First Ever Residents’ Report Card Gives NYCHA Failing Grades

Evaluations from Nearly 1,500 Residents Expose Poor Maintenance, Shoddy Repairs, Bad Management, and Failure to Provide Jobs Opportunities

NEW YORK – A first-of-its-kind survey of public housing residents across New York City released today shows poor maintenance, shoddy repairs, unsafe conditions and management failures in New York City Housing Authority buildings are reaching a crisis point after years of budget cuts caused by government disinvestment in public housing. 

The resident report card was released by  a coalition of five community organizations including, CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, Community Voices Heard (CVH), Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES), and Mothers on the Move (MOM), with research support from the Community Development Project (CDP) of the Urban Justice Center.

The groups surveyed 1,446 residents at 71 NYCHA developments across the city, asking participants to grade NYCHA’s performance on a range of issues facing public housing residents. The report card also includes recommendations for improving policies and programs across NYCHA.  The recommendations, which were developed by residents in response to the survey results, come as NYCHA holds forums across the city for residents to comment on its Annual Plan for FY 2012.

“This report card gives us a real measure of how public housing residents across the city feel about NYCHA– and the results are not pretty,” said Alexa Kasdan, Research and Policy Director at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center. “From broken elevators, moldy apartments, and leaky ceilings to lost paperwork and unjust eviction proceedings, this report card shows that NYCHA’s failures are system-wide and have reached a crisis point for the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers living in public housing.”

Key findings from the report include:

• Repairs:   Citywide, 40.2% of residents giving NYCHA a “D” or “F” on repairs inside residents’ apartments. Residents made clear that the Central Calling Center, which began in 2005, has significantly lengthened wait times for repairs – as have the elimination of 11% of NYCHA maintenance workers since 2005.
  
  “Repair appointments are usually a year away and when they do come it is a patch up job and then you have to wait another year to get it fixed again.” 

--Rose Willis, a resident of Taft Houses and a member of Community Voices Heard (CVH)

• Maintenance:   Overall, residents gave NYCHA a “D+” on maintaining public spaces within developments, with 53.1% of residents giving NYCHA a “D” or “F.”  44% of residents surveyed said their elevators break down weekly, another 8% said elevators in their buildings break down daily.
  
  “When you call, you have to wait for months or years to get your maintenance calls completed. You get nothing but excuses. And if you really want to know a secret: maintenance is only done when HUD is coming for inspection.”

-- Cynthia Butts, a former 50-year resident of the Whitman Houses and a community leader with Families United for Racial & Economic Equality (FUREE)

• Criminalization:   Residents reported that NYCHA, in collaboration with the NYPD, criminalizes residents instead of protecting them.  One in three survey respondents reports that they or one of their family members has been unjustly stopped by police in their own building or apartment.

• Jobs:  Residents say NYCHA has failed to effectively implement critical jobs programs intended to provide employment to public housing residents.  While 22.1% of the survey respondents say they lost their job in the past year, 74.3% have not heard of job opportunities through NYCHA programs.
  
  “Our community wants to work. Some people live in really terrible conditions so putting people to work fixing our homes would help everyone. NYCHA needs to do more than just create green committees; they need to create green jobs.”

-- Luisa Escalera, a former 20-year Mitchell Housing resident and member of Mothers on the Move (MOM)

• Management:  NYCHA residents gave the agency a “C-” for the accountability and competence of its management. 39.7% of residents say NYCHA has lost their paperwork in the past.  Of those, 30.3% have mistakenly faced eviction from their NYCHA apartments.

“When I was 13, my mom and I faced eviction because of management’s negligence.  They kept telling us we didn’t pay rent, when my mom had the paperwork stamped proving we did.  If it wasn’t for my mom knowing her rights and being diligent, we would have been evicted.”

-- Corey Cofield, a resident of Jacob Riis and a member of Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES)

• Language Access: 56.4% of Chinese speaking residents gave NYCHA an “F” for language access. Among surveyed Spanish speaking residents, 21.40% gave NYCHA an “F” for language access.

"Language access is a huge problem. With so many Chinese tenants in NYCHA, you would think they would have more interpreters and translate documents, but all the notices are only in English and sometimes Spanish, and there's never a Chinese speaking person when I call. If I can't communicate with NYCHA, how am I supposed to know if something's wrong, or ask for repairs?"

--Li Duan Jiang, a resident of Rutgers Houses and member of CAAAV

“The report captures the wide spread sentiment that it takes an extraordinary wait period for basic repairs. The chronic budget deficit caused by federal underfunding is certainly to blame but the Housing Authority will need to do come up with viable plan because it is unacceptable for tenants to live with unhealthy and unsafe conditions,” said Council Member Rosie Mendez.

In order to address the problems identified through this survey, the groups are calling on NYCHA to implement a variety of policy and programmatic recommendations that are included in the report.