No electricity. No heating or hot water. Mold. Asbestos. Broken piping. Holes in the walls. Plaster falling from leaky ceilings. These are just a handful of the conditions that residents in New York City’s public housing are currently facing. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) serves over 564,301 residents, and for many of these residents, public housing is their only affordable option. They are forced to live in rapidly deteriorating conditions that have been repeatedly ignored by management. NYCHA’s recent attempts to fix the situation have only worsened the crisis: privatization plans, supposedly made with good intentions, are now threatening the end of public housing in New York City.
Ramona Ferreyra, a community advocate for tenants’ rights, has spent many years living in New York Public Housing, moving in and out of her grandmother’s apartment since childhood. In the early 2000s and prior, conditions were much better, she noted. “While the Housing Authority had a lot of corruption, service was quicker, there were more staff, and the management worked directly with the tenants,” Ferreyra said.
After graduating from highschool and leaving public housing, Ferreyra earned multiple degrees and went on to work for the federal government before she eventually returned to New York City. Over those years, she witnessed a steady decline in living standards that her grandmother, who lived in a Bronx development, was facing. Ferreyra would have to do repairs on the apartment herself because no one would respond when they submitted a request.
“It breaks my heart because the tenants that are usually the most vulnerable, like seniors, those that don’t speak English, and the disabled, tend to have the worst living conditions,” Ferreyra said.
It is no secret that New York public housing has been declining in recent years. NYCHA itself reports that it has been going through its worst financial crisis in history. There is simply not enough money being pumped into its upkeep and development. In order to acquire new funds, NYCHA has begun privatizing New York City’s developments – a move that has been met by much anger by activists, who believe that privatization will only harm the tenants, and that the true answer is fixing the institutional problems causing the crisis in the first place, such as the federal divestment from public housing and NYCHA mismanagement.
Incredibly slow rental times are a product of this mismanagement. Ferreyra explained that when people leave housing or pass away, the units are emptied, “and it’s taken 260 days minimum to flip a unit – this is in a climate where you have housing insecurity and you have homelessness at an all time high in New York City.”
NYCHA began its turn towards privatization in 2012 with the implementation of two programs: the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) and New York City’s version, the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT). Previously, public housing developments were established and funded under Section 9 of the United States Housing Act, which ensured residents only had to pay 30% of their income as rent. RAD and PACT converted a portion of NYC developments to Section 8, which authorized rental housing vouchers for residents to use to pay private landlords.
The switch was designed to access private funding that Section 9 housing is barred from using, and it was supposed to resolve the desperate lack of funds. However, there has been little improvement in these converted developments; tenants are now more vulnerable than ever.
NYCHA released information documenting that nearly half of the apartments converted before February 2020 saw significant increases in evictions. They also revealed that under Section 8, families pay 40% of their income towards rent, a substantial increase from the 30% maximum under Section 9 public housing.
According to Vernell Robin, founder of the activist group Neighbors Helping Neighbors, “a lot of people are being displaced, their families are being dismantled, people are going to shelters, and families are just being destroyed. It’s not only a physical disparagement, but it’s mental and physical as well as spiritual.”
A 2022 Human Rights Watch report found that PACT has caused a decrease in government oversight, loss of tenant protection, and the removal of any resources to address issues. The report goes on to show that these issues may leave residents vulnerable to other rights violations such as increased evictions.
These violations have already started to occur in various residences. Brenda Temple, a member of activist group The Committee for Independent Action, observed that Oceanside, a residence that was converted to a Section 8 building by PACT in 2019, has not seen any improvement. In fact, things have worsened. “We see through surveys and through personal experiences that the rents are going up, that people are being evicted left and right, that the repairs are substandard, and that almost half of the residents are dissatisfied with the way management is run,” Temple said.
With RAD and PACT being unsuccessful, NYCHA proposed their latest grand solution in July of 2020: the Blueprint for Change. The Blueprint, despite being funded by a public trust – the NYC Public Housing Trust – is ultimately a very similar plan to RAD and PACT. Under the Blueprint, housing will still be converted to Section 8.
