NYCHA has too many vacant apts, Stringer

[Anna]

email from Scott Stringer, NYS Assembly, UWS:

Scott Stringer <strings@assembly.state.ny.us>

Dear Friends,

As we gather with our families and friends for the holiday season, I want to draw your attention to my research concerning the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) public housing stock. Over the years, my office has received numerous complaints about long waiting lists for public housing and the hardships posed by delayed transfer requests. To determine the magnitude of this problem, my office issued a Freedom of Information request to NYCHA in March 2003.

As you many have seen in recent news coverage, my office found 4,399 vacancies that could serve as low-income apartments cannot be used due to overdue repairs, conversions (access for the disabled) or use as construction relocation sites. Yet, the sheer volume of vacancies does not convey the entire story. It’s the systematic time lag in bringing apartments back into the housing stock that is the most troubling.

Our investigation showed a significant portion of the current public housing vacancies has been withheld from potential tenants for several years, with some units having been off the market for as long as 12 years. In fact, of the vacancies due to conversion, repair or relocation, 79% have been vacant for over a year, 21% for over 5 years and 2% for over 9 years.

NYCHA responded to our findings by explaining that 1,000 apartments per month are vacant because of turnover. However, it is important to note that the 4,399 vacancies my investigation identifies does not include those units vacant for turnover. In other words, the 1,000 apartments that NYCHA specifies are an additional 1,000 vacancies.

In light of my findings and the 146,100 people currently on the public housing waiting list, I urge you to join me in my fight to restore our public housing stock. Please contact Alaina Colon or John Simpson in my office via email (strings@assembly.state.ny.us) or phone (212-873-6368) if you would like to join our efforts. For more information, please read The New York Times article below. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to learn more about this important issue. I wish you and your families a happy holiday and wonderful New Year.

Sincerely,

Scott Stringer
Assemblymember, 67th A.D.

* * * *

THE NEW YORK TIMES
DECEMBER 22, 2003

ASSEMBLYMAN SAYS THE CITY’S HOUSING AUTHORITY KEEPS TOO MANY APARTMENTS VACANT

By DAVID W. CHEN

The New York City Housing Authority is the biggest and, by many accounts, the best-run public housing agency in the country. Its 2,700 buildings have held up reasonably well. Few of its 419,000 residents move out. And there are more than 146,000 people ready to move in, determined to wait the decade or so that it can often take for an apartment to open up.

But now, a state assemblyman from Manhattan is criticizing the housing authority for holding several thousand vacant apartments, some for as long as 12 years.

In a report to be released today, the assemblyman, Scott Stringer, found that the authority's own data showed that there were more than 5,300 vacant apartments, or 3 percent of the entire inventory, with more than a third being in Manhattan.

Nearly 3,500 of those apartments have been vacant for more than one year. More than 900 have been empty for more than five years. And 88 have been empty for more than nine.

"There was never a sense that there would be vacancies in public housing, because what people bemoaned was the doubling up, the tripling up, and waiting list of over 140,000 people," said Mr. Stringer, who, after receiving the data through a Freedom of Information Act request, discussed his preliminary findings with The New York Times. "So the fact that there are thousands of vacant apartments in public housing that have been vacant for many years is alarming."

But the housing authority says that the numbers are not nearly as bad as Mr. Stringer might presume. In fact, the housing authority says a few thousand apartments are always empty, either because they are in the middle of renovations, or being saved for emergencies in which families need immediate shelter.

Housing officials also say that some apartments end up being vacant for more than a year because of the deliberate, meticulous and sometimes frustrating nature of government contracts.

"When Scott Stringer comes along and says there are vacancies, well, yes there are vacancies," said Howard Marder, a spokesman for the housing authority. "But the vacancies exist because of modernization work, and when it's all done, people will move back."

The jousting over vacancies comes at a time city officials and housing groups are desperate to create as much housing for low- and moderate-income families as possible in a city with record homelessness and a shortage of housing or land.

Indeed, last year Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in declaring that the city faced a housing crisis, announced a plan to repair, preserve and build 65,000 units of housing — a plan that would be the most ambitious since the Koch administration.

The vacancy rate for New York City's entire inventory of 2 million rental apartments was 2.9 percent in 2002. In 1999, it was 3.2 percent. The vacancy rate for public housing has been comparably low, as well, though it did increase to 3.4 percent in 2002 from 1.9 percent in 1999.

A decade ago, the housing authority would typically have perhaps 1,000 or so units that would stay vacant for more than a few months or even a year because of rehabilitation needs, said J. Phillip Thompson, a former acting general manager of the authority during the Dinkins administration. But in recent years, that number has climbed to 3,000 or 4,000. And according to Mr. Stringer, that means that the housing authority is losing anywhere from $10 million to $30 million each year in potential rent.

