Lede
Saundrea I. Coleman was in her bedroom at the Stanley M. Isaacs Houses in the fall of 2021, when Hurricane Ida hit New York City. On that first day of September, heavy rainfall and wind, and both a flash flood and tornado warning hit the city at the same time. As Coleman sat in her room for a few hours, she was unaware that her terrace had flooded and water had breached her home. When she finally came out of her room, she found that water had made its way into her entryway and kitchen. Coleman mopped up the water with towels, annoyed at this latest instance of water seeping into her apartment. Her bathroom walls have bubbles and a black substance that she assumes to be mold. They have been this way for months, and her landlord has yet to fix it, just one more example of the New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) failing to provide timely repairs to its residents.
NYCHA, home to over 400,000 New Yorkers, is the largest provider of public housing in the country, with 302 development sites. In 2020, the authority halted most non-emergency repairs to comply with COVID-19 social distancing protocols; however, the need for repairs increased from 78 percent to 93 percent between the months of February to September. By December the housing authority had fallen so far behind in maintenance, it faced a backlog of 483,000 outstanding repairs. The average time to complete emergency work increased from four to 16.7 hours, while that to resolve non-emergency repairs increased from 19 days in the fiscal year 2019 to 27.6 in fiscal year 2020.
To understand this infamous NYCHA trajectory, we have to understand the agency’s history. NYCHA built its first development in 1934 at the height of the Great Depression to improve the housing conditions of the working class on the Lower East Side. In the beginning, NYCHA excluded impoverished people from its housing, as well as single mothers, those suffering from alcoholism, and people without a stable job. As time went on and the need for public housing increased, NYCHA began to open up to more people. Black and Brown communities were allowed to move into NYCHA buildings. As more minority families moved into NYCHA developments, federal and local funding began to decrease, and the building’s upkeep went with it. The once believed aid to a housing crisis took a turn for the worse.
By the 1980s, 90 percent of NYCHA’s developments had been created. Since 2002, the deterioration has accelerated so rapidly that now the majority of NYCHA’s buildings appear to have reached the end of their useful lives. Many of the structures are literally falling apart and are unsafe. The lack of maintenance can be blamed on a decrease in funding. There are leaks in walls and ceilings that go weeks and months without attention. Often rats and other pests infest tenants’ apartments. Sometimes elevators don’t work for days, meaning tenants have to spend a long time waiting for one elevator to get to their floor. All of this continues as NYCHA, New York’s “Worst Landlord,” appears helpless to aid its residents.