Introducing “A Blueprint for Change”
NYCHA’s strategies for investing in its properties, residents, and organization
Dear NYCHA Resident,
NYCHA’s buildings and apartments need more than $40 billion in major repairs to be brought into good condition and provide residents with the quality of life they deserve. This astonishing figure rises by about $1 billion every year, and so it is very clear that we must take action to ensure that public housing is here to support the generations of New Yorkers to come. That is why we launched A Blueprint for Change, a set of ideas for how we can invest in our properties, residents, and organization.
First, I want to assure you that our Blueprint preservation strategies will improve your home while protecting your rights as a resident. Please know that with these ideas:
- NYCHA will not be privatized – it will remain 100 percent public, and NYCHA will continue to own its land and buildings.
- No residents will be displaced. Residents will keep their full rights and protections permanently, including the right to establish resident organizations, automatic lease renewal, and succession rights. Rent will continue to be capped at 30 percent of household income.
- We will make any necessary repairs, and we will upgrade all our buildings and apartments. That means new kitchens, bathrooms, boilers, elevators, and high-security front doors and addressing mold, lead, and leaks – creating healthier homes for residents.
- NYCHA staff will continue to manage and maintain your building.
To bring these desperately needed repairs and upgrades to our buildings, we propose transferring many of our properties to a Public Housing Preservation Trust. This would enable us to bring improvements to your home more quickly. It would also allow us to access a new funding stream, Tenant Protection Vouchers, which are worth nearly twice as much as other federal funding sources. The funding for your apartment would switch from traditional public housing (known as Section 9) to the Section 8 program, which is a more reliable source of funding.
This is not privatization. The Public Trust is not a developer or a private entity, and our buildings would remain fully publicly owned and under public oversight. NYCHA would own the land and buildings permanently and would enter into a long-term lease with the Trust. The Trust enables each NYCHA apartment to earn $650 more in subsidy each month. With the extra money, we can take out NYCHA’s version of a home improvement loan to pay for the top-to-bottom renovations. The Trust would do the repair work while contracting property management back to NYCHA staff. This model is similar to the NYC School Construction Authority, which helped improve the Department of Education’s schools when they were in bad condition in the 1990s.
We believe that the Public Trust could completely renovate 110,000 NYCHA apartments. For the first time in many decades, we will have a comprehensive plan to fix every building. That’s because we are using a separate program, PACT/RAD, to rehabilitate our other 62,000 apartments.
This would be the largest investment in New York City’s public housing since the 1950s – an investment that would help the city recover economically from the COVID-19 pandemic. Every dollar put into public
housing is more than doubled in the regional economy, thanks to the jobs and tax revenues generated by the investment. Through Section 3 and M/WBE programs, residents would be prioritized for job training and the thousands of jobs associated with the renovation work. By incorporating the latest energy-efficient technologies and appliances, the renovations would also foster a greener and cleaner NYCHA.
A Blueprint for Change lays out other ways we are investing in our buildings and our organization. We have been working tirelessly to improve services to residents in critical areas such as heating, elevators, pests and waste, lead, and mold. To be more responsive and accountable to residents’ needs, we are transforming the way we work. With property-based budgeting (a budget we can share with residents) and more resources at the front line, we will empower property management staff in their work to serve residents and address building needs.
This is only the beginning of the conversation about how best to move forward. We will have many discussions with residents over the coming months about these plans. We look forward to hearing your ideas, questions, and concerns, and to working together to put the details of these commitments into writing. Preserving and improving NYCHA requires collaboration, and we want feedback from our residents (who know our buildings best) and other partners. Please click here to learn more about A Blueprint for Change and how it will improve your home while keeping NYCHA fully public. We look forward to working with you as these critical efforts progress.
Sincerely,
Greg Russ
Chair & CEO