Brian4Liberty
06-13-2018, 04:25 PM
NYCHA’s failings prove we need to rethink public housing
By Howard Husock - June 11, 2018
It’s even worse than we knew.
The complaint and consent decree filed Monday by US Attorney Geoffrey Berman makes clear that the failures of the New York City Housing Authority, by far the nation’s largest, went well beyond the notorious lack of heat and hot water experienced by 300,000-plus tenants this past winter.
The complaint shows that there was not only incompetence but malice. The decision to lie about conducting lead paint inspections was, we learn, part of a pattern: turning off water rather than fixing leaks; posting danger signs to keep away federal inspectors.
The housing authority once held up as the exception to more notorious projects, such as those in Chicago, has been shown to be in a corrupt league of its own. Tenants’ welfare was clearly no priority for a unionized workforce asked to perform what should’ve been straightforward services: keeping the heat and lights on, picking up the garbage, making sure the front-door buzzers work.
You have to defer — and screw up — a lot of projects for the system itself to find an estimated capital-project backlog of anywhere from $18 to $26 billion. But, as any homeowner knows, if the roof goes unrepaired, all sorts of damage can follow.
If NYCHA managers were private landlords, they’d have been perp-walked in front of the federal courthouse. Small maintenance failures have big consequences — as in the case of Akai Gurley, shot to death in 2014 by NYPD Officer Peter Liang in what news accounts referred to as the “darkened public housing project stairwell” at Brooklyn’s Pink Houses. Memo to NYCHA: Stairwells don’t have to be dark.
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More: https://nypost.com/2018/06/11/nychas-failings-prove-we-need-to-rethink-public-housing/amp/
By Howard Husock - June 11, 2018
It’s even worse than we knew.
The complaint and consent decree filed Monday by US Attorney Geoffrey Berman makes clear that the failures of the New York City Housing Authority, by far the nation’s largest, went well beyond the notorious lack of heat and hot water experienced by 300,000-plus tenants this past winter.
The complaint shows that there was not only incompetence but malice. The decision to lie about conducting lead paint inspections was, we learn, part of a pattern: turning off water rather than fixing leaks; posting danger signs to keep away federal inspectors.
The housing authority once held up as the exception to more notorious projects, such as those in Chicago, has been shown to be in a corrupt league of its own. Tenants’ welfare was clearly no priority for a unionized workforce asked to perform what should’ve been straightforward services: keeping the heat and lights on, picking up the garbage, making sure the front-door buzzers work.
You have to defer — and screw up — a lot of projects for the system itself to find an estimated capital-project backlog of anywhere from $18 to $26 billion. But, as any homeowner knows, if the roof goes unrepaired, all sorts of damage can follow.
If NYCHA managers were private landlords, they’d have been perp-walked in front of the federal courthouse. Small maintenance failures have big consequences — as in the case of Akai Gurley, shot to death in 2014 by NYPD Officer Peter Liang in what news accounts referred to as the “darkened public housing project stairwell” at Brooklyn’s Pink Houses. Memo to NYCHA: Stairwells don’t have to be dark.
...
More: https://nypost.com/2018/06/11/nychas-failings-prove-we-need-to-rethink-public-housing/amp/