In 2016, after moving back into public housing to care for and spend time with her grandmother, Ferreyra became incensed by privatization plans that were putting residents’ safety and futures on the line. In the following years, she joined several campaigns aiming to improve conditions in public housing residences. From 2018 to 2019, she worked to improve waste management systems, supplying new garbage cans for public housing buildings. In 2019, she campaigned for old and unsafe elevators to be replaced — elevators that have been promised but still have not been implemented. Ferreyra also joined movements beyond the public housing sphere, fighting for equitable transportation and justice for incarcerated people, but still, she wanted to do more.
In April of 2021, Ferreyra founded Save Section 9, an organization devoted to fighting NYCHA’s shift away from Section 9 public housing. Ferreyra explained, “we’re not one group, we’re a coalition. We invite all groups to the table, and we develop tools and resources that all of the groups can use.” Save Section 9 focuses on lobbying and teaching tenants about what is happening with NYCHA.
When it comes to lobbying, Save Section 9 differs from other tenant focus groups because they target the federal players: Congress, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and federal politicians. They do this because privatization is not a New York City specific issue but a nationwide policy trend implemented by the federal government that has affected many communities for the last several decades.
The first major instance of privatization occurred in the 1990s, when the Cabrini-Green public housing stock in Chicago was torn down. Though tenants were promised they’d be allowed to return, Cabrini-Green was replaced with mixed income housing unaffordable to most of the original tenants. Since then, various privatization plans have gone into effect elsewhere like Cambridge, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. Now, it is New York City’s turn.
Kristen Hackett, researcher and member of Save Section 9 and the Justice for All Coalition, explained that the disrepair in New York City started getting worse in 2008. At this time, she said, “there were a slew of tenant-led lawsuits and the Feds got involved. But what started to happen in that process was that the Feds started to alleviate Congress of responsibility and started to blame NYCHA and focus on mismanagement. Mismanagement is an issue, but the root of the issue is really federal disinvestment.”
According to Human Rights Watch, between 2000 and 2021 the budget of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has decreased by 35%, adjusted for inflation. The government is turning away from public housing when they need to revitalize it.
With public housing being attacked on all sides, one of the most important efforts of organizations like Save Section 9, Neighbors Helping Neighbors, and the Justice for All Coalition is educating tenants.
According to Ferreyra, Save Section 9 focuses on telling stories – explaining the story of public housing and its legislation and policy in order to make it more accessible for tenants. This work is important because the future of New York City public housing developments is, at least in part, up to the tenants themselves.
Although initially, housing developments were converted to PACT without a vote, now residents get to vote on whether to convert their development to PACT, convert to the Blueprint for Change, or remain with Section 9. However, only 20% of the development needs to vote in order for the vote to be considered valid. With such low voter turnout required, this major change can occur even if most tenants are unaware of the implications that come with each option.
Temple described the process by which NYCHA poses the vote to residents: “What NYCHA will do is come to your development, and they will show a PowerPoint presentation about the three options. They do not elaborate on Section 9, because they don’t want to.” After 100 days, the vote commences and whichever option receives the most votes wins.
Tenants deserve the chance to fully understand what RAD and PACT, the Blueprint, and staying Section 9 might mean for them, and the work of these organizations ensures that they get this chance.
NYCHA and government officials believe that the public housing system is unsaveable – that the only way to get the necessary money is to privatize. But privatization is not the answer and protecting tenants must be prioritized. So, a major change in the system and in public housing policy is necessary.
In Hackett’s view, public housing isn’t a perfect system. However, “it’s the only form of housing that currently exists that provides stable, deeply affordable long term housing, especially for extremely low income households. Can you imagine a world without public housing? That’s a major homelessness crisis waiting to happen.”
For Ferreyra and many others, public housing policy is deeply personal. Growing up, Ferreyra did not have to worry about housing insecurity; she could go to college, and then on to grad school, with the knowledge that she had a supportive network back home to rely on. In Ferreyra’s words, “I would not be who I am – I would not have achieved the things that I’ve achieved, had it not been for public housing.”