Beleaguered New York City Housing Authority Chairman John Rhea has just floated two plans for improving the quality of life for tenants that, well, he first promised to get done four years ago.
Rhea had this to say when he took command of the troubled agency in 2009:
“I want to see nothing short of wowing our residents. I want to move to a performance standard that is breakthrough service where people say, ‘It’s great living in NYCHA. You get served extremely well.’ “
Presumably, the service should have included expeditiously making repairs. Did not happen. The backlog of requested fixes ballooned under Rhea to 420,000 repair tickets, a number larger than NYCHA’s population of 400,000 residents.
Now, surely pressured by Mayor Bloomberg, Rhea has committed to eliminate the backlog by year’s end. Good deal if he finally gets things moving before heading out the door, which will happen with Bloomberg’s departure Dec. 31, if not sooner.
In the meantime, Rhea should post monthly backlog updates, development by development, on NYCHA’s website, starting immediately. Not that we doubt his ability to get the job done.
Rhea also says he wants to raise money for his cash-strapped operation by leasing land on the grounds of 16 NYCHA developments to builders for the construction of apartment towers. Following a standard formula, 80% of the units would be market rate and 20% would be affordable.
In concept, this makes great sense. In practice, it will be economically and politically difficult for anyone to pull off, let alone for Rhea, whose future with the agency is so short. Perhaps if he had started, oh, four years ago.
