Help is on the way for long-suffering Housing Authority tenants who have been waiting years for apartment repairs.
Mayor de Blasio on Wednesday set aside $52.5 million in his preliminary budget to attack the outrageous backlog of repair orders in NYCHA buildings.
He came up with the money by ending, for now, the longstanding practice of making the Housing Authority pay for police protection.
“It’s a crucial step forward for NYCHA,” de Blasio said.
The Daily News reported that NYCHA had 420,000 outstanding repair requests by tenants. Thirteen months ago, then Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed that the backlog would be eliminated by last Dec. 31, but it never happened.
De Blasio said the new spending will “reduce the outstanding work orders by 33%,” boost “response times for basic maintenance,” and “create an independent inspection unit to make sure these repairs are done properly.”
The News has reported that NYCHA workers were closing repair requests without actually doing the work.
In the 1990s, then Mayor Rudy Giuliani merged the Housing Authority’s Police Department into NYPD, but he required that NYCHA pay for millions for “above baseline” police services.
The Housing Authority was supposed to pay $72 million for police services in the current budget year, which ends June 30. Of that expense, $52.5 million had not yet been paid. It is that amount that will be redirected toward the repair backlog.
