City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you guys

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City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you guys!’

Being NYCHA Chairman John Rhea and members Emily Youssouf and Margarita Lopez means never having to say you're sorry for strolling in late to meetings or sitting on a billion bucks and fiddling while city housing residents live with high crime and squalor

Housing Authority chief John Rhea (c.) and sidekicks Emily Youssouf (l.) and Margarita Lopez endure metting Wednesday, where good ideas from a Fulton Houses resident were met with glazed stares.


Perfect.

Three of the Gang of Four were 35 minutes late.

When New York City Housing Authority board members John Rhea, Margarita Lopez and Emily Youssouf finally strolled in for a scheduled 10 a.m. meeting at 10:35 a.m. to face their employers, the taxpayers of New York sitting in 50 chairs, they did not apologize.

Or even offer an excuse.

“Oh, well, I don’t know why it started late,” a press spokeswoman said afterward. “The rain? Traffic, maybe. We’re just, you know, late from time to time.”

Indeed.

Sometimes years late in spending $1 billion on repairs and on lifesaving security cameras for the 400,000 residents in 178,895 apartments in 2,597 buildings of the city’s 334 housing projects.

A full 5% of the city’s population, closing in on the size of Boston.

The bored board members fidgeted at a 12-foot table in the large wood-burnished room on the 12th floor of 250 Broadway and listened to speakers.

Not bad work at close to $200,000 per year each — except for Victor Gonzalez, who gets a $250 monthly stipend. But, hey, Gonzalez lives in public housing instead of the swank digs of his crew members. He wasn’t at the meeting.

Carol Demech, an eight-year veteran of the Fulton Houses in Chelsea and a former Automotive High teacher, took the mic and gave the board members a New York earache about how incompetent and indifferent they were to the people they are paid to serve.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...d-murder-guys-article-1.1127131#ixzz22PR2ba2X

Fulton Houses resident Carol Demech blasted the NYCHA for wasting money on experts and not fixing problems, saying, 'You don't need consultants. Ask the tenants!'



Demech has been complaining about the same broken side door to her building for eight years, explaining that the door was improperly installed. Instead of tearing the damned door out and properly installing a new, secure one out of that $1 billion, NYCHA just keeps repairing it. And it breaks or gets vandalized again.

“The next murder or mugging in my building is on you guys,” Demech said, jabbing a finger attached to the arm of the entire city.

Demech had a laundry list of problems and solutions.

“And that $10 million consulting fee you paid to find out what’s wrong with public housing is a joke,” she said. “You don’t need consultants. Ask the tenants!”

When Demech was finished, NYCHA Chairman Rhea — whose previous experience was as a corporate honcho at a brokerage called Lehman Brothers that fell like the House of Usher, said, “Thank you for your comments, especially the ones about public safety.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...d-murder-guys-article-1.1127131#ixzz22PQn2n2q

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Re: City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you

Picture this, NYCHA tenants - now you are getting cameras!


Chariman John Rhea flip-flops again

NYCHA honcho John Rhea can’t seem to make up mind on whether housing projects will get security cameras.




The city's public housing honcho has thrown it in reverse — again.

NYCHA Chairman John Rhea renewed a promise Friday to install cameras in 80-plus developments by the end of next year. Two days earlier, Rhea told the Daily News there would be security enhancements at the selected housing projects, not necessarily cameras.

That, of course, contradicted a statement from the housing authority two weeks ago that said “approximately 85 developments will receive security camera installations by the end of 2013.” The mayor’s office — acknowledging Rhea’s flip-flop — released the latest version of Rhea’s intentions on Friday.

“The Chairman is absolutely firm in his commitment that all 80-plus developments will receive security cameras,” the statement read. “There will be additional security enhancements at some developments.”

Rhea told the News his agency has a precise plan for cameras and upgraded door locks called “layered access” at 20 of the 80 or so developments. He promised specific plans for the other 60 by year’s end.