"I was really shocked by the data," said Mr. Thompson, who is now an associate professor of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Both Mr. Thompson and Mr. Stringer speculated that the increase might have to do with poor management, rather than any plan to privatize housing. And Mr. Marder, from the housing authority, was emphatic in saying that there were no such privatization plans. "Period. End of story," he said.
Still, Mr. Stringer said that the borough-by-borough breakdown of vacancies was striking in many ways. Manhattan had the greatest number of vacancies of more than a year, with 1,749. The Bronx had the highest percentage of vacancies of more than five years, with 43 percent.

The development with the greatest number of vacancies was Vladeck I, on Madison Street in Manhattan, with 456, with some apartments empty as far back as 1996. Next was Prospect Plaza, in Brooklyn, with 266, with some vacant back to 1997, according to Mr. Stringer.

In response, Mr. Marder said that the Prospect Plaza project was one that was ambitious, and complicated, in scale because it involved funding from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

And for other projects, there was another federal component: a 1996 agreement with HUD in which the housing authority agreed to make approximately 9,000 units accessible to people with physical disabilities. That conversion typically takes four or five years to complete.

It sometimes takes one or two years to find enough vacant apartments to reach a critical mass to make renovations economical, Mr. Marder said, excluding any complications due to funding or contracting.

"This isn't a TV show where you've got a problem and a solution in 30 minutes," Mr. Marder said.

[TenantNet]

NYCHA isn't the cat's meow, but realize that Scott is gearing up to run for Borough President in 2005. Besides, what is he doing supporting Bloomberg and Doctoroff's plan for all those skyscrapers on the West Side. A lot of people are disappointed in him. He's generally done good work over the years (as good as west side electeds are expected to do), but by jumping in bed with all those developers, you gotta ask what's really going on.

[jay]

Is there anything disingenuous about Stringer's comments other than he is meritoriously running for office? Are his allegiences truly compromised,because he is supporting a development plan and is his position on that even related to the argument he is making? I am all in favor of healthy cynicism,but I have viewed Stringer's office as nothing but an ally until shown differently. I wouldn't be rushing to judgement about sellout implications. When politicians have to stretch their ideology,it's called diplomacy. Please provide more details if it is anything more than that.

<small>[ December 31, 2003, 02:32 PM: Message edited by: jay ]</small>

[Cranky Tenant]

It sounds like a plan that could serve both interests. The more people Stringer gets into Public Housing, the more people he gets out of, what are probably, rent regulated apartments.

Of course this begs the question of whether it's the city's responsibility to house the working class.

<small>[ December 31, 2003, 03:03 PM: Message edited by: Cranky Tenant ]</small>

[TenantNet]

Originally posted by jay:
Are his allegiences truly compromised,because he is supporting a development plan and is his position on that even related to the argument he is making?

We weren't commenting on the NYCHA issue, only that Stringer, among others, is supporting plans that will result in many evictions. Yes, it is disingenuous to claim to support tenants on one hand and support bulldozing of major portions of neighborhoods on the other. And no, what he's doing is not diplomacy. As one observer said, it's like letting the troops inside the city gates as long as they leave the trojan horse outside.

Remember, many politicians get on their soapbox claiming to support tenants. Even Peter Vallone did that. No one took him seriously, but he did that. You have to look at what they're actually doing, not what they say. People thought Virginia Fields was pretty good until she became Borough President. Stringer isn't Peter Vallone, but he's going in the wrong direction. While his statement on NYCHA is pretty good, in judging his overall performance, what are the political risks in beating up on NYCHA?

<small>[ December 31, 2003, 08:09 PM: Message edited by: TenantNet ]</small>

[jay]

I will become more educated to the details. Even though eviction is never diplomacy,displacement can be handled socially responsibly and I do not know enough to say whether that is the case here. Suffice it to say,it doesn't look good. Raised eyebrows are healthy and necessary. This is a city that has embraced Abe Hirschfeld as nothing more than eccentric and glorifies the smugness of Trump.
I am inclined to give Stringer the benefit of the doubt but I agree the situation bears watching.However, he is no more Virginia Fields than he is Totie Fields. He is not about to morph into Peter Vallone. Insincere politics aside,this is a man(Vallone), who managed to become a Zelig type boil on Guiliani's self- engrandising ubiquitous shoulders after 9-11. If Stringer campaigns by becoming the Yankee mascot,like Guiliani,I will be really concerned (at least Mr. Met has a smaller head than Guiliani and doesn't attempt to do play by play).
More to the point,while Stringer may not risk political capital,he has consistently taken on such obvious malfunctioning areas as the Dept. of Buildings.No risk there as his complaints are met with deafening silence.I understand your point but I won't disparage him for taking on apparent political layups that no one else seems to give a damn about.
Also, of great concern is that ANY new construction takes place in this city without some adherence to noise codes and the general safety of residents and passersby so they don't have to worry about virtual javelins flying out of construction sites ala the Time Warner 59th street debacle.