New York, NY – After securing data on the repair backlog for New York City’s public housing, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio today launched NYCHAWatchList.com, an online tool tracking repair requests at each of the 334 public housing developments in the city. Topping the list was Harlem’s Grant Houses, with 6,203 repairs that have waited on average for 344 days.
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For the New York City Housing Authority’s 400,000 tenants, the new watch list spotlights thousands of repair requests that have gone unanswered and unfixed for years. The website displays every individual NYCHA repair order by ticket number, ranks each of the city’s developments and features an analysis of unresolved repairs by type and the length of time they have gone uncorrected.
Earlier this year, NYCHA’s commissioner announced his intention to eliminate the entire backlog of more than 400,000 repairs by the end of 2013—but the agency has released only limited information to the public on its progress toward that goal. By tracking public housing repairs online, the new watch list allows tenants and housing activists to hold NYCHA more accountable on fulfilling its promises. In an additional Freedom of Information Request made last month, de Blasio demanded NYCHA provide a further update on its repair backlog, which will be added to the watch list. The current watch list reflects conditions as of February 2013.
“Our public housing got this bad, in part, because there is zero accountability. NYCHA is a black box. Tenants deserve to know that their ceilings will actually get patched or that mold will actually be removed,” said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. “We’re going to use the watch list to hold NYCHA’s feet to the fire.”
The NYCHA Watch List mirrors de Blasio’s NYC’s Worst Landlords Watch List (LandlordWatchList.com), which has become one of the most heavily used online resources in city government, with more than 620,000 unique page views over the past three years.
The top five of the city’s most neglected developments are:
Grant Houses in Harlem: 6,203 repairs, on hold an average of 344 days
Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side: 5,743 repairs on hold an average of 328 days
Van Dyke I Houses in Brownsville: 5,723 repairs on hold an average of 325 days
Smith Houses on the Lower East Side: 5,438 repairs on hold an average of 284 days
Pink Houses in East New York: 4,869 repairs on hold an average of 328 days
Some of the most time-sensitive repair requests still pending are found in Brooklyn, including:
The Sumner Houses in Williamsburg have two dozen outstanding requests for extermination, with an average wait time of 524 days. If NYCHA were subject to the same penalties as private landlords, the extermination violations would cost the agency more than $4.1 million in penalties.
The Nostrand Houses in Sheepshead Bay are located on a flood plain just blocks away from the coast. There are more than 20 outstanding work order requests for fire extinguishers and sprinkler repairs since Hurricane Sandy, with an average wait time of 212 days.
Visit the NYCHA Watchlist at http://nychawatchlist.com/