Residents of the Smith Houses on the lower East Side have filed suit against the city Housing Authority, arguing the agency refuses to make repairs, forcing them to endure dangerous conditions like crumbling ceilings and toxic mold.
In the suit, more than 300 tenants allege that NYCHA officials have told them repair funds will only be made available to fix problems in their apartments if they support the agency’s plan to lease land in the complex to developers.
NYCHA has been aggressively promoting a program to lease land in eight Manhattan housing developments so that 4,300 new apartments can be built, mostly at market rate. The arrangement is projected to pump $46 million per year into authority coffers.
The tenants argue that their rights have been trumped by the all-important real estate scheme.
“We feel NYCHA is holding residents hostage, forcing residents to support their plan whether it’s in their best interest or not,” said Aixa Torres, president of the Smith Houses Tenant Association. “We should not be at the mercy of a real estate deal.”
NYCHA spokeswoman Sheila Stainback denied that repair work was being held back to compel support of the plan. “Our efforts to eliminate the backlog of open work orders are not at all linked to the land-lease plans,” she said in a statement Tuesday.
The Urban Justice Center’s Community Development Project and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest filed the suit April 29 in Manhattan housing court.
Last month, Smith residents boycotted a meeting on NYCHA’s development proposal after agency officials refused to meet with the tenant association, plaintiffs said. Since then, NYCHA has stopped roof work that was previously contracted and for which funding has already been allocated, causing extensive damages, the suit charges.
Stephanie Rudolph, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, said Smith Houses residents are really hurting. “The number of times I had to type the phrase ‘Rats present in an apartment’ is absolutely outrageous,” she said.
Stainback said “NYCHA’s land-lease plan, through the revenue it would generate, would directly address these needs at Smith Houses.” She added that more than $200 million is necessary to put the development in a state of good repair over five years.
On Tuesday, NYCHA announced it had reduced its backlog of repairs system-wide to 274,000, from a peak early this year of 420,000. Some of the requests date back four years.
In January, Mayor Bloomberg announced an aggressive campaign to eliminate the backlog by 2014. But the Daily News reported on Sunday that the reduction in work orders systemwide has been accomplished in part by an effort to cancel work orders without doing the repairs, whenever possible. Workers told The News that managers are pressuring them to cancel work orders.
NYCHA responded to The News’ findings by saying the spike in cancellations was seasonal, and that the January figure was “largely in line with the same period of 2012.” But the agency would not provide the number of cancellations logged in January 2012.
esandoval@nydailynews.com, gsmith@nydailynews.com and gotis@nydailynews.com
