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Our Plan To Save NYCHA Is Working, But Under Attack


NYCHA board meeting

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 us on stable financial footing. They set out a path to better fund, operate, rebuild and engage developments. And despite numerous obstacles, as residents, we can say firmly, we have made progress.

NYCHA has increased revenue by almost $33 million, saved millions and become more efficient by implementing new technology, protected buildings by building new roofs, built almost 1,500 new affordable apartments, started 10 youth councils and placed almost 6,000 residents in new jobs. NYCHA and the brave officers of the NYPD have worked together to come up with new ways to secure developments and keep our families safer. When you mention funding as well as advances in technology and job placements there is still the human element to be considered. The list could go on.

What’s important though, is that residents are starting to feel these changes and feel their voices are being heard. Their vision is being broadened, resulting in a greater sense of responsibility for their environment, and ultimately residents feeling empowered to bring about change. NYCHA is listening to residents and is genuine in their mission to change the way they do business. Everyday they’re becoming better landlords. That doesn’t mean there isn’t work left to be done - there is. But we know that with Chair Olatoye and the team she and the mayor have put in place, they are moving in the right direction and lives are improving as a result.

Despite this remarkable progress, our buildings are in poor condition because of years of neglect by the federal government. Our roofs sag, the facades are crumbling and the pipes leak. Now, the president has proposed cutting over two-thirds of the budget dedicated to keeping our buildings standing, the capital budget. This is not about politics or parties, it’s about dismantling the future of public housing and jeopardizing the progress we’ve made on our long-term plan NextGen NYCHA. It is a horrific message to send to those who are the backbone of our society. In its simplest terms, these proposed cuts would lead to higher numbers of homelessness.

We are calling firmly on our partners to stand proudly with NYCHA and demand the federal government fully fund public housing. Obstruction and budget cuts are not the road ahead for solving the housing crisis in the city. For many, NYCHA is what stands between them and homelessness. With over half a million residents, NYCHA housing is the size of Miami, and will always have room for improvement, but it is essential that we consider humanity first, before economics. If public housing isn't adequately funded, we will devastate working families, counter to the roots of public housing in our city and country. During this crisis, when the very existence of public housing is threatened, it’s time to come together to protect the lowest income New Yorkers and save NYCHA.

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The authors are Resident Board Members of the New York City Housing Authority.

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Making Mother’s Day Better for Every Mother


strive new york

(photo: STRIVE New York)


Every Mother’s Day, across America we celebrate the women who have raised us. Cards and flowers are a fine way to mark the day. But at a time when many women face a substantial wage gap with men, struggle economically, face increasing instances of violence and, due to new government restrictions, now face the potential loss of their health care, reproductive rights, and other protections, it’s time to look at how we can make motherhood better for all mothers.

The New York Women’s Foundation has focused on the lives of women in New York City across their lifespans for the last 30 years. From this, we know that the challenges are significant, particularly for women with children. Low-income mothers often have very limited access to the basic guidance, reassurance, and resources that all mothers need to be effective nurturers and first teachers. Low-income women of color are overwhelmingly both the primary wage-earners and the primary caregivers for their families.

But the service and retail jobs overwhelmingly held by women are typically characterized by minimal pay scales, erratic hours, and total lack of any flexibility. Childcare initiatives are few, leaving it unaffordable for many, while those who work as caregivers often earn salaries that put them barely over the poverty line and sometimes they must choose between their jobs as caregivers and caring for members of their own families.

We also know that such a lack of support is consequential for children. Our most recent report focused on the youngest of girls, age 0-8. This time of life, so highly formative, sets girls on their path to womanhood and is when adult role models can have the greatest impact. Their progress is inextricably intertwined with that of the women around them and is affected by how women are treated economically and socially.

For low-income girls, however, there is an appalling lack of consistent nurturance from well-supported and well-prepared adults. Promoting little girls’ healthy development depends absolutely upon making sure that their main caregivers can give them what they need.   Perhaps it should have been obvious, but we found that the best way to help girls is by helping their mothers.

Despite the historic lack of investment and resources, solutions do exist and are being pushed to the forefront. New York City has just introduced a new pilot program that will expand universal full-day pre-kindergarten to children who are three years old. “3K for All” is an ambitious idea from Mayor Bill de Blasio that could have major potential benefits, and not just for children. This program can reduce early education and childcare costs for the neediest and create new opportunities for caregivers to work. For the many women who work as early education providers, there is potential for better salaries and better access to training.

In the coming months, it behooves us to attend to the new challenges and demands facing communities as the federal funds supporting many social safety net programs and policies -- the very ones that poor women rely on the most -- are threatened with extinction.

Several things we must do:

--Support advocacy efforts promoting better workplace protections for working mothers and increased access to high-quality subsidized childcare.

--Seek out, convene, and generously fund organizations pioneering Head Start-caliber early education/parenting programs for all low-income families, regardless of whether mothers are in the workforce.

