BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE
NYCHA told to rip it up and start again
TWO WITHERING reports expose the city Housing Authority’s management as being more dysfunctional than the problemplagued housing projects — and its boss finally admits he runs a deeply troubled agency.
The scathing twin critiques — one internal, the second by an outside consultant — ripped NYCHA officials for bungling virtually every aspect of their $3-billion-a-year operation.
Beleaguered agency boss John Rhea admitted for the first time that NYCHA has a backlog of 338,000 maintenance orders. And they won’t get to some of them for two years.
“We learned at the end of the day that NYCHA needs to look at all of its operations, from top to bottom,” Rhea said Thursday. “In almost every level of the NYCHA, there’s an opportunity to increase efficiency.” Change will start at the top. In a shocking turn of events, Rhea — who initially dismissed a Daily News investigation of his agency as “a great work of fiction” — announced plans to dismantle Nycha’s-highly-paid-board.
Gone would be two mayoral appointees, Margarita Lopez and Emily Youssouf, with full-time driv-er and annual salaries of $187,147.
The city plans to sponsor legislation in Albany allowing the change in the board as part of a no-holdsbarred revamping of the agency that couldn’t shoot straight. It’s not clear how long that process would take.
The new-look board will include five members, four of them unsalaried — and two of them residents of NYCHA housing, said Rhea, who was appointed by Mayor Bloombergin 2009.
Three of the four current mem- bers, including Rhea at $197,364, are on the city payroll. Just a single NYCHA resident represents the 400,000 people living in 334 projects.
Bloomberg, when asked about the damning Boston Consulting Group report on Monday, chided reporters for displaying “morbid curiosity” in its contents. He has also called Rhea’s performance “spectacular.”
NYCHA, in its own 20-page report confess- ing its sins and declaring the end of its inefficient ways, announced no plans to improve conditions for its low-income tenants an by:
Committing all capital funds to specific projects within 18 months, and spending the money within three years — rather than sitting on the desperately-needed cash.
Reducing the staggering volume of open requests for repairs, which left tenants with festering moldand broken appliances.
Cutting the repair response time from the current average of one month — and sometimes as long as two years.
Seeking federal HUD
money to reduce energy consumption with efficient lights and retrofitted boilers.
l Upgrading security at 85 developments designated as criminal “hot spots.”
Modernizing the application process to reduce the current waiting time by 40%.
The News exposed NYCHA’S failure to spend $42 million set aside by the City Council for security cameras; its conversion of a Brooklyn project into a ghost town through bureaucratic bungling; and its decision to sit on nearly $1 billion in federal funding dating back to 2009.
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer praised the News’ probe and applauded Bloomberg for following his advice to bring in volunteers and residents to the Nycha board.
“This is an important step in changing the dysfunctional culture of the New York City public housing authority,” Stringer said.
“Ending the patronage culture at NYCHA WILL send a strong signal to the tenants that the old way of doing business is gone, is over.”
City Controller John Liu, following a City Council hearing on secu--