City announces plan to resolve $24B of NYCHA repairs

Nearly a month after announcing public-private partnerships to bring repairs to 62,000 NYCHA apartments, Mayor Bill de Blasio has unveiled a new plan that will preserve public housing and resolve $24 billion in repairs.

The ten-year plan, called NYCHA 2.0, will bring full renovations to apartments for 175,000 residents and will roll out new strategies to address issues like broken elevators, lead paint, mold, and heat issues. Additionally, the New York City Housing Authority will launch three new programs called Build to Preserve, Transfer to Preserve, and Fix to Preserve.

Under Build to Preserve, the city and NYCHA will transform underutilized public-owned land to construct new developments and will dedicate 100 percent of the proceeds toward repairs for surrounding public housing developments. New residential developments will be subject to Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) and will add to the mayor’s Housing New York 2.0 Plan to create and preserve 300,000 units of affordable housing by 2026.

Transfer to Preserve will generate roughly $1 billion in capital repairs through the sale of underutilized development rights, or air rights, while Fix to Preserve will improve services, infrastructure maintenance, and immediately address health and safety issues related to elevators, heating, pests, lead, and mold.

“NYCHA is facing an existential crisis and the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who live in public housing need innovative solutions to big problems,” said City Council Speaker Corey Johnson. “I am happy to see we are getting creative and exploring all possibilities to make things better for residents. They deserve better conditions and they deserve them now,”

This new plan, paired with plans to convert NYCHA apartments to the federal government’s Section 8 program, will enable the housing authority to address as much as 75 percent of its nearly $32 billion overall capital need.

• NYCHA enlists private developers to oversee repairs, daily operations [Curbed]