Mayoral spokeswoman Julie Woods promised the agency would soon release a list “showing where each development is in the (security upgrade) process.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg admitted blowing off a nonprofit agency that warned him about NYCHA’s problems last year and complained that the agency had failed to apply for $600,000 in available federal funds.

“It’s all ginned up by some group,” Bloomberg said Friday on WOR-AM radio’s John Gambling show. “They wrote us a letter. And, yes, it’s true, they did not get a written response.”

Bloomberg went on to say it’s hard to attract good people like Rhea to government “if there’s this character assassination.”

“Oh and they had a picture of him running. That’s not good either,” Bloomberg said of The News’ coverage.

He chided the charitable Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, which last year wrote to Bloomberg alleging that NYCHA was hampered by “delay, confusion and complaints.”

Bloomberg said the group had a meeting with “three of our top people in the city” and that its members “didn’t like what they heard.”

“I can just tell you the bottom line is, we are not giving up on NYCHA, and we’re not walking away from the residents. And I’m not losing faith in John Rhea and his team,” Bloomberg said.

Also on Friday, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) who is already investigating a $10 million consultant report that NYCHA won’t release to the public, demanded information on the six-figure salaries of Rhea and two NYCHA board members.

gsmith@nydailynews.com

Approximately 85 developments will receive security camera installations by the end of 2013.

The Chairman is absolutely firm in his commitment that all 80-plus developments will receive security cameras. There will be additional security enhancements at some developments.

No. That’s not how we phrased it...We said security enhancements.

New York City Housing Authority Chairman John Rhea

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/picture-nycha-tenants-cameras-article-1.1128800#ixzz22aC085Z0



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/picture-nycha-tenants-cameras-article-1.1128800#ixzz22aBMDyMi

 

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Re: City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you

One month later, NYCHA tenant sweats out a new fridge


Catalina Martinez was told, 'housing doesn't have any new refrigerators'

Catalina Martinez, 68, retired home health aide, lived in the Gun Hill Houses without a working refrigerator for the month of July because NYCHA couldn't find a replacement - until The News got action!



For the entire sultry month of July, Bronx retired home health aide Catalina Martinez lived without a working refrigerator because the city Housing Authority couldn’t find a replacement.

On Thursday night — 30 days after her the appliance died and after the Daily News called NYCHA — she finally got what most renters reasonably expect from their landlord: a working fridge.

“You guys did a phenomenal job,” declared Martinez’s son-in-law, Steve Wiggins, expressing gratitude to New York’s Hometown Paper.

Martinez, 68, first noticed the fridge’s temperature was climbing on July 2. She called NYCHA and a maintenance worker came to her apartment in the Gun Hill Houses and checked the appliance.

“He said, ‘It’s messed up. You need a new refrigerator.’ And I said, ‘When?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, housing doesn’t have any new refrigerators.’ ”

As the days turned into weeks, she was forced to get takeout Chinese food in her Bronx neighborhood and buy food to cook right away.

While the USDA says refrigerator temperature should be 40 degrees or below, a thermometer placed inside Martinez’s fridge Thursday afternoon read an unsafe 60 degrees.

A News investigation recently exposed the agency is sitting on nearly $1 billion in federal funds intended for repairs, half of which dates back two years. Some goes back to 2009.

Nine workers showed up late Thursday and installed a new fridge for Martinez. She was happy with the replacement, but frustrated by the delay.

“All I’m saying is treat people fair,” her son-in-law said.

epearson@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...-a-new-fridge-article-1.1128805#ixzz22aKOf51X

 

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Re: City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you

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Re: City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you

NYCHA’S GRAY MONSTER: Residents live with mold that won’t die


A tale of rot and ruined health is all too familiar among residents of New York City Housing Authority buildings, where mold often grows unchecked and impatient renters grow irate.

