She has a chronic rodent and roach problem in her two-bedroom apartment on the ground floor, she said, and wondered if the building management would let her move upstairs to Apartment 4A or 4B with her two young daughters.
"I said, 'I'll take the fourth and not deal with the pests,' " said Ms. Ciprian, 36, an assistant at a day care center. "They said, 'You don't want the fourth floor, trust me.' "
The apartments are still unoccupied.
Apartment 4B has sat empty for nearly seven years, and 4A next door for almost two decades — since 1994, New York City Housing Authority auditors have found. They are among hundreds of public housing units that have languished unoccupied year after year awaiting major renovations or a decision about their fate.
With nearly 179,000 apartments, the authority plays a key role in preserving the affordable housing the city already has. Although the authority has reduced the number of unoccupied units in recent years, it still allows many units to stay empty for long periods, long enough in some cases for the deterioration to spread.
As recently as this year, internal auditors faulted the agency for a lack of strategies to return apartments to the rent rolls more quickly. But housing officials say a lack of money is the main impediment to prompt repairs. The agency, which relies on federal housing funds, estimates it has a capital budget shortfall of $6 billion. Many vacant apartments are in limbo, and more are at risk, the officials said, because of the steady decline in federal subsidies.
"You really have to make choices," said Cecil R. House, the authority's general manager.
The capital crunch also poses a test for Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, who has promised to increase the city's affordable housing stock. Public housing advocates say the question is whether the city will step in with its own money to help preserve public housing buildings, some of them dating to the 1930s and 1940s, as federal funds continue to dry up.
"The city and state have capital they invest in stadiums and parks and museums and all sorts of public development," said Victor Bach, a policy analyst with the Community Service Society of New York, an anti-poverty group. "It's a matter of political will."
The empty apartments wear the indignities of abandonment: broken windows, missing deadbolts, ripped plaster, graffiti on the walls. Some are further defiled by people and birds.
At Betances Houses in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, a group of teenagers broke into Apartment 4B in one of the buildings from the roof two years ago, neighbors said. They moved in a mattress and television set, staying there for several months until they left a bathroom faucet running; water leaked into the apartment downstairs, and police were summoned.
"They were cooking, eating, having sex, using drugs," said Joyse Ribera, 38, who lives next door, adding that her many complaints to the police and housing managers about the squatters went unheeded before the leak. "It looked like they weren't going to school and came here."
The apartment, a four-bedroom duplex empty since 2006, was just recently rented and the new tenants moved in this month. Housing officials said they have brought down the number of apartments vacant and awaiting major renovation to fewer than 800, from several thousand. Another 2,300 apartments are vacant as a result of routine turnover or relocation, the officials said.
But last year, Housing Authority internal auditors found that 319 of the vacant units had been empty for an average of more than seven years, awaiting major repairs like roof replacement. The auditors found that the work — and the return of the apartments to the rental pool — could be done more quickly. With the units off the rent rolls, the city has lost an estimated $1.4 million a year in rent, the auditors said.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
In Public Housing, Units Languish in Limbo
Dengan url
http://homepageglobal.blogspot.com/2013/12/in-public-housing-units-languish-in.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
In Public Housing, Units Languish in Limbo
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
In Public Housing, Units Languish in Limbo
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar