Today, on simultaneous livestreams starting at 10 a.m., officials will count the ballots cast by Brooklyn residents of NYCHA developments Unity Towers and Coney Island Houses to determine the tenants’ choice of their buildings’ future.
There are three options: remaining in Section 9, transition to the PACT structure of private management or join the Housing Preservation Trust, which Albany created to enable NYCHA to pull from federal Section 8 dollars and be more nimble in contracting, among other things. These are the third and fourth such votes after residents of Nostrand Houses and Bronx River Addition overwhelmingly joined the Trust. We hope that this morning’s results will show the same outcome.
The votes are about the future and viability of these units that provide a basic lifeline to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. One thing most residents, advocates and political figures can agree on is that the long-standing ways of doing things are not working, and that the failure to act to secure the authority’s sustainability will have irreversible consequences.
Already, residents — including senior citizens and people with disabilities — have been forced to live without running elevators, intermittent heat, rampant vermin, health-threatening mold and lead. These factors can have indelible consequences; a child exposed to lead at a young age can expect to have lower educational attainment pretty much indefinitely. This is not just a failure but a shame for our city, which has a responsibility to these tenants. We wouldn’t accept these results from a private landlord, and we shouldn’t accept them from a government entity.
Change is always frightening, especially when it comes to something as personal as your own home. But the change the Trust brings isn’t about altering the fundamental promise of NYCHA housing, that residents will have a place to live at a price that they can afford.
NYCHA will still own the housing, and the Trust is a public corporation, similar to the MTA, with no shareholders or profit motive. The change is actually about fulfilling that promise better, giving the residents the same but with more responsive management and more funding flexibility to not only patch things up but fix things in a long-lasting way.
We know that repairs deferred only get more complicated and expensive — a big part of the reason NYCHA’s projected costs to bring all developments to full good repair has ballooned to a staggering $80 billion — so investments now will also put the authority on a path to fewer fiscal woes later.
So far, NYCHA residents have agreed, and we trust that today will notch two more victories for the Trust. Let the momentum continue through the next round of voting at the Hylan Houses and on to additional NYCHA developments. The results won’t necessarily be seen or felt immediately, but that shouldn’t discourage residents as they make their choice.