At the Andrew Jackson Houses, there are large cases where apartments have black mold growing on ceilings which is making residents sick from asthma. Here Daniel Ramirez, 8, takes a look at the black mold with his mom, Jamaira Paramo, 27, in the bathroom. Daniel has asthma


The bathroom ceiling in apartment 4B was alive — and Jamaira Paramo feared it would become the death of her kids.

Dark gray mold, with ominous black flecks, spread like festering storm clouds above the shower. The vile fungus slithered down the wall, coating the lid of a TRESemme shampoo bottle.

“I had to get out of here,” said Paramo, 27, who abandoned the Jackson Houses last year after her 8-year-old boy came down with severe asthma. “My son was getting a lot of attacks.

“He was being contaminated.”

Her tale of rot and ruined health is all too familiar among residents of New York City Housing Authority buildings, where mold often grows unchecked and impatient renters grow irate.

“Not since 1998 have they ever come to fix the mold,” said Paramo, the mother of three. “We gave up.”

Paramo shared the four-bedroom Bronx apartment with her parents, her brother and her three kids: Adriana, 10, Daniel, 8, and Ismael, 5.

She noticed Daniel began suffering asthma attacks after taking a bath.

“He wants to sit in the bathtub,” she said. “He wants to play. But the minute he came out, he’d be coughing.”

The child is now on a daily regime of medication, and can’t play any sports.

“It’s something that’s going to affect him for the rest of his life,” said Paramo.

Amayra Ortiz holding her kid's toys full of mold.



The asthma diagnosis is hardly surprising. Kids living in New York public housing are nearly three times as likely to suffer asthma as those in private family houses, a 2010 study indicated.

The figures were 21.8% of children in the projects compared to 7.4% in private homes, according to the Journal of Urban Health.

An earlier study by a different group showed asthma was the leading cause of emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and missed school days in the city’s worst neighborhoods.

NYCHA officials couldn’t immediately provide the number of mold complaints from its 334 housing projects.

Mayor Bloomberg, on his weekly radio show, defended the beleaguered public housing agency.

“Nobody likes landlords,” the mayor said. “I can just tell you the bottom line is we are not giving up on NYCHA, and we’re not walking away from the residents.”

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio receives hundreds of “quality of housing” complaints each year — making it the No. 1 gripe in his office.

He’s stunned by NYCHA’s inability to handle routine repair complaints without waits of more than a year.

“If toxic mold were growing unchecked in a private building, the city would throw the book at the landlord,” said de Blasio, the former head of New York’s Housing and Urban Development office.

“Why should tenants in public housing be treated any differently? We owe our tenants apartments that are safe, not a slip of paper telling them it will take 18 months to make a repair."

At the Jefferson Houses, Amayra Ortiz says her wait for help with a mold problem is more like 15 years.

Her 14th-floor Manhattan apartment features two bedrooms — both plagued by foul-smelling mold on the walls, closets and ceiling.

Mold in the wall inside the girl's room at Amayra Ortiz's apartment.


Daughters Marielys, 16, and Yakaris, 11, both struggle with asthma, Ortiz said. Boxes of toys and clothes sit in the middle of the bedroom floors to stay clear of the mold.

Large plastic tarps cover the closet doors in an effort to keep the sleeping quarters free of the stench. Mold sprouts on the walls alongside their beds.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Ortiz, who first asked the NYCHA for a new apartment 10 years ago. “You see the way we have to live. . . The management is just playing games while my children suffer.”

Ortiz’s husband, 63-year-old Gregorio, paints the apartment walls every year before Christmas. But just like Santa Claus, the mold inevitably returns.

“He tries so hard to make it right,” said Amayra Ortiz, 41. “We just want to live like normal people.”

Bronx Community activist the Rev. Frank Skelly said the biggest complaints among his parishioners in public housing are inevitably the same: leaks and mold.

“The NYCHA solution is if you have mold, they paint over it,” said Kelly. “And in three months, you’re back to where you were. The solutions are not solving the problems.”

