Gotham Gazette

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NextGeneration NYCHA

NextGeneration NYCHA

  • As New NYCHA Chair Takes Over, the Future of Public Housing Hangs in the Balance

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    Chair Gregory Russ visiting a NYCHA complex (photo: @NYCHA)


    “These first few months of our work have revealed NYCHA as an organization fraught with serious problems in structure, culture, and direction, and perhaps even worse,” wrote Bart Schwartz, the new federal monitor of the city’s public housing authority, in his first progress report, released July 22.

    Three weeks later, this past Monday, Gregory Russ arrived in Manhattan for his first day of work as NYCHA’s new Chair and CEO, with an enormous task in front of him.

    NYCHA’s short- and long-term futures

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  • What's The [Data] Point? $31.8 billion in NYCHA need, with Sean Campion

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    What's The [Data] Point? Episode 47 -- $31.8 billion, with Sean Campion [You can download What's The [Data] Point? wherever you get your podcasts, including on iTunes]

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    NYCHA needs

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  • Shola Olatoye Did a Lot of Good for NYCHA

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    Outgoing NYCHA Chair Olatoye, center (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    As faith leaders in communities with large populations of NYCHA residents, we have witnessed the results of chronic disinvestment in public housing first-hand. NYCHA’s aging buildings are crumbling and many residents are worried about the health and safety of their children, elders, and neighbors.

    Since 2001, NYCHA has been shortchanged $3 billion in federal operating and capital funding. NYCHA has been struggling to maintain and repair its aging housing stock for

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  • Max & Murphy Podcast: Suing NYCHA

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    Ben Max, left, of Gotham Gazette, and Jarrett Murphy, right, of City Limits


    April 9, 2018 - Max & Murphy Podcast: Suing NYCHA

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    Danny Barber is the Chair of the Citywide Council of Presidents of NYCHA Tenant Associations and Elie Hecht is the Director of At Risk Community Services, which runs youth programming at NYCHA complexes. Barber and Hecht are also co-plaintiffs in a lawsuit

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  • Max & Murphy Podcast: NYCHA CEO Shola Olatoye

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    Ben Max, left, of Gotham Gazette, and Jarrett Murphy, right, of City Limits


    December 7, 2017 - Max & Murphy: NYCHA CEO Shola Olatoye

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    NYCHA Chair and CEO Shola Olatoye has been at the center of a firestorm lately related to the public housing authority's lapses in lead paint inspections, violating federal and city laws, filing faulty documentation, and not telling NYCHA residents

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  • Dissecting Mayor De Blasio's Record As He Seeks Reelection

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    Mayor Bill de Blasio & First Lady Chirlane McCray (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


    As Mayor Bill de Blasio, a first-term Democrat, seeks reelection this fall, a close examination of his record is essential. De Blasio came into power promising to address inequlality in a variety of forms, including income, educational, policing, racial, and opportunity inequities he identified during his 2013 campaign. In this year's election de Blasio is running in part on his record, which is headlined by the

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  • De Blasio's Record on NYCHA

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    De Blasio, Olatoye & others in 2015 (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayor's Office)


    This article is part of a series on Mayor de Blasio's first term record as he seeks reelection this fall, in partnership with WNYC radio and City Limits. Find all pieces of the series here.

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  • Nonprofit Supporting NYCHA Adds to Early Fundraising & Programs

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    Rasmia Krimani-Frye, center, at the farm at Bayview Houses


    More than a year-and-a-half after the Fund for Public Housing officially began soliciting donors, the nonprofit has raised approximately $1.5 million, according to New York City Housing Authority Chair and CEO Shola Olatoye.

    Appearing recently on the “What’s the [Data] Point?” podcast with Gotham Gazette and Citizens Budget commission, Olatoye explained that the 501(c)3, established to support NYCHA

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  • What's The [DATA] Point? $17 Billion

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    What's The Data Point? Episode 8 -- $17 Billion, [You can download What's The [Data] Point? wherever you get your podcasts, including on iTunes]

    For this episode of the podcast, we were joined by Shola Olatoye, chair and CEO of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the country's largest public housing authority, with over 400,000 people residing in its thousands of units across the city. Olatoye took over at NYCHA in 2014, soon after Mayor de Blasio took office and appointed her to the position, facing

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  • Our Plan To Save NYCHA Is Working, But Under Attack

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    A NYCHA board meeting


    Residents understand better than anyone what it means to live in public housing. On the second anniversary of the NextGeneration NYCHA long-term strategic plan, we find our homes under attack from the federal government.

    As both residents and board members of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), we have unique insight into the challenges facing the housing authority, but also the successes of NextGen NYCHA. Two years ago, when Mayor de Blasio and NYCHA Chair Shola Olatoye stood in front of residents, they announced a bold plan to put

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  • NYCHA Shifts to Modernized Resident Funds Program

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    At a NYCHA development with CEO Olatoye (photo via NYCHA on flickr)


    In an effort to digitize its workforce and operations, the New York City Housing Authority announced a new process for allocating tenant participation funds. Beginning in January, NYCHA -- whose properties are home to about a half-million New Yorkers -- will manage funds that go to resident associations through an online system, similar to an online banking account.

