Posted Jun 10, 2018, 11:38 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: San Francisco
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From Rats to Rainwater, a Tour of New York Public Housing
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By Howard Husock
June 8, 2018 6:42 p.m. ET
Last week the story broke that the New York City Housing Authority, by far the nation’s largest system of public housing, will be forced to operate under a federal monitor. The city also will be required to spend $1 billion on repairs and renovations.
Crisis has come to NYCHA-land, as New York magazine once called the city’s public housing system to underscore the sheer isolation of many of its large projects. This past winter, more than three-quarters of the housing authority’s 400,000 tenants, in 176,000 apartments, went without heat and hot water. Mandatory lead-paint inspections were not performed, and then falsely claimed to have been done. The chairwoman of NYCHA’s board resigned under fire. Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared an official state of emergency and went to visit the projects for himself.
Readers may not be surprised, given the terrible reputation of public housing. But for years, a few utopian believers have insisted that New York is different. Take “Public Housing That Worked,” a 2009 book by Nicholas Dagen Bloom, a professor at the New York Institute of Technology. “The New York story provides a fresh perspective on familiar stories of housing failure,” Mr. Bloom writes, “by showing that, rare as it may be, a housing authority dedicated to everyday management can maintain housing even under trying conditions.” He describes NYCHA as having “comparatively tidy grounds” and “well-maintained high-rise buildings.”
That would be news to tenants . . . .
Extricating government from this business may seem far-fetched. It should not be. A federal program called Rental Assistance Demonstration, developed by the Obama administration, allows private developers to take over public housing so long as they promise to keep the rent affordable for a negotiated period. New York could give tenants a buyout or limit their length of stay. (The average NYCHA resident has lived in public housing more than 17½ years.) Many projects sit on valuable real estate. The city could sell it and use the funds to support housing for those who truly have nowhere else to go, such as the low-income elderly or the disabled . . . .
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-ra...&page=1&pos=12
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