Waiting lists for tenants interested in living in New York City Public Housing apartments, better known as NYCHA projects, are overflowing, with an estimated 250,000 families signed up, waiting for available units.
However, from December 2021 to now, NYCHA’s inventory had more than 3,000 vacant homes, when it was only 500, increasing vacant units to more than 3%, a fact that the City Council does not understand, so This Tuesday he held a public hearing to ask for explanations.
The big question that the chairwoman of NYCHA’s Public Housing Committee, Alexa Avilés, initially posed to the officials of that agency, is why, in the midst of the lack of affordable apartments that reigns in the Big Apple, if there are so many apartments vacant in projects around the five boroughs, the agency hasn’t turned them in and they’re still vacant?
“NYCHA’s vacancies have increased from less than 500 to more than 3,300 since December 2021, roughly the number of units as in the Innovation Queens project. Our city is in a housing crisis and public housing must be part of the solution”, said the political leader of the Council, asking municipal officials to account. “Unsurprisingly, there was also an uptick in how many days it takes for NYCHA to deliver an apartment or get a vacant apartment ready for a new tenant, from an average of 120 days to 260.”
The councilwoman added that an analysis by the City Council found that the increase in undelivered vacant apartments was not an isolated occurrence in some Public Housing projects, but throughout NYCHA.
“I’m interested in learning more from NYCHA about the current number of vacancies and what caused them; I want to know what they are doing to change that and to re-rent those empty units in the fastest and most efficient way possible,” Avilés stressed.
The first revelation of the hearing was to learn that the Council’s estimated data fell short, since until January 16, the number of vacant apartments in NYCHA was almost double what was presumed: 5,964, of the total of 161,585 that has the entire system in the Big Apple, including 1,000 that are considered unprofitable. NYCHA’s vacancy rate is 3.7%, lower than the citywide vacancy rate of 4.5%, and higher than 3% for rent-regulated housing.
Eva Trimble, head of Official Operations for NYCHA, explained the reasons for the non-delivery of these units, and warned that although the objective of that agency is to be able to locate New Yorkers in available housing “as quickly as possible”, when the apartments become vacant in discord, they do not have all the necessary security or quality requirements immediately.
“In keeping with this vital mission and in compliance with the 2019 HUD Agreement, we have been intensely focused on addressing the areas of greatest concern to residents, including lead-based paint, mold, heating and elevator service, pests and waste management,” said the official. “As part of this crucial work, in recent years we have been performing extensive and required environmental work on each apartment once it is vacated, considering that residents stay in their NYCHA apartments for an average of 25 years.”
The great limitations that prevent the works from proceeding more expeditiously are, according to NYCHA, the lack of personnel and financing for the dimension of the required works.
NYCHA’s Chief of Operations defended the agency’s work and reiterated that the units that remain empty present “immense repair needs”, in the order of $40 billion across the entire portfolio, a figure that grows by $1 billion each year.
Despite the financial impact of the pending work, NYCHA assures that since December 2021 they have been advancing works to guarantee that all apartments are lead-free under the new lead-based paint standard of the City of 0.5 milligrams per centimeter. square, renovating some 4,500 apartments until January 2023.
Likewise, that agency revealed in the hearing in the Municipal Council, that on average, it takes four to six months to complete the main work of the vacant apartments and then follows a review process to guarantee that the safety and quality conditions to rehabilitate it are optimal.
“Creates an order for Healthy Homes program lead testing and inspection with a vendor, conducts a quality control review of the lead inspection report, and provides primary disclosure. This process takes about four months to complete. If the apartment is negative, this is the end of the process. If the apartment tests positive, it takes an additional two and a half months on average,” Trimble said.
And faced with questions from the Committee on Public Housing about what the agency is doing to expedite processes so that vacant units can be used more quickly, NYCHA said they are “taking steps to shorten their timeline, including adding more resources to review test reports” and the addition of new reduction measures with suppliers.
The City’s Public Housing agency also explained that during the process to turn over vacant apartments, they are required to ensure that asbestos vinyl tiles are properly removed, and each week they work on an average of 30 units.
“To meet these requirements, since December 2021, we have removed asbestos tiles from more than 2,000 vacant apartments. On average, it takes 55 days to complete the asbestos investigation and an additional 29 days to complete the asbestos abatement if the apartment tests positive and costs between $28,000 and $63,000 to complete the initiative and remedial work, if necessary, in each apartment,” the NYCHA spokeswoman explained at the hearing.
NYCHA also revealed that last year, the average time to have a vacant unit ready in habitable condition was 236 days, and despite complaints from the Council and potential tenants who hope that “the miracle will work” for them to receive the long-awaited response from that one of the available units will be assigned to them soon, that agency insists that the delay ensures that anyone who moves into a NYCHA apartment will be safe from lead and asbestos.
“This extensive cleanup process, along with the general repairs being done, contributes to slower turnaround times and longer waits for many families, and we understand the implications of these delays, but the past practice was to match potential tenants with apartments as close as possible. soon as an apartment was vacated (which has changed),” Trimble responded. “That made many families wait too long, often many months, before they could move into the apartment. Therefore, last spring we instituted a policy change to not match prospective tenants to apartments until the homes are ready for turnkey use. This reduces the amount of time between when residents are assigned apartments and when they can move out.”
NYCHA also mentioned that it hopes to improve unit allocation times, and that the outlook looks better, since in the midst of the financing needs of the vacant unit preparation program, the City delivered $78 million.
“While we understand that it can be frustrating for potential tenants to wait for a new apartment, the work we are doing is essential to provide decent housing and quality of life for their families, as well as for generations to come,” concluded the Director of Operations of NYCHA.
María Martínez, mother of two children, who claims to have been waiting for an apartment in NYCHA for more than three years, called on the Municipal Administration to allocate more funds, not only to speed up the delivery of available Public Housing vacancies currently, but to use empty apartments throughout the Big Apple and provide homes to low-income families.
“Winning an apartment in NYCHA is a more difficult lottery than the Mega one, because there are so many of us who have applied, and there are not enough vacancies for even a handful of us. That’s why the Council and the Mayor should look at all those empty apartments and give us a hand so we have permanent apartments; That would be the real solution and it would be cheaper for everyone,” said the Puerto Rican.
NYCHA Apartment Vacancies by the Numbers
- 161,585 are available NYCHA housing units in the 5 boroughs
- 5,964 units are currently vacant
- 3.7% of all NYCHA apartments are empty
- 250,000 families are on waiting lists for an apartment
- 3,300 empty apartments was the data known to the Municipal Council
- 500 was the number of vacant units in December 2021
- Lead-based paint, mold, heating, elevator, pest, and waste removal work done in vacant apartments
- 25 years on average lasted former tenants in vacant apartments
- $40,000 million cost the works in the vacant apartments
- $1 billion increases every year
- 2,000 vacant apartments had asbestos tile removal works
- Asbestos investigation lasts 55 days
- 29 additional days asbestos removal lasts
- $28,000 and $63,000 are the estimated costs to fix each vacant apartment
- An additional $78 million provided by the City to NYCHA to accelerate the vacant apartment repair program