#nycha

on.nyc.gov/section8-application

In public policy, the devil is always in the details.

So I read the same articles that you've read, which mention that NYCHA just reported that they need $78 billion to repair and renovate their buildings, and that figure is almost double the $45 billion estimate from 2017. And then I read the actual report, which explains that $78 billion is how much NYCHA will need to spend over the next twenty years.

$78 billion divided by 20 is $3.9 billion a year. Now I don't want to minimize the problem: NYCHA's operating budget, which is separate from the NYC municipal budget, is about $4 billion a year and its capital budget is about $8 billion a year, so these repairs represent a significant additional cost burden for NYCHA. However, the NYC municipal budget is $107 billion a year - financing these repairs is not beyond the fiscal capacity of the City of New York, especially if it can get some assistance from the State Budget and HUD.

Counter-intuitively, I actually think this issue is an example of the costs of not spending money when it comes to public housing. As I've said before, trying to build public housing as cheaply as possible is actually counter-productive, because cheap construction runs down faster and increases maintenance and repair costs. In part what we are seeing now is the long-term consequences of the Federal Housing Acts of 1937 and 1949 and New York's state and city level housing laws requiring public housing to be built as cheaply as possible, as well as budgeting decisions made by NYC and NYCHA since the 1970s that have downplayed building new housing to replace the older stock and sought to save money from maintenance and repair budgets.

If instead NYCHA housing had been built to and operated at the same standards as similarly sized private apartment complexes that house New York's middle class and affluent residents, the buildings would be looking much better for their age - and NYCHA's repair bill would be much, much lower.

But to answer your question: it is absolutely possible for New York to build large amounts of high quality public housing, if it's willing to spend the money to do so, and the governor doesn't massively alienate the same progressive legislators and labor groups whose support they'll need to overcome suburban resistance to affordable housing.

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