That’s the case in the Paramo apartment, where 58-year-old Camerino and wife, Elvia, 59, still live with their son Hector.

Camerino, a cook at Metropolitan Hospital, was recently diagnosed with asthma, too. He’s repainted and replastered the bathroom, only to watch the indomitable mold return . . . and return . . . and return.

Eight separate complaints about the mold were ignored in the last two years, the family says. A NYCHA staffer has stopped by on several occasions, raising hopes that were eventually dashed when no repair work followed.

Mold in the wardrobe inside the girl's room at Amayra Ortiz's apartment.

Camerino, who has no health insurance, now shares his grandson Daniel’s asthma medication.

Inside Apartment 4B, the wall behind the toilet is still crumbling. The lime green wall in the hallway is still peeling. The electrical box leaks water near the kitchen.

But unlike his daughter and her kids, Camerino Parama has no place to go.

“We feel we’re not worth anything,” he said. “I don’t like to live like that. I have a family, grandkids. But housing isn’t doing anything.”

lmcshane@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...ld-die-article-1.1129343?pgno=1#ixzz22gWgEaxH

 

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Re: City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you

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Re: City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you

NYCHA spends $325G on a pep talk and $100G to jazz up its website, but major apt. fixes can wait until 2014!



Mandatory cheerleading session led by Chairman John Rhea at Javits Center cost $200G in rent and polishing Housing Authority's 'brand' was also at top of to-do list

THE TROUBLED city Housing Authority may be drowning in debt and unable to repair crumbling apartments, but it spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on a two-day staff rally and a Web image consultant, the Daily News has learned.

NYCHA’s four board members — who receive salaries topping $187,000 and have city-provided cars and drivers — spent $325,000 on the rally for employees at Javits Center in March, the agency confirmed.

And the agency last year spent $100,000 on a consultant to upgrade its image on the Web. Last month, it solicited bids for another firm to continue that task.

The rally took place March 13-14, and all of NYCHA’s 12,000 workers were required to attend, gathering on the far West Side from their offices citywide.

Employees attended in three shifts, where they heard speeches by NYCHA Chairman John Rhea and his fellow board members, Margarita Lopez, Emily Youssouf and Victor Gonzalez.

Rhea told the crowd they were all brought there “to feel our collective power,” employees who attended told The News.

Rental of the hall for two days cost $200,000.

Inside the hall, the authority set up an elaborate interactive multimedia presentation in which each employee was handed a clicker device that would register responses to questions presented on Jumbo-trons hung from the ceiling.

When employees were asked if they were “concerned about NYCHA’s future,” 69% clicked yes, while 44% clicked that NYCHA was worse off than it was a year ago, according an account in the agency’s monthly bulletin.

The clicker-enhanced “audio/visual presentation” cost $100,000.

On top of that, NYCHA spent another $25,000 on MetroCards so employees could make the trip to and from Javits. No food was served.

The total Javits bill came to $325,000, and all of this took place on the clock. As a result, employees told The News that during the rally, NYCHA offices across the five boroughs operated on skeletal staffs for most of the day.

Residents with complaints or inquiries were told to come back when everyone had returned from the rally, the employees said.

“They were trying to sell this new plan,” one NYCHA worker told The News, referring to Rhea’s vision for reforming NYCHA.

“They gave us clickers and asked how do you feel about certain things,” he added. “ ‘How do you feel about NYCHA? Do you trust NYCHA? And everything came up horrendous.’ From the employees’ perception, there’s no trust.”

It’s not clear how or if NYCHA responded to its workers’ concerns.

But late Friday, Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bloomberg, defended the spending as necessary.

“NYCHA did exactly what it is supposed to do: convened meetings to communicate with its 12,000 employees about its new plan to use smart innovations to recover from the challenges presented by devastating budget cuts and aging infrastructure.”

