The city Housing Authority Thursday backed away from its promise to eliminate its huge backlog of apartment repairs by year’s end.
Last January, Mayor Bloomberg stood at a public housing development in Harlem and vowed to erase NYCHA’s outrageous inventory of 420,000 repair requests by Dec. 31.
That day, the New York City Housing Authority’s press release said the agency’s stated goal was “eliminating the entire backlog of outstanding repair requests by the end of 2013.”
Chairman John Rhea declared, “It’s unacceptable to have this backlog exist for even one more year.”
On Thursday, NYCHA quietly moved the goal posts, revealing deep down in a press release that it now expects to have 24,000 outstanding requests at year’s end.
Workers and tenants doubt even that number is truthful, telling the Daily News that NYCHA closes requests without completing repairs. Tenants say that in recent weeks they’ve been given repair dates for old requests well into 2014.
The authority says as of Dec. 1 it had reduced the backlog to 138,000 open work orders. To reach the new goal of 24,000, it’ll still have to complete 3,677 work orders each day, including weekends.
NYCHA spokeswoman Sheila Stainback insisted the agency never promised to eliminate the entire backlog, stating it “set an ambitious year-end goal of 90,000 outstanding work orders, not zero.”
Factoring in the 24,000 backlogged orders, that brings the year-end total to 114,000 — still short of whatever goal NYCHA now claims it set.
Also this week, a judge put on hold a City Council lawsuit that aims to block NYCHA from leasing out public land for luxury apartments.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Cynthia Kern ruled Wednesday the lawsuit is premature, finding that NYCHA must actually choose a developer to build the housing before the lawsuit can move forward.
To date, the authority has only asked developers to submit plans to build huge towers within the grounds of eight Manhattan NYCHA developments.
Only 20% of the proposed units would be designated as “affordable,” with the others renting at market rates.