    Through this new process, NYCHA will provide each resident association president with a credit card with a

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  • Nascent Fund for Public Housing Begins Building NYCHA War Chest

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    Tree-planting at NYCHA (photo via NYCHA on flickr)


    Five months after the announcement of NextGeneration NYCHA, the comprehensive overhaul plan for New York City’s troubled public housing system, the Fund for Public Housing accepted its first donation. Shola Olatoye, NYCHA Chair and CEO, and Rasmia Kirmani Frye, the founding president of the Fund, welcomed the support for the new public-private partnership that aims to “improve social service delivery and access to economic opportunity for residents.”

    In January, ...

  • Visit to Bronxchester Shows NYCHA in Transition, Section 8 Concerns

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    NYCHA Chair Olatoye at a NYCHA event (photo via NYCHA on Flickr)


    There are several pieces to the affordable housing puzzle in New York City. One is the city’s large public housing stock, home to about half a million people across the five boroughs. Another, at times overlapping piece is Section 8 vouchers, also known as Housing Choice Vouchers, which are federal subsidies that allow low-income tenants to live in a variety of locations, depending on where those vouchers are being accepted.

    The New

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  • NYCHA Chair Outlines Some Movement Up Steep Hill

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    NYCHA Chair Shola Olatoye (photo: Buck Ennis)


    The head of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), landlord to more than 400,000 New Yorkers and leader of more than 11,000 employees serving about 178,000 apartments in nearly 2,600 buildings, believes that the future of public housing in the city must be driven by the same type of innovation embodied in its early years.

    “Certainly, we must do the basics better,” said Shola Olatoye, NYCHA CEO and Chair, at a breakfast hosted by Crain’s New York Business at the New York Athletic Club on Thursday morning. “But

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  • NYCHA's 'Core Challenge'

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    Council Member Torres & "VP Nelson" at Twin Parks West (photo via NYCHA on flickr)


    In a special edition of "Max & Murphy on Housing," our weekly discussion of New York housing politics, City Council Member Ritchie Torres joined Jarrett Murphy and me to discuss the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, which Torres has oversight of as chair of the Council's public housing committee. Torres also grew up in NYCHA housing in the Bronx. The Democratic

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  • Making New York Public Housing Sustainable

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    (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayor's Office)


    The New York City Housing Authority is the nation’s largest residential landlord, providing permanently affordable housing to more than 400,000 low-income New Yorkers, many of whom would be homeless without public housing.

    Like many public housing authorities around the country, NYCHA has its critics. Stories of poor living conditions, safety concerns, and health hazards often grab headlines, and rightly so. That’s why housing authority leaders must respond with real, innovative solutions to maintain a

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  • Wary of Gentrification, East Harlem Braces for Rapid Change

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    Hank Prussing's mural, The Spirit of East Harlem (via @ManhattanCB11)


    Pearl Barkley moved to East Harlem in the 1950s, when she was six years old. Her family lived in the Jefferson Houses on 115th Street, where she lives today and works as an organizer with Community Voices Heard, an economic justice advocacy non-profit.

    “Many people remember the fires, the abandoned boarded up buildings, and the people who left,” Barkley said in an interview. Essential services began disappearing from the

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  • Get the Facts Straight on NYCHA Attacks

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    photo via NYCHA


    In a recent op-ed outlining opposition to organized labor and Project Labor Agreements, Associated Buildings & Contractors Empire State Chapter President Brian Sampson paints an outdated and inaccurate picture of NYCHA. Let’s be honest, yes—there had been a long history of mismanagement at NYCHA. But with the new administration and under new leadership, we are taking NYCHA in a different direction

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  • Another Way of Looking at Infill Housing Development

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    The Mayor's NYCHA plan (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Office)


    The mayor touted the number of affordable apartment units - 20,325 - as a one-year record, and far from anything seen in the city since Mayor Ed Koch’s ambitious housing plans of the ‘80s. The 20,000-plus, which includes both new and preserved units, is a big first step toward the de Blasio administration’s plan to build 80,000 entirely new affordable units and preserve another 120,000 over the next ten years. And, at a

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  • 18 Months of NYCHA Scrutiny, Reform and Conflict

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    Mayor de Blasio at a NYCHA announcement (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayor's Office)


    "If we were to lose public housing," warns City Council Member Ritchie Torres, "we might have a shelter system overflowing with hundreds of thousands of people."

    With more than 400,000 residents, the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, is the largest public housing system in the country. Never far from the headlines due to ongoing problems, NYCHA is under even more scrutiny courtesy of a series of audits

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  • The Week That Was in New York Politics, July 13-17

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    photo: Stanley Kubrick via Museum of the City of New York


    Gotham Gazette's Week in Review, Friday July 17

    PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Activist Russell Simmons in an electric car outside City Hall, where we was calling on Mayor de Blasio to make good on his promise to ban horse-drawn carriages ...

  • City Fights to Stem Annual Tide of Summer Family Homelessness

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    Mayor de Blasio, at podium, & DHS Commissioner Taylor, left (photo: @NYCDHS)


    New York City is home to about 10 percent of the homeless population in the United States. By the end of 2014, the number of homeless in the city's shelters reached a historic high of nearly 60,000 that included 25,849 children. But since the start of this year, there has been an 11 percent decrease in homeless children. As of July 10, the figure stood at 22,864 homeless children according to ...