Loisaida is home to four New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) locations: Jacob Riis, located at 454 E 10th St; Jacob Riis II, located at 54 Avenue D; Lillian Wald, located at 54 Avenue D; and Lower East Side III, located at 722 E 9th St, half a block away from The Loisaida Center. NYCHA has a history riddled with scandal and inequity, but it has also been lauded as one of the only successful public housing campaigns and organizations in the nation (one only needs to look at NYCHA’s contemporaries, such as Chicago’s Cabrini Green, and New Orleans’ Magnolia St. Project, or Atlanta’s entire housing authority.) In essence: anything short of an authority-wide shutdown can be considered a success.
Despite these low standards, in the last decade we’ve seen NYCHA face an overwhelming amount of difficulty in maintaining safe and equitable housing for its residents, in conjunction with tumultuous leadership and severe underfunding, which has led to nationwide scrutiny. Some of these issues stem internally, and can be traced back to the NYCHA’s policy creators themselves, while others have roots in external systems, aggravated by the current political administration on both citywide and federal levels.
According to Adam Wisniewski, of the online publication City Limits, part of Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts for 2018 included a $751 Million, per year, deduction from NYCHA’s funding. This cut would result in a raise from the current average NYCHA rent, of 30% monthly income, to 35%. For NYCHA families, whose average yearly income is $24,336, a 5% increase in rent (or an extra $84 per month) has the potential to be financially devastating, not to mention the fact that NYCHA currently faces a $77 Million budget deficit. While any proposed budget cut would have to be passed through congress, the president’s proposal is indicative of a political landscape that does not favor public housing in general.
This federal pressure is only further aggravated by the recent chaos surrounding NYCHA’s leadership, as Shola Olatoye, NYCHA’s chairwoman who was hired by Mayor De Blasio in 2014, resigned this past April. According to Aaron Short, of the online publication City and State New York, after months of internal turmoil, marked by lead paint exposure and broken boilers, Olatoye decided to step down after negotiations with federal investigators and the department of Housing and Urban Development, despite the mayor asking her to stay on. 80 year old Stanley Brezenoff, who has ties to the Koch administration, has stepped in as Interim Chairman.
However, the status of disrepair that a vast number of NYCHA units maintains extends far past Olatoye’s four years, and into today. According to Luis Ferré-Sadurní of the New York Times, in an article published this past July, 820 children under 6 in public housing tested positive for high lead exposure. This shocking statistic is even more dramatic when considering that New York’s Department of Health made notable attempts to keep the scandal under wraps, especially since the consequences of lead exposure in young children can be as severe as stunting intellectual growth as well as permanently disrupting in cardiovascular, hormone, and immune systems.
According to NYCHA insiders, the authority was reluctant to act on, or release, the lead test results because of insufficient funds to properly investigate and repair the vast number of units with lead paint and lead piping. Perhaps this is why, according to Greg Smith of the Daily News, 48 tenants of Brooklyn’s Red Hook Houses, received “breach of lease” notices from NYCHA after the inspection and discovery of lead paint in their homes by the authority in 2017. NYCHA has since made a statement that the notices were sent out in error, but the error sends a threatening message to residents regardless.
This disturbing turn to tenant blaming by the authority brings up other tenant’s right issues that have been in question since the 90’s. For example: Permanent Exclusion. Since 1996, NYCHA has reserved the right to evict any resident who has committed a crime, on a “One Strike You’re Out” basis, no matter if they have been formally convicted or not. Therefore, a mere arrest, which does not prove guilt, results in immediate eviction. As stated by Batya Ungar-Sargon, of City Limits, one of the most troubling parts of this practice is the way it tears families apart: if the child of two NYCHA residents is evicted, that child is barred from entering his parents’ home, making it difficult for families to gather (even for holidays) and visit, and often resulting in familial trauma immediately. It has become more than apparent that NYCHA is in trouble, and the bleeding has more than one source, but its tenants do not deserve to suffer at the authority’s hands. What lies next for NYCHA is unknown, but dramatic change must happen to ensure safety and justice within its premises.
If you or someone you know is a NYCHA tenant who suspects that their home is a site for lead exposure, please refer to:
If you or someone you know has suffered due to the Permanent Exclusion practice, please refer to:
I hope you’ll add that contact information above! This is really informative contextual piece on NYCHA’s long-standing troubles. Did I refer you to Nicholas Dagen Bloom’s book called PUBLIC HOUSING THAT WORKED, which is a good overview of NYCHA’s good times. (It’s so badly written, but the information is good.) There is also a lot of scholarship on how the city dealt with the long decrease in federal funding that has existed here pretty much since urban renewal. Let me know if you want to read more! One built-in trouble with public housing has always been that it exists for those who meet varying standards of social control. Early tenants had to have bank accounts and exist in legalized heterosexual family units. Now we have the “one strike” rule. Ultimately, the problem has always been that there is a limited supply for a vast and growing group of people who need this type of housing — and the political will to keep it going continues to dwindle.