But critics questioned the need for spending on the rally, and blasted another $100,000 spent on a firm called Search Impact Consulting that specializes in improving corporations’ image on the Web.

Rebecca Bilbao, a company official, referred questions to NYCHA.

But a recent request for proposals by NYCHA seeking to continue Search Impact’s work makes clear the mission is to manipulate Web searches to improve NYCHA’s image.

The request speaks of the agency’s effort to “evolve NYCHA online brand presence in response to search queries to one where the best qualities of the brand are prominently displayed in terms of customer service, community achievement and overall brand image.”

NYCHA wants to “enhance the image of NYCHA in the minds of various stakeholders (residents, the local population, the media, government funders).”

Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) wrote to Rhea in June, questioning why NYCHA would spend that much money on feel-good sessions and “online brand” improvement when it’s confronting so many problems.

NYCHA faces a backlog of 10,000 apartments with serious problems that aren’t scheduled for repairs unti 2014 and a budget gap each year averaging $50 million.

Its 400,000 residents suffer daily with busted appliances, leaky roofs, dark and dangerous stairwells, broken elevators and moldy walls.

“Instead of making a dent in its more than three-year repair backlog, the Authority has already spent $100,000 on a previous image management consultant.”

“NYCHA has gone to especially great lengths this year to emphasize its financial difficulties, and so it is ironic and extremely concerning that NYCHA would spend its scarce resources on a public relations consultant to advance a reform package designed to balance its budget,” she added.

Rosenthal noted that the agency already employs full-time public relations staff, as well as lobbyists in Albany and Washington to press its agenda.

Rhea has yet to respond to her June 26 letter.

Wood of the mayor’s office defended the Web image consultant, stating, “It’s 2012 and NYCHA serves a population as big as the city of Boston — of course they need to have a good website.”

gsmith@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...t-2014-article-1.1129678?pgno=1#ixzz22lpreL1f

 

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Re: City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you

Invasion of rats for residents at NYCHA apartments and now tenants suing the beleaguered housing agency


Tenants at Claremont Apartments in the Bronx say vermin are crawling through their walls and venturing into living rooms and kitchens in broad daylight

Oh, rats! An infestation of vermin at Claremont Houses in the Bronx is giving tenants the creeps.



For hundreds of residents of the city Housing Authority’s Claremont apartments in the Bronx, life has become exile on rat street.

In the last few months, they say rats have been invading their NYCHA apartments, crawling inside the walls and even venturing out into living rooms and kitchens in broad daylight.

“They’re going up into people’s apartments,” said Audrey Henry, the tenant association president at Claremont, one of 19 residents who are suing Thursday on behalf of the 659 tenants enduring this most unwanted rodent influx.

Residents interviewed Wednesday by the Daily News described rats everywhere. One resident, Alvin Wilmore, produced a video of a dead rat he said fell or was tossed out of window Monday onto closed-off Findlay Ave. where kids were playing hopscotch and skateboarding.

“I hear the kids screaming and I bring over my phone,” he said, displaying a video showing a NYCHA worker scooping up the dead pest as kids back quickly away.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...ousing-agency-article-1.1137296#ixzz23ies1S5c

Residents at the Claremont Houses in the Bronx are suing NYCHA over infestation of rats.



Minutes later, Wilmore said, “I hear one of the kids say, ‘There’s another one over here.’” The video shows another rat - this one quite alive and obese - squirming to escape a metal gate next to a basement staircase.

In the video, the rat eventually breaks free and sits in the middle of the stairs. Wilmore says he then stomped on it to kill it.

“I hate rats,” he said. “You see them all over the place, especially in the wee hours of the morning.”

Another tenant, who didn’t want her name published for fear of retribution by NYCHA, says she found two dead rats under her bed about a year ago. That was her first encounter.

Around December she found another dead one - a big gray rat with white underbelly and pink tail - under a radiator in her living room. Her friend held it by its tail while she took a photograph.

