Funding for 176 employees will also put workers on career-tracked jobs
New York, NY – March 19, 2012 – (RealEstateRama) — The New York City Housing Authority applauds and welcomes City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn’s announcement today that NYCHA will receive $10 million from the City Council to help fund repairs and hire public housing residents to perform those repairs in Fiscal Year 2013. As the largest affordable housing provider in the city, NYCHA housing is a critical resource. Recent years have brought unparalleled fiscal challenges for NYCHA as it strives to maintain and preserve its 178,000 units of affordable housing. NYCHA has lost nearly one-billion dollars in funding since 2001, but is leading the charge to meet these obstacles head on with new initiatives already underway. Over the past year, NYCHA has undergone an extensive strategic planning process, culminating in Plan NYCHA, a call to action to ensure the preservation of public housing and increase the supply of affordable housing for current and future generations in New York City. Plan NYCHA issues a call to action to residents, employees, city agencies, elected officials, activists and stakeholders to work together to overcome those challenges facing public housing in NYC.
“Only through sustained, meaningful collaboration can we ensure that this invaluable resource will be available for future generations,” said NYCHA Chairman John B. Rhea. “With the $10 million in funding from the New York City Council, we can work together to implement Plan NYCHA’s imperatives of expediting maintenance and repairs, preserving the public and affordable housing asset, and connecting residents and communities to critical services, such as job training and career-track employment.”
Responding to repair work orders and addressing a severe backlog is critical to the maintenance and preservation of NYCHA’s housing stock. To tackle the repair backlog head-on, NYCHA launched a task force in June 2011 grouping a team of skilled workers to help reduce significant repair backlogs and to reduce wait times. The team of workers targeted buildings with the highest number of repair work orders per apartment. In just 6 months, the repair teams that include carpenters, plumbers, plasterers and maintenance workers successfully completed nearly 40,000 repair work orders, in almost 10,000 apartments citywide. Because of this effort, there were more than 90,000 more repair work orders completed in 2011 than in 2010, a 6 percent increase.
With $10 million in funding from the City Council, NYCHA anticipates filling an additional 116,000 work orders annually – reducing approximately 12 percent of the maintenance work orders in the backlog. The Authority expects to create 176 new jobs that will be filled by NYCHA residents. NYCHA anticipates that half of the positions will be filled by graduates of the NYCHA Resident Training Academy (NRTA) and half will be filled by current residents working at NYCHA.
The Job Creation to Support Preservation of NYCHA Infrastructure proposal to City Council is an innovative solution that will help maintain and improve the infrastructure of NYCHA’s affordable housing stock while creating new jobs with career pathways for public housing residents. The project will significantly increase the number of maintenance and repair work orders completed on an annual basis by hiring qualified NYCHA residents and promoting current NYCHA resident employees to assist NYCHA Maintenance Workers in these tasks. Moreover, NYCHA anticipates that residents not currently working at NYCHA will receive soft skills and hard skills training in basic maintenance through the NRTA.
NYCHA serves approximately 420,000 public housing residents across 334 developments in all 5 boroughs. To learn more, go to www.nyc.gov/nycha.
About the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA):
NYCHA provides decent and affordable housing in a safe and secure living environment for low and moderate- income residents throughout the five boroughs of New York City. To fulfill this mission, NYCHA must preserve its aging housing stock through timely maintenance and modernization of its developments. NYCHA also administers a citywide Section 8 Leased Housing Program in rental apartments. Simultaneously, we work to enhance the quality of life at NYCHA by offering our residents opportunities to participate in a multitude of community, educational and recreational programs, as well as job readiness and training initiatives.
Contact Sheila Stainback, 212-306-3322 or media (at) nycha.nyc (dot) gov
Contact:
NYCHA: Sheila Stainback or
Zodet Negrón
(212) 306-3322
media (at) nycha.nyc (dot) gov
