NYCHA was in charge.

“HPD has become our best friend. 311 has become our maintenance,” she said. Under PRC, she says, “If you make a maintenance call you would be waiting two or three weeks, a month, if they came at all.” Her request regarding a tub stoppage, she said, took weeks to resolve.

“We don’t know what happens once the [repair] ticket is made over the phone, why it takes so long for it to reach management and then for management to reach maintenance and then have maintenance come and take care of the problem,” she said. “I’m finding that PRC feels they don’t have to abide by the rules of NYCHA or HPD or anybody else. They’re doing things on their time and their system that’s faulty and they’re just doing it and tenants are suffering.”

“You know, NYCHA had a system,” she said. “Now you call downstairs and it’s like a hope and a prayer.”

‘$500 Million Band-Aid’

A few blocks away from Boulevard at NYCHA’s Linden Houses, HPD has brought in hired vendors 36 times since the development went into RAD. Eleven times HPD had to hire contractors to test for lead paint in apartments where young children live — a longtime issue at NYCHA where in the past hundreds of children have tested positive for lead poisoning.

At 245 Wortman Avenue, for example, HPD issued building charges totaling $6,142 seven times between July 2022 and March 2025, five of which were related to lead paint abatement or testing completed by an HPD-hired vendor. HPD lists the work as “thoroughly remove lead paint.”

John DeSio, a spokesperson for C+C Apartment Management, the firm running Linden Houses, did not address why HPD had to hire vendors to do this work. He said in a statement, “During the lead abatement work, there was some crossover between the planned work and HPD’s efforts. However, today about 98 percent of units have been tested and [if lead was found] remediated. Approximately 48 units remain to be tested where residents have refused entry. ”

HPD also had to issue charges at 875 Pennsylvania Avenue two times totaling $3,336, including one on November 27, 2024, related to “Local Law 111 of 2018 [self-closing doors] – replace apartment entrance doors.”

DeSio said the building’s entrance doors “have been repaired multiple times due to damage caused by misuse or vandalism, costing over $350,000 to date.”

Metro IAF, the housing advocacy group, has been pressing C+C to be more aggressive in responding to tenant issues, said group member Robinson, who is also a Boulevard tenant.

“I know firsthand how important it is for this program to actually work the way it was promised. Yet at Linden and Boulevard, many of us continue to live with serious conditions that remain unresolved. We had to organize as tenants to pressure management to conduct repairs, and even when repairs are made, the same issues often resurface, leaving families in a cycle of frustration and instability. That’s not real progress — it’s a $500 million Band-Aid.” 

To get a better perspective on residents’ day-to-day experience, THE CITY spoke with Linden Tenant Association President Carol Barnes, 65, and Casper Harold, 64, Linden’s TA vice president, about their frustrations since Linden went into RAD. Barnes and Harold have lived at Linden for years, first under NYCHA management, now under C+C. Both agreed life under NYCHA management was actually better.

“The way it used to be [under NYCHA], if you had a problem and you called the main office, the management, they had somebody out to your apartment within 15 minutes, no later than an hour,” Barnes said.

“With PACT/RAD and this new management, I’m not going to sugarcoat it, I’m not going to lie: You call, put the ticket in and sometimes it takes them a week or maybe two weeks,” Harold said. “I mean seriously, if [residents] could figure a way to get NYCHA back here and these people out of here, even new management, they want them out.” 

Barnes and Harold say that out-of-service elevators, a chronic issue at Linden, appear to have gotten worse under RAD, despite the fact that the lifts were upgraded as part of the program. They say one building at 245 Wortman Avenue is particularly cursed, and Department of Buildings records back that up: Tenants have filed complaints about out-of-service elevators there on 14 separate dates from January 2022 through mid-June.

Barnes said an upper-floor tenant at 245 Wortman was undergoing chemotherapy and couldn’t be sure of making appointments because the elevators were so unreliable. Her family put her in a hotel because her doctor advised her to not keep going up and down the stairs.

“They said we have brand new elevators, [that] these elevators are refurbished,” Harold noted. “These elevators go out every other weekend.”

DeSio, C+C’s spokesperson, said the firm inherited hundreds of HPD violations when it took control of Linden and Penn-Wortman, including unresolved lead-paint remediation. Since then, he said, C+C has resolved more than 1,100 HPD violations and closed 32,000 repair requests.

“Presently, C+C has about 0.036 HPD-related complaints per unit and one open work order per unit,” he said. 

Rampant Violations

THE CITY also looked at whether RAD buildings with high numbers of citations — if they were privately owned — would have been eligible for HPD’s “alternative enforcement program” watchlist of buildings with excessive numbers of violations. 

Buildings can be put in the program if HPD has been forced to bill the owner more than $2,500 within five years for work performed by city-hired vendors the building owner should have performed, and if the building has racked up a number of open serious violations that is triple the number of units in the building.

THE CITY found two particularly troubled buildings in a NYCHA RAD development in Crown Heights with nearly 200 open serious violations as of October 17. One would qualify for AEP, while the other comes close.

A 20-unit NYCHA property at 1598 Sterling Place had 106 open serious violations classified as “hazardous” or “immediately hazardous” as of October 17 — more than the three-violation-per-unit trigger. The building managers, Fairstead, have been billed for $10,393 in repairs handled by HPD-hired vendors since February 2024 — well over the $2,500-in-five-years trigger.

The 37-unit building at 692 Ralph Avenue had 84 open “hazardous” or “immediately hazardous” violations as of October 17 — close to the three-violation-per-unit cap. Fairstead has been billed $3,873 for repairs handled by vendors HPD hired since November 2024 — also more than the $2,500 trigger.

Both the Ralph Avenue and Sterling Place buildings went into RAD nearly two years ago. A firm called BRP Development agreed to fund $636 million in renovations for the nearly 1,700 units of the former Reid Apartments/Park Rock developments. Fairstead partnered as both the general contractor and the building manager.

In an emailed statement, a Fairstead spokesperson noted that construction had been under way through last spring to bring about “an incredible transformation,” adding, “Work is ongoing to address the root causes of these violations — namely immense capital needs resulting from decades of underfunding and deferred maintenance.”

There is only one example where NYCHA and the developer had a change of heart about a building manager’s performance.

In a bundle of buildings in Manhattan NYCHA placed in RAD five years ago, certain addresses began racking up hundreds of HPD violations. At 133 West 90th Street on the Upper West Side, HPD has issued 243 violations since 2021 — including 87 dubbed “immediately hazardous.” That’s the highest number of “immediately hazardous” violations of any RAD property, THE CITY’s analysis found. (As of September 27, the building had 64 open violations, including 32 deemed “immediately hazardous.”)

The number of violations in that building rose from 26 in 2021, its first full year of RAD, to 100 in 2023. The next year the building’s developer, Monadnock Development, sought NYCHA’s approval to replace the building manager, Cornell Pace, with Wavecrest, according to NYCHA spokesperson Michael Horgan.

“The development team felt, and NYCHA agreed, that a larger, more experienced property management team was required to provide the best service to residents in this bundle,” Horgan stated in an email. “Wavecrest was selected given their larger staff size, ability to onboard more staff quickly, and familiarity with the PACT program.”Wavecrest took over in January 2025 and the number of violations has since fallen off. A Wavecrest spokesperson wrote in an email, “Since taking over management of the Manhattan Bundle in January, Wavecrest has removed 289 violations and are working diligently to remove the remaining violations in the coming months, 42 of which we expect to be resolved very soon.”

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