NYCHA unleashes firestorm along with its budget

This chart shows the increase in non-discretionary, or fixed, expenses (such as utilities and debt service) that NYCHA has faced over the last five years, forcing the agency to cut discretionary spending substantially, from $997.8 million in 2002 to $784.9 million in 2007. The latter includes things like maintenance jobs and salaries, along with programs for tenants.

By Chris Lombardi

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) recently unveiled a budget shortfall that is leaving tenants and housing advocates reeling.

Last week, NYCHA announced a fiscal year 2007 budget that contained substantial deficits, including $159 million to be incurred this year, and October staff cuts of 500 positions, unless at least one of the three public entities currently funding the developments comes up with more money. While New York State did include funds for NYCHA for the first time in 10 years in its 2007 budget, the $3.4 million allocation fell far short of the $62 million that NYCHA had requested, while support from the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) division has actually decreased as costs increase.

While legislators like State Senator Tom Duane pledged to push Albany to increase the allocation for the 15 developments it built in the 1960s, including the Elliot-Chelsea Houses, New York’s Congressional and Senatorial delegations have revived efforts to “federalize” those developments and six more built by the city, and in the process protect them by getting HUD to play a more sustained role in preserving public housing. Both NYCHA and tenant advocates were cautiously optimistic about the prospect for getting at least some of the funding, while saying there were too many unanswered questions. Meanwhile, Chelsea’s NYCHA residents, already wilting under the weight of slow repairs, plan to attend en masse a June 18 forum by the housing authority at F.I.T., to ask what the future really holds.

The funding from New York State was the first since 1998, when its allocations ceased under then-Governor George Pataki. Since then, NYCHA has been hard at the task of doing more for less in its 344 public housing developments, with federal and city funds flatlined and expenses continuing to rise. In those 10 years, NYCHA has cut staff by more than 1,500, instituted “extended maintenance” (e.g., painting less frequently) and rent increases, including a raise in the top “ceiling rent.”

Overall, NYCHA has cut discretionary spending substantially, from $997.8 million in 2002 to $784.9 million in 2007, though non-discretionary (fixed) expenses, such as utilities and debt service, have risen by far more. Some of those cuts have been keenly felt by the residents of the authority’s 79,000 apartments, 73 percent of whom now pay the maximum rent (which can be up to one-third of the renter’s income).

“Our residents already see [levels of ]maintenance] have declined,” said Victor Bach, senior housing policy analyst for the antipoverty Community Service Society (CSS), who keeps in regular touch with the leadership of NYCHA’s resident associations. And recent tenant gatherings witnessed by Chelsea Now, at both Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses, have often featured complaints about waiting for plumbers, dripping ceilings and broken locks, with managers and advocates working overtime to change things.

“Overall, we do have very good public housing in New York,” said Bach. “In some ways, it’s the jewel of public housing in this country. We have 10,000 people waiting to get into these buildings.” However, Bach added, the current stress on the system makes him all the more concerned about the predicted future hiring freezes and staff cutbacks. “That budget deficit means there are problems that need to be addressed,” he said. “But not at the expense of low-income people.”

Howard Marder, NYCHA spokesman, told Chelsea Now that whatever cuts it needs to make, “there will be no reduction in services,” and that any staff cuts would be from the central office, not in the field staff maintaining buildings and programs.

Bach and others seemed skeptical about that promise. “How can you cut 500 positions without a reduction in services,” asked Colin Casey, an aide to Duane.

NYCHA is mounting an aggressive campaign to persuade the state and federal government to add more stable funding to NYCHA’s patchwork of support. Currently, funds from federal, state and city sources cover only 82 percent of the agency’s operating expenses, the rest coming from bonds and from some planned use of the agency’s fast-declining capital funds.

The fiscal year 2007 budget juggles all these factors in a budget spreadsheet, one that includes the coming year’s federal allocation; the new $3.4 million from New York State (with the wistful note that it’s $56 million less than requested); and the $70 million in subsidies allocated by the New York City Council, in addition to “new initiatives” such as the not-yet-approved use of federal Section 8 funds, the sale of land in NYCHA’s parking lots for the building of middle-income affordable housing, and hoped-for increases in the state’s “shelter allowance” for low-income residents. With all of the above included, the bottom line still shows an operating deficit for this year of $159 million.

Chelsea Now asked officials at Governor Spitzer’s office why the governor had included less than one-fifth of the amount requested by NYCHA in his budget, despite Mayor Bloomberg’s passionate plea the $62 million in his State of the City address. Uneasy with the question, at first spokesman Jeffrey Gordon would only say that the amount allocated was a result of the legislative process.

“The state has limited resources, and the budget reflects difficult choices,” Gordon finally said. “We look forward to continuing to work with the City and the Mayor to address housing issues.”

Duane, meanwhile, told Chelsea Now that while he was disappointed in the low level of state funding, the fact that it had been added as a line item in the state budget gave him and his allies something to build on in future years.

At the same time, everyone interviewed by Chelsea Now this week, from advocates to legislators to NYCHA’s Marder, said that it’s time for the federal government to step up.

“The developments built by the city and state entered the Federal program in July 1995, but they were not allowed to be included in the count that determines the NYCHA subsidy,” said Melissa de Rosa, deputy press secretary to Representative Nydia Velasquez. “From that point on, they have [had to share] the subsidies received by the other developments.”

Velasquez and U.S. Senator Charles Schumer are therefore sponsoring the Public Housing Equal Treatment Act, which would change HUD’s annual budgeting rules to include those complexes, adding them to the 334 other NYCHA complexes that came under HUD in the 1930s. According to de Rosa, the change mandated by the Act would add $100 million in stable, steady funding to NYCHA’s budget.

In addition to enabling repairs and improvements to occur on schedule, explained a summary provided by her office, “community centers that provide job training, elderly and youth programs will stay open and continue to enrich the lives of tenants…. Most important, this critical affordable housing will be maintained for the long term.”

While the lobbying ensues on various fronts, local public housing residents watch, and wait, and worry. Some will express those worries at the June 18 NYCHA forum.

“We live in filth because of the cuts,” said Miguel Acevedo, of Fulton Houses and Community Board 4. “It’s really scary; people don’t know how to take it.” He added that these changes revive a perpetual worry: that the deficit will make their units far more vulnerable to being sold off to developers.

“Some people have been here for 40 years,” Acevedo told Chelsea Now this week. People aren’t stupid, he said. “They see all this building going on around them, and they wonder, when does our home go?”