New York City’s perennially in-the-red public housing authority is set to lose millions in funding from the federal government.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is facing a $35 million funding cut, the largest in five years and the first cuts New York has received under the Trump administration. That figure breaks down to $7.7 million in housing voucher funding (Section 8) and $27.7 million in operating funds.
NYCHA units are home to more than 400,000 New Yorkers, so the funding decrease is sure to have a negative impact on some of the city’s most vulnerable residents. Even though the agency ended last year with a $21 million surplus, it now confronts a $14 million—or greater—deficit.
Despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent pledge of $1 billion to shore up faulty roofs, NYCHA faces an estimated $17.1 billion shortfall in capital repairs that consign residents to live with mold, lead paint, vermin, and, in low-lying complexes, Hurricane Sandy damage. The WSJ reported that up to $150 million in cuts to the agency are possible, and those cuts would reverse any recent improvements NYCHA has made.
“The direction we’re moving in is one where public housing is drastically different or doesn’t exist,” NYCHA chair Shola Olatoye told the WSJ. “The progress we have made over the course of the last three years—it’s not that it’s at risk. It evaporates.”
NYCHA is looking for money in all the places it can, but some fear that revenue-building initiatives like the city’s plan to build infill housing and sell housing authority property could compromise the agency’s mission.
