For several decades, NYCHA (New York City Public Housing Authority) apartments, where at least 360,000 authorized people live, have become the solution to homelessness for thousands of low-income families, many of them Latinos who have permanent housing.
And while the agency that manages the 335 housing complexes across the city has tried to keep the buildings running amid complaints from some residents about poor maintenance, NYCHA says it has had to juggle to meet its obligations. Not only has it seen things go horribly wrong due to the lack of federal funding, but also after the COVID-19 pandemic, the debt of thousands of delinquent tenants, estimated at $487 million that they are not receiving, is strangling them further.
NYCHA officials made the statement on Wednesday during a public hearing convened by the City Council’s Housing Committee to monitor the impact of rent arrears on the agency’s operations. It is estimated that NYCHA is currently experiencing rent arrears for at least 32% of its tenants, which has also resulted in a total of 62 households being evicted due to rent arrears in the first quarter of 2024 alone.
“Our goal is to keep residents housed, and that is why we have strongly advocated for government funding for rental assistance and implemented
“We have a number of supportive policies and programs that help residents who are struggling to pay their rent,” said Eva Trimble, NYCHA’s chief operating officer, noting that rents make up one-third of NYCHA’s operating budget, without which funding would affect repair and maintenance efforts.
“These revenues are especially critical considering that our aging buildings are suffering the consequences of decades of federal disinvestment in public housing with nearly $80 billion in significant capital needs,” added the official, who insisted that the path will only look better if tenants pay on time and the State and the federal government promote more investment measures to help delinquents, since the number of residents who fall behind has been increasing.
“Unfortunately, we are currently collecting only about 68% of the rent owed, and rent arrears now total $487 million — nearly four times what they were in 2019 and well beyond the ERAP funding we have secured for residents,” the NYCHA spokesperson said. “All households must do their share of rent payments so we can provide the quality of life residents deserve.”
According to the Mayor’s 2024 Management Report, more than 64,711 NYCHA apartments remain in arrears on their rents, making the outlook worse, and despite the criticism that NYCHA has received for promoting the evictions that have been carried out this year for non-payment of rent, they defended their actions at the hearing and stressed that they have tried to offer available resources and support.
“As such, eviction rates are very low in NYCHA, substantially lower than in other public housing and substantially lower than the citywide eviction rate. Eviction is always a measure of last resort, after all other avenues for resolving tenants’ problems have been exhausted, whether they relate to egregious instances of nonpayment of rent or major lease violations,” the official said at the hearing.
The Public Housing Authority revealed at City Council that after the nearly two-year pandemic-related eviction moratorium was lifted in January 2022, NYCHA executed just two evictions in the entire year, 58 in 2023 and 174 this year as of Sept. 1.
“In most cases of rent arrears, we are able to work collaboratively with residents to resolve the matter, and tenants pay their arrears and remain in their apartments as a result (…) but to give you an idea of how dire and widespread the arrears situation is, consider this: as of September 1, there are nearly 70,000 households in arrears — nearly half of all households — and 20,000 of them are senior-headed households. The average amount of arrears per household is $6,915, representing an average of 14 months of arrears, and 20% of households owe more than $10,000,” NYCHA’s chief operating officer said.
The official stressed, however, that there are currently several policies and programs implemented at NYCHA to help residents who are behind on their rent payments.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, we launched a NYCHA-wide campaign to inform residents about the many ways they can get help, from one-time emergency assistance available from the City’s Human Resources Administration to financial counseling opportunities from our partners,” Trimble said. “We worked with residents experiencing hardship, developing payment plans that will allow them to get caught up on rent — there are more than 1,500 payment plans currently in place, and the vast majority of them were executed this year alone.”
Councillor Chris Banks, chair of the council’s Housing Committee, said there was an urgent need to develop a plan to ameliorate the negative impact of unpaid rent while also preventing delinquent tenants from ending up on the streets.
“The COVID pandemic and the economic impact that came with it changed the city and four years after the first wave of infection, NYCHA is still dealing with the legacy left by the pandemic in the form of more than $400 million in rent arrears,” the politician said. “We are looking at the past to make a plan for the future, and we want to know what NYCHA is doing today.”
NYCHA in numbers
- 68% of NYCHA tenants are paying their rent
- 32% of residents are behind on their rent
- $487 million, almost four times more than in 2019, is the debt of delinquent tenants
- 174 families have been evicted from NYCHA this year for rent arrears
- 70,000 households are in arrears
- 20% of apartments owe more than $10,000 in rent each
- 1,500 delinquent tenants are currently on payment plans
- 360,970 residents authorized through public housing programs live in NYCHA buildings
- 177,569 apartments make up the public housing system
- 2,411 buildings are located in the five counties
- 335 is the total number of conventional and PACT public housing developments
- 6% of New Yorkers live in NYCHA apartments
- 7.1% of NYC’s total affordable housing is in NYCHA