“The rat problem started maybe last year,” the resident said. “Housing began treating the basement (with poison), so the (rats) were coming up looking for water through holes in the wall."

The tenant says after NYCHA stopped treating the problem over the winter, live rats started popping up in apartments.

“Now they are coming in alive now. They're running around my apartment," she said. At her request, NYCHA gave her a rat trap for her living room.

On Monday she noticed what she thought was a string. When she moved closer, the string moved - it was a rat’s tail.

“It disappeared under my couch,” she said. “It's disturbing. You can hear them in the ceiling. It’s like they're running a race. I’d be in my kitchen and I'd hear a noise and I'd be scared and I'd think somebody's coming into my house. But it's just the rat.”

For Shamecca Jackson, the solution to her rat problem was Betty, a somewhat overweight 6-year-old feline she relies on to do what cat’s do best.

In June after a rat ran past her feet while she was cooking in the kitchen, she got a little freaked out.

“The rats are not even scared. These things are huge,” she said.

But Betty came through, and - with a mixture of horror and relief - Shamecca discovered a dead rat in her new sneakers. She asked a maintenance person to get rid of the beast.

“And these were my new sneakers,” she said.

Tenants say they complain repeatedly to NYCHA, whose workers lay down poison and traps, but the problem only seems to get worse, or move from building to building.

The tenant suit, being handled by the Urban Justice Center, demands that the city complete a top-to-bottom inspection of all the buildings in Claremont, get NYCHA to eliminate the rat population, then fine NYCHA for failing in its duties.

gsmith@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...ousing-agency-article-1.1137296#ixzz23iebHAr8

 

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Re: City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you

Two reports expose city Housing Authority’s management as being more dysfunctional than problem-plagued housing projects
Beleaguered NYCHA 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.

Julia Xanthos/New York Daily News
NYCHA board chairman John B. Rhea speaking with the Daily News Editorial Board on Thursday.



Two withering reports expose the city Housing Authority’s management as being more dysfunctional than the problem-plagued 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.

RELATED: UNBELIEVABLE BACKLOG OF REPAIR ORDERS

RELATED: NYCHA SPENDS UP TO $28 FOR A CAN OF PAINT

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.

EARLIER: NYCHA BOARD SITTING ON NEARLY $1B IN FEDERAL CASH

“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.”

390_nycha1

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.

EDITORIAL: THE MESS AT THE HOUSING AUTHORITY IS WORSE THAN EVER

READ MORE: NYCHA TENANT COULDN'T GET WORKING FRIDGE FOR A MONTH

Gone would be two mayoral appointees, Margarita Lopez and Emily Youssouf, with full-time drivers 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-holds-barred revamping of the agency that couldn’t shoot straight. It’s not clear how long that process would take.

READ MORE: NYCHA TENANTS LIVE WITH MOLD THAT WON'T DIE

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 Bloomberg in 2009.

Three of the four current members, including Rhea at $197,364, are on the city payroll. Just a single NYCHA resident represents the 400,000 people living in 334 projects.
NYCHA17N_2_WEB
Julia Xanthos/New York Daily News
The Daily News Editorial Board, left, listens the NYCHA’s John B. Rhea, who outlines planned reforms that will be presented in Albany, including a new board structure and plans to better use federal funds.

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 confessing its sins and declaring the end of its inefficient ways, announced plans to improve conditions for its low-income tenants 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 mold and 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.

-- Upgrading security at 85 developments designated as criminal “hot spots.”

-- Modernizing the application process to reduce the current waiting time by 40%.

HAMILL: CITY HOUSING WAS MY HOME, AND WE OWE IT TO RESIDENTS TO KEEP IT SAFE

READ MORE: HOUSING AGENCY SUED OVER RAT INVASION

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.

390_nycha3

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 security cameras, called that issue “only the tip of the iceberg.”

