THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

WAKE UP OR PACK UP

Public Housing Residents better wake up, stand up and demand a seat at the table, Public Housing is disappearing and being deconstructed right from under our sleeping families! Two recent articles are very concerning and only the tip of the iceberg!

New York City Housing Authority Chairman John Rhea announced a plan Monday to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars by leasing out unused space owned by NYCHA to private developers, says the New York Times.

The plan, which would take several years, would begin with the leasing of two dozen sites in Manhattan to developers for commercial, residential and retail space. At least 1,000 of the apartments – or 20 percent of all the units, according to housing advocates – would be set aside for low- and moderate-income families, says the paper.

Rhea said “this is not a plan to privatize Nycha,” and added that no buildings would be demolished, nor residents displaced.

“It wouldn’t require a single penny of housing subsidies,” Rhea said during a breakfast speech to the Association for a Better New York, a civic group.

Judith Goldiner, an attorney in charge of civil law reform at the Legal Aid Society, voiced critisim of the plan to the Times.

“We are concerned that the development proposed will not be affordable to Nycha residents, that Nycha is not consulting with the community as a whole and that losing open space in dense high-rise communities will have a negative impact on the public-housing community,” she told the paper.

Since a series of scathing reports about the NYCHA have surfaced, Rhea has admitted that the agency is mired with problems, and planned to overhaul its executive board. In August, Rhea appointed Cecil House, a former utilities corporate executive, to the position of general manager, in an effort to speed up repairs at hundreds of NYCHA buildings.

and in a second article:

For residents of Whitman, Ingersoll and Farragut Houses, news last week of New York City Housing Authority's plan to lease some of its real estate holdings to private developers brought back old anxieties over the future of the nation's largest public housing system.

"Everything around us is falling apart," said Jose Rivas, a resident of Farragut Houses, who said he's still waiting for repairs to his leaky kitchen ceiling. "It feels like nobody really knows or cares what's going on."

Representatives of Nycha, as the landlord for an estimated 400,000 public housing residents across the city is known, said the plan to bring in private investment would be first unrolled in Manhattan.

"This is not a plan to privatize Nycha," chairman John Rhea told the New York Times last week.

But those assurances did little to assuage the fears of residents and public housing advocates over what they termed the lack of investment in public housing—especially in rapidly gentrifying areas in Brooklyn.

"We're worried Nycha is trying to pull another fast one. It's hard to trust them when they sat on $1 billion while my neighbors wait years for needed repairs," said Beverly Corbin, a resident of Wykoff Gardens and a board member for Families United For Racial and Economic Equality. "Without more tenant control and oversight, mismanagement issues will continue, and no long term preservation plan will be found."

For many, concerns about the future of public housing have been compounded by a huge backlog of unfinished repairs and fears that developers are eying places like Whitman and Ingersoll as the site of the city's newest big-time condo project.

On Myrtle Avenue, Rivas pointed to a large sign announcing the impending arrival of Red Apple Group's newest luxury residential development across the street from Ingersoll Houses.

"That's the future," he said