MANHATTAN — The city's public and affordable housing stock is slipping deeper into disrepair, according to a report by Comptroller Scott Stringer.
The "crisis" is being felt most severely by the 400,000 residents of the New York City Housing Authority, where apartments with at least one deficiency jumped to 79 percent — a 19 percent increase from 2002 to 2011.
NYCHA residents also suffer in greater proportions from issues related to rodents, peeling paint and plaster conditions, broken windows and water leaks.
"It clearly shows NYCHA is going in the wrong direction," Stringer said in an interview.
The number of reported missing or broken windows jumped 945 percent to 6,000 windows between 2005 and 2011. The portion of NYCHA residents who reported seeing rodents jumped to 37 percent in 2011, up from 26 percent in 2005.
Heating-system breakdowns increased 72 percent between 2008 and 2011, with 43,000 reported in 2011. Reports of peeling plaster doubled from 2008 to 2011, and one-third of all NYCHA residents reported water leaks in 2011.
Stringer compared the current state of NYCHA housing to the tenement slums the buildings replaced in the early part of the 20th century.
"This great housing experiment is now as vulnerable today as the tenements were 70 years ago," said Stringer. "If we are going to preserve NYCHA housing we need bold action."
Titled "How New York Lives," the report draws data from the city's department of Housing Preservation and Development and the U.S. Census Bureau's Housing and Vacancy Survey.
NYCHA has long suffered from chronic federal underfunding. The agency expects to receive $230 million less in federal funding than it is eligible for each year through at least 2018. NYCHA also acknowledges having more than $13 billion worth of unfunded capital needs. With more than 400,000 residents, the agency reported a $191 million deficit for 2014.
Stringer acknowledged NYCHA's continual funding crisis but said it's time for "bold action" to stop the bleeding. One recommendation is to streamline the agency's repair process, said Stringer. Money also must be secured for repairs and the city also needs to enforce the housing code.
"It's all hands on deck," said Stringer who, with this report, is criticizing the de Blasio administration for the second time in two weeks.
Officials from NYCHA said the data the comptroller used for his analysis was outdated.
“By looking at a narrow, years-old sample of the city’s public housing, the comptroller’s report attempts to call attention to a situation Mayor de Blasio has been effectively addressing since day one," NYCHA spokeswoman Joan Lebow said.
The agency effusively praised the changes de Blasio has made thus far, highlighting plans by the mayor to remove miles of scaffolding from NYCHA housing developments. The city has already sent $210 million to the agency this year to help with repairs and provide services and upgrades, and it has also canceled payments the agency was making to the city for police protection.
Other changes include the creation of a new NYCHA division to assess the conditions of 178,000 units. The agency also claims to have reduced its backlog of repairs to 80,000 from 430,000 last year under a program first launched in 2012 by Mayor Bloomberg. The de Blasio administration has "provided more support for NYCHA than any other in decades," Lebow said.
Stringer said rent stabilized housing is also in trouble.
Approximately 15 percent of all the city's housing stock could be qualified as deficient, meaning three or more major maintenance conditions were in existence simultaneously, the report said.
But almost a quarter of rent regulated housing and 35 percent of NYCHA housing fell into the deficient category. When it came to market rate rentals, only 11 percent, were deficient.
Stringer called de Blasio's housing plan "exciting" but said he wants the data in the report to be used to "inform critical decisions" ahead about affordable and public housing.