The Thursday hearing “should be the first of many to get an understanding of why NYCHA’s buildings are deteriorating and its housing developments are overrun by rodents, all while NYCHA sits on a pile of unspent money,” he said.

During the hearing, Speaker Christine Quinn received an unprecedented commitment from Rhea to provide the Council with quarterly reports detailing how NYCHA is spending city money.

390_nycha2

The reports will include money allotted going back to 2005 — and including the security camera funds. The nation’s largest public housing agency announced its sweeping changes after the Boston Consulting Group released its pointed assessment of the troubled agency. The report, completed in April at the cost of $10 million in taxpayer funds, was released four months later as Rhea began repositioning the agency.

Among the disturbing findings spread across the 112-page report:

-- NYCHA randomly pays anywhere from $8 to $28 per gallon for white paint, rather than finding the best deal.

-- The agency spent $5 million on a storage facility that held just $10 million of inventory.

-- NYCHA installed “a powerful software package” for its computer system — but failed to use it properly in tracking repair requests, use of agency materials or workers’ hours.

-- The agency could easily eliminate two levels of management bureaucracy.

BGC also offered a series of proposals to fill NYCHA coffers with an extra $125 million a year — $70 million in cost trimming, and another $55 million in increased revenues.

An immediate $20 million in savings could come from NYCHA’s vast and vastly mismanaged network of warehouses and storerooms, the report said.

The News reported that NYCHA has millions of dollars worth of spare parts and supplies stashed in its more than 5,000 storage areas — but has no clear of idea of what’s in there or what it’s worth.

The report was particularly critical of NYCHA’s handling of bidders for agency business, noting the process — which should last about six months — often stretches to 20 months.

It also recommended leasing the agency’s unused office space — noting that up to half of the current property is unused.

And it called on NYCHA to hire new skilled workers to handle painting and plaster repairs — a major problem in its many mold-riddled apartments.

A 2010 study indicated kids living in New York public housing are nearly three times as likely to suffer asthma as those in private family houses.

“The report does point out a number of things where we can do better,” the mayor acknowledged Thursday. “I think that’s true of probably everything.

“But just remember, unlike virtually every other city, we are not walking away from public housing .. . . We have increased dramatically the support for public housing in the city.”

Despite its severely critical tone, the consultant’s report wasn’t as harsh as expected.

Rhea released a somewhat sanitized version of the BCG findings, omitting specific details on how NYCHA spends its federal funds.

In the draft version obtained by The News, BCG unloaded on the agency for its “limited capacity to efficiently or effectively spend” the money.

There was no reference to the agency’s mismanaged system of ordering and storing supplies. The News reported NYCHA tradesmen couldn’t find the right repair part on three out of four calls.

The agency plans to appoint a general manager, a chief financial officer and a chief procurement officer to help solve that and other woes. Skeptical NYCHA residents were pleased by the potential ouster of the big bucks board members — but unconvinced things would improve.

“The mold is horrible,” said Ebony Noel, 29, a stay-at-home mom in the General Grant Houses. “The plumbing is no good. Every other day the elevator is out. We pay rent.”

The 11-year resident hailed the decision to revamp the board’s leadership: “Somebody had to be held accountable. They had all that money that was supposed to be used to repair the buildings, and they did nothing.”

New York City has the state’s only full-time, paid board members of any housing authority in the state. The paid positions have been in place since 1958.

John Johnson, 50, moved into the Harlem projects 30 years ago — and he’s watched sadly as his home fell apart year after year.

“You used to go over to the office and they’d fix the problem,” he said. “Now you call a citywide number, they give you a date for who knows when, and they never fix anything.”

With Tina Moore

gsmith@nydailynews.com

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[MASTERBAKER]

Re: City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you

NYCHA sees the light, makes long-awaited fix for Red Hook Houses robbery victim


Bus matron Wilma Matthews asked agency to repair a hallway light in August 2011. Then she was brutally mugged this August after getting a judge to order NYCHA to do the delayed work. Repair is finally made after Daily News ran story on attack

LET THERE be light!