--Fund providers interested in launching/deepening services supporting mother-child healing and bonding for families living under acutely stressful circumstances.

--Strongly support nonprofit organizations working to build strong community-school-parent collaborations and supporting parents’ ability to be full educational partners.

--Seek out, convene, and fund nonprofits serving immigrant and other low-income communities, local schools, and childcare centers to create programs that support parents as first teachers and that train and place parents in volunteer positions within schools.

--Support youth development-school partnerships seeking to provide pre-K to second grade after-school services in low-income neighborhoods.

--Seek out and support community efforts improving basic overall neighborhood resources, including libraries, community gardens, farmers’ markets, and playgrounds.

Providing low-income mothers and all mother figures with a solid foundation is the most efficient way to make sure that their daughters will not face the same tough odds and the cycle of poverty that is devastating our communities. This critical support will ensure that there are more happy Mother’s Days for all women, for generations to come.

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Ana Oliveira is president & CEO of The New York Women’s Foundation. On Twitter @NYWomensFdn.

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Proposed East Midtown Transit Measure is ‘Zoning for Dollars’


City Planning Vision

East Midtown (image: City Planning)


As city officials contemplate new zoning regulations for East Midtown, it's important that they avoid “zoning for dollars,” whereby zoning variances are granted to build larger buildings in exchange for cash payments to the city’s coffers.

But that seems to be precisely what is happening with the transit improvements under the East Midtown proposal.

“Incentive zoning,” the term of art city planners use to describe ceding zoning variances in exchange for public amenities, was once aptly described as “sanctioned bribery, abiding a private sector that can ‘buy’ its way out of legal restrictions.”

At first impression, all incentive zoning might seem to be “sanctioned bribery.” But honest governments work to avoid even the appearance of such avarice. In New York, incentive zoning is codified in the city’s current zoning regulations so that buildings are permitted to be built larger than they would otherwise be, provided the developer creates public amenities like public plazas, atriums, or adjacent transit improvements that mollify the larger building that is imposed on the immediate vicinity. This has resulted in some remarkably inviting urban oases, like Greenacre Park in East Midtown, or the atrium at the former IBM building.

The proposed greater East Midtown rezoning, though, is considerably different.  That’s because it allows developers to make a “one-shot” payment for transit improvements that have only a tangential nexus to any specific Midtown development site.  

A history of up-zoning tied to transit public realm improvements shows that similar arrangements in the last 30 years were all directly tied to the immediate vicinity of the up-zoned property. In the past, developments could only be up-zoned with transit improvements if they were built atop or immediately adjoining a transit station, as they were for the Citicorp Building and Zeckendorf Towers.  

But in the East Midtown proposal, city planners offer a menu of transit improvements, unrelated to any particular development site, that developers can fund in order to build a larger building anywhere in the boundaries of East Midtown. There’s virtually no difference between building a transit amenity and making a cash sale of zoning rights, aside from the developer funding the MTA budget instead of the city’s. Developers could simply cut a check to the city coffers and eliminate the middleman.

Exacerbating the tenuous nexus of the up-zoned property and the transit improvement, though, is the very troubling aspect of the proposed zoning regulation that would allow developers to make a “one and done” payment for the transit improvement. Unlike developers who create above-ground amenities like public plazas and atriums, developers who build transit improvements do not have to pay any future costs to maintain, repair, or replace the improvement.

There’s a clear disconnect: on the one hand, city planners assert that transit improvements are necessary to accommodate additional hordes of transit passengers who will occupy new, larger, buildings that will last 50 years or more. But the developers, who created and who will benefit from the additional burden that the transit improvements are needed to ameliorate, pay only at the beginning. The costs to maintain, repair, and replace shorter-lived transit improvements, like escalators and elevators, that were necessitated by the developers’ bigger buildings, will fall upon New York taxpayers and straphangers.  

Payment now; corporate welfare later?

A better solution is to put the future costs of maintenance, repair, and replacement of the new transit improvements on the developers and to enforce collection of those costs for the life of the associated development. Enforcement could take the form of a lien against the up-zoned property or by linking the certificate of occupancy for the up-zoned property to the timely payment of maintenance, repair, and replacement costs of the associated transit improvement. (One official told me that developers do not pay for the maintenance, repair, or replacement of existing adjacent transit improvements because “they just don’t do it.” But in the past, the zoning regulation didn’t require them to and there was no means of enforcement even if it did.)

If transit improvements are required because East Midtown will become more densely occupied with office workers in larger developments, then all the costs of the transit improvements - including maintenance, repair, and replacement - should be coterminous with the life of the development that necessitated them, not just the first few years of the development’s existence. And those costs should be borne by the developer, not taxpayers and straphangers.

Any other arrangement is simply “zoning for dollars.”

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J.G. Collins runs The Stuyvesant Square Consultancy, a management advisory and consulting firm, and occasionally comments on national and local policy matters. He has also contributed opinion to the NY Post, Forbes, The Hill, and other publications. On Twitter @StuySquare.

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