Public Employee Press

Part 2 of a series on the New York City Housing Authority crisis

Mismanagement at the New York City Housing Authority
Housing Hell

Drugs, mold and urine-soaked lobbies degrade living conditions for the 400,000 tenants of the city Housing Authority, where many residents had no working toilets, heat or elevators for weeks after Hurricane Sandy. Before then, Mayor Bloomberg’s appointed chief sat on $1 billion in federal assistance as mismanagement and understaffing built a backlog of 420,000 needed repairs.

BY DIANE S. WILLIAMS and GREGORY N. HEIRES

Mice race through April Johnson's apartment. Her stove lights haphazardly, which has brought the Fire Dept. to her door three times lately. Under pressure from DC 37 legal service Attorney Admarie Llewellyn, the Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development issued violations for mold, peeling paint and vermin infestation against her landlord, the New York City Housing Authority.

A member of District Council 37, April lives in the Coney Island Houses, one of 334 NYCHA public housing projects that are home to 400,000 New Yorkers, more than 5 percent of the city's population.

"They gave me a used refrigerator, changed a valve on the stove and patched the wall. That's about it," said Johnson, an Assistant Public Health Advisor in Local 768, whose daughters, 17 and 9, suffer with asthma and allergies.

NYCHA: city's worst slumlord

NYCHA's backlog of 420,000 repair orders means that tenants can wait two years or more for even minor repairs. Understaffed and underfunded, plagued by crime and massive infrastructure problems, NYCHA has become the city's biggest slumlord.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYCHA left residents in Coney Island Houses, Red Hook and other projects in Flood Zone A without full power, operable elevators, toilets or heat for weeks after Hurricane Sandy struck. It took days for generators and portable toilets to arrive. Volunteers and Federal Emergency Management Agency workers - not NYCHA - reached public housing's elderly and shut-in residents, who went without food, medicine or water for up to 10 days.

"It was so scary, like a ghost town. There are no lights, and we still have no heat," Johnson said in January, two months after Sandy, as temperatures hovered below freezing.

When it storms, rain seeps through the walls of Crossing Guard Ruth Hinds's Bruekelen Houses apartment and pools on the floor. Walls pucker and bubble and mold. Hinds's bedframe is rusted, the box spring and mattress are covered in mold. She refuses to throw it away until management agrees to reimburse her, which NYCHA will not do without a receipt. Ruth sleeps on the sofa and stores her work uniforms and underwear in plastic.

Her son Walter, who is training to be a chef, was diagnosed with a fungus that earned him the moniker Cheetah for the furry white spots that appear on his skin. Police stop him frequently as he enters the building, where tenants say street drugs are sold. "You can get anything here, crack, cocaine, weed," he said.

Doctors removed a tumor "the size of a corn muffin" from Ruth's sinus, and she's been fighting ovarian cancer since 2010. Chemotherapy treatments have left her in pain that has put her on medical disability leave. She believes the mold has triggered her medical problems; her doctor wrote NYCHA requesting a transfer to a clean apartment, but NYCHA refused.

High crime, slow repairs

To contain the debris that rains down with each flush, NYCHA installed a galvanized metal box over a waste pipe above the toilet. Lawyer Llewellyn went to Housing Court, which ordered NYCHA to make repairs. Workers have patched Hinds's walls six times.

Despite citations for violations, NYCHA has never tested for mold or done a professional mold abatement, said Llewellyn.

The agency has been sitting on $1 billion in federal capital improvement funds, but has responded to only 10,000 of tenants' 338,000 most recent complaints to its centralized call center.

Hinds contacted state Senator John Sampson in September. But little has changed. "Housing offered to transfer me to the Seth Low projects," she said, "but the day I visited there, I had to climb over a dead body to get into the building."

Since 2010, crime in New York City public housing has increased by 14 percent, while under NYCHA Chair John Rhea, $42 million worth of surveillance and security devices sat in storage for two years. After an embarrassing newspaper exposé and City Council hearings, NYCHA announced it would install cameras in 85 high-crime projects.

In the 1950s, when many NYCHA developments were new, NYCHA lived up to its goal of providing decent and affordable housing in a safe and secure environment for low and moderate income families.

A living hell

But today, the odor of urine permeates lobbies and stairwells, and long waits for even the smallest repairs show City Hall's total disrespect for tenants. Mismanagement and underfunding have turned the projects into housing hell.

In the summer of 2011, raw sewage spewed from the toilet, bathroom sink and bathtub of Local 420 Patient Care Associate Irmatine Marshal, who moved to NYCHA's Borinqua Houses in 1998.

"The entire apartment stinks with feces and sewage, and I broke out in boils, ringworms and white fungus," Marshal said.

Conditions in her apartment drove Marshal to McDonald's, Burger King, church and her job - just to use the toilet. She could not shower at home. Mold ruined her clothing and furniture. With help from DC 37's Municipal Employees' Legal Service, Marshal took NYCHA to Housing Court. Repairs, Llewellyn said, took almost a year. In July Marshal moved back in, but by September the sewage problem was back.

For three years scaffolding surrounded four of Taft Houses' nine 19-floor towers in East Harlem. "The elevators break down regularly. NYCHA used to fix them within four hours, now we wait days," said Adolfo Mangual, a 24-year resident who points out that the city's public housing is home for many elderly and disabled folks.

Taft Houses has repeatedly failed HUD inspections. Many residents have not had gas for months, and NYCHA and Con Edison blame each other. In October after a community meeting with local politicians and Housing Authority management, NYCHA gave tenants hot plates and food stamps.

"Hot plates? You can't buy cooked food with food stamps, it's worthless," Mangual said. "We are frustrated. These were very good buildings, but management ignores us."

DC 37 Retiree Association activist Nellie Gonzalez Arce lives in Manhattan's 11-story Sondra Thomas Apartments for the Aging. Gonzalez said NYCHA dragged its feet and only repaired a window broken by vandals after she complained to City Council member Gayle A. Brewer. She said, "You wait all day and they never show up."

Local 1549 member Cynthia Hill is the former president of the tenants association of Shelton Houses in Queens, where she has lived for 28 years. When loosened bricks fell off the roof, repairs took seven years, said the Police Communication Technician.

She said, “Last year tenants couldn’t use their stoves, so NYCHA gave them hot plates. The building’s fire alarms and gas lines still malfunction.” The building’s two elevators break down frequently. Concerned about aged residents, Hill said, “They stay downstairs until the elevator is fixed, sometimes waiting all night. “What if they use a wheelchair? It’s a horrible way to live.”

Life in the NYCHA project, she says, has become “a never-ending battle for safe and decent living conditions.”