A year after tenant Wilma Matthews was mugged, the New York City Housing Authority has finally fixed busted lights in the Brooklyn hallway where the attack took place.

In August 2011, the 59-year-old bus matron first asked NYCHA to fix lights in the hall outside her apartment in the Red Hook Houses.

Frustrated by NYCHA’s inaction, she went to Housing Court Aug. 29 and got a judge to order the authority to comply. That night she was brutally attacked in the darkened hallway outside her door.

After The News reported on the attack Saturday, NYCHA workers showed up within hours and repaired the electrical problem.

“I got so much light I don’t know what to do with myself,” said a joyful Matthews on Monday. “If you hadn’t put that in the newspaper, believe me they wouldn’t have fixed it. Thank you so much.”

Her attacker hid in the pitch-black stairway to the roof next to her door. Though the court had given NYCHA until Monday to make sure the roof door locked from the inside, that fix hadn’t happened as of late Monday.

gsmith@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...obbery-victim-article-1.1161826#ixzz26pgZDdz6

 

[MASTERBAKER]

Re: City housing resident Carol Demech tells NYCHA board: ‘The next murder is on you

NYCHA's slow response forces some evicted families into shelters, lawsuit claims



Report finds agency computer system for processing Section 8 payments causing 'major backlogs and slow turnaround times' processing landlord and tenant paperwork

Lawsuit claims NYCHA takes too long finding evicted residents new housing causing them to wind up homeless. Above, NYCHA chief John Rhea.



Low-income tenants evicted through no fault of their own wind up homeless because the city Housing Authority is so slow finding them new places to live, a class-action lawsuit charges.

The suit, filed Monday by the Legal Aid Society, says NYCHA takes months to respond when families are evicted, forcing some families into shelters — even though the agency is required to “promptly” relocate tenants under the federal housing subsidy program known as Section 8.

“NYCHA routinely delays processing participants’ emergency requests for transfer vouchers for months at a time,” the suit, filed in Manhattan Federal Court, alleges.

About 30,000 NYCHA residents who get the subsidy live in unregulated apartments where landlords can evict them without cause.

Legal Aid says this often occurs when NYCHA cuts off funding after finding apartment conditions are unsafe, prompting landlords to seek eviction.

About 3,000 of these households requested emergency transfers to safe housing in 2008.

Tenants say NYCHA routinely loses their paperwork, demands unnecessary documentation that they’re not in arrears in rent, and delays help.

An internal consultant’s report released last month confirmed NYCHA’s troubles, finding that the agency’s new computerized system for processing Section 8 payments was causing “major backlogs and slow turnaround times” processing paperwork for both landlords and tenants.

A NYCHA spokeswoman said she could not comment on the suit.

Plaintiff Jonelle Shepherd said she and her two kids waited more than a year after she requested a transfer. During that time, the family was evicted and is now doubling up with Shepherd’s mother in a two-bedroom Flatbush apartment.

Shepherd, 31, says her troubles began in 2011 after NYCHA deemed her Chelsea apartment unsafe due to dangerous conditions, including a window that would suddenly slam shut. She says her landlord evicted her when she refused to say everything was fixed when it wasn’t.

Shepherd asked for an emergency transfer in July 2011, but was told soon after that NYCHA lost her paperwork. She filed a new request.

Months later, NYCHA demanded a sworn affidavit from her landlord saying she didn’t owe back rent. They requested this even though the court had already determined she didn’t.

Last month NYCHA told her that it had stopped processing that request, so she filed again.

“I did everything NYCHA asked me to do,” she said. “My kids, they depend on me. They’re looking at me, why did you let them kick us out? I have nothing to tell them.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...awsuit-claims-article-1.1168243#ixzz27avUtRFd