A single mother fears her 5-year-old son will get sick or injured because of the pipe leaks that are causing the walls and ceiling of her apartment to crack and crumble.
A 72-year-old woman can’t fill her bathtub with water to bathe unless she uses a garden hose that her son has attached to the bathroom sink.
A 76-year-old woman is forced to walk up 12 flights of stairs to her apartment because the elevator isn’t working.
“I thought I was going to die on the 10th floor,” Marina Torres, 76, said of her long upward stairwell hike. “I was short of breath. Oh God, I don’t think I’m going to make it! I got there tired and scared.”
These real-life stories, culled from local media reports, illustrate the substandard conditions that are endured by too many tenants of New York City Housing Authority, the largest housing authority in the United States.
The Trump administration’s planned cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development will have a devastating impact on working families. We implore Secretary Ben Carson to meet with the families who live in HUD financed properties and workers who count on these investments for their livelihood to hear firsthand how these cuts will affect their lives. Dr. Carson’s gifted hands should not be used to dismantle an agency that can uplift so many.
We agree that major changes are needed to sustain the public housing developments across the nation. But we will never agree with or accept President Trump’s proposal to cut HUD funding by a mindboggling $6.2 billion, or 13 percent, by 2018. That sure as hell doesn’t seem like the first step toward improving the quality, quantity or accessibility of affordable housing, whether those units are publicly or privately owned.
No, it looks more like a major retreat by the federal government from the critical task of helping millions of low-income Americans keep a roof over their heads by providing apartments in public housing developments, subsidies to help cover the cost of renting an apartment and other forms of assistance.
In New York City alone, approximately 600,000 people are living in public housing or benefiting from Section 8 rental assistance programs. That’s more people than the total populations of many large cities in the country, including Atlanta, Cleveland, Miami and Pittsburgh.
We remind President Trump and Dr. Carson that these residents aren’t just numbers. They are working families, single parents, children, veterans and people with disabilities.
Hundreds of the public housing tenants in NYC don’t just live in one of the Housing Authority’s developments. They also work there. For them, these proposed draconian cuts threaten both the affordability of their homes and the viability of the jobs that put food on the table and clothes on their children. Ironically, many of these workers were hired for construction and repair projects through an innovative program involving local businesses, union officers and tenant leaders. That’s the type of public-private partnership for which Republicans have been clamoring for years.
And there is a lot of work that needs to be done with public housing in NYC, which in many instances have old infrastructure, such as water pipes and electrical wiring. Many buildings are 70 years old. There is a systemic mold problem, for example, because of leaking pipes and roofs. The health of residents is at risk.
NYC may indeed be much safer than it used to be, but safety and security remain big concerns for public housing tenants. Hallways lack adequate lighting. The installation of security cameras has proceeded at a pace slower than crosstown traffic. Residents risk falling down elevator shafts.
HUD was created to ensure that public housing is available and is safe. It has failed to invest properly in maintenance and upgrades for many years. The impact on the agency and its tenants is going be devastating if the Trump administration is able to push this proposal through.
So what will such a massive slashing of the HUD budget mean for the Housing Authority and residents in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx? Here are some likely scenarios:
An estimated 20 percent reduction in the operating subsidies to the New York City Housing Authority.
Longer waiting times for public housing residents to get maintenance repairs, which now can take months and sometimes years.
No replacements for faulty and old boilers, meaning more breakdowns leaving residents without heat or hot water.
No elevator replacements or critical elevator repairs, leading to more service outages that are much more than an inconvenience but a threat to health and safety in apartment towers, particularly for seniors and the disabled.
Imposition of time limits, forcing out residents short on other housing options after five years.
Elimination of thousands of housing vouchers that are the lifeline that keeps many from slipping into homelessness.
If you think New York City has a homeless crisis now, it pales in comparison to what will unfold in the streets, parks and subways. It’s not as if public housing tenants and Section 8 recipients have housing options at their disposal. They don’t have second homes at the beach or in the Poconos where they can take up residence. They can’t afford market-rate rents in a city where a wave of gentrification and soaring property values continue to flow toward the far corners of the five boroughs.
Right now, these cuts are just a proposal. We urge the administration to take a second look at this issue, and we call on all New Yorkers to stand up and let it be known that these cuts must never become a reality.
