Farewell, Shola

From the Daily News:

Beleaguered NYCHA chairwoman Shola Olatoye, accused of making misleading statements about the conditions in public housing and under fire from multiple critics, will announce Tuesday that she is resigning.

Olatoye will make the announcement at a public housing development in the Rockaways along with Mayor de Blasio, who appointed her four years ago and has defended her against a growing chorus of criticism.

Late Monday, the mayor said he will tour the Ocean Bay Bayside Houses Tuesday morning, and a City Hall spokeswoman confirmed Olatoye would step down and the mayor will install government veteran Stanley Brezenoff as interim chair of the New York City Housing Authority.

Late Monday the mayor continued his defense of Olatoye, 43, calling her “a change agent from Day One. Crime is down. Repairs are faster. Finances are stabilized. And NYCHA is putting record investment from the City to work making life better for the 400,000 New Yorkers that call NYCHA home.”

Mr. de Blasio goes to Albany

From the Wall Street Journal:

New York state lawmakers are pushing Mayor Bill de Blasio to move faster on a promise to take on a property-tax overhaul, saying many residents are already being financially hurt by changes to the federal tax code.

“It’s urgent that we move forward,” Assemblyman Michael Cusick, a Democrat, said during a finance hearing in Albany Monday where the mayor was presenting his preliminary budget.

The mayor’s budget appearances in Albany take place several times a year. It’s typical for state lawmakers to grill the New York City mayor on subjects ranging from taxes to schools to police.

At one point, State Sen. Catharine Young, a Republican, asked Mr. de Blasio why Shola Olatoye, the head of the city’s public housing authority, was still at the helm amid concerns over management issues, including revelations the agency had failed to conduct lead-paint inspections required by law for four years. Mr. de Blasio defended Ms. Olatoye, saying she had made progress in a difficult agency.

But many lawmakers in Monday’s hearing focused on property taxes, an issue that in New York has cut across partisan lines.

The mayor said he would “unquestionably” roll out property-tax changes this year. But he said any changes would have to be “revenue-neutral” to allow the city to maintain its current services.

The city’s property-tax rate hasn’t increased under Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat. But the levy has grown by 23%, or about $5 billion, since fiscal 2015, the first full year he was in office. The increase is because of a rise in property-value assessments by the city.

Cuts to property taxes haven’t been a priority for the liberal mayor and liberal City Council. But the city could change the way it assesses property values to reduce what many residents, lawmakers and experts have said are disparities in the way the levy affects homeowners in different areas.

Bill's with Shola

From the Daily News:

Mayor de Blasio is still standing by his New York City Housing Authority Chairwoman Shola Olatoye — and channeling a president he doesn’t quote very often in doing so.

“As George W. Bush once famously said, ‘I'm the decider,’” de Blasio told reporters Tuesday. “Hold me responsible for the decision. I am responsible. She is the right person to lead.”

De Blasio has repeatedly defended Olatoye as the authority she leads has come under fire for years of failing to conduct lead inspections in public housing apartments — and for falsely claiming on federal documents they’d been done even when she knew they had not.

Infill is coming to NYCHA, like it or not

From Curbed:

Between 30-40 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) sites across the city are being considered for the agency's infill program — adding mixed-income developments to underused NYCHA sites, the agency's CEO, Shola Olatoye announced at a heated City Council hearing last night. At the moment, this particular program is moving forward at two sites - the Holmes Towers at 403 East 93rd Street on the Upper East Side, and at Wyckoff Gardens at 185 Nevins Street in Boerum Hill. But what the meeting revealed last night was the fact that while residents at both developments will have input on what the final new development might look like, the project will move forward — regardless of community opposition.

A typical new building at a NYCHA site will have 50 percent market rate units, and the other half will be affordable. Of these affordable units, 25 percent will be set aside for NYCHA residents to apply to. And the affordable units will be open to those who make about 60 percent of the area median income, which NYCHA estimated to be $46,600 for a family of three.

The major concern for residents however, that City Councilman Ritchie Torres, who heads the public housing committee, made clear to NYCHA officials was that residents have been mostly cut out of the process — yes they can provide opinions, but the development is moving forward anyway.

Residents who spoke at the meeting stressed that the agency should find alternative means for funding repairs at existing NYCHA buildings.

"How can the government find $4 billion to fund a Penn Station renovation but find no money for public housing?" Darnell Brown, a resident at Holmes Towers, pointedly asked the officials.

DeBlasio defends green space-to-housing plan

From the Observer:

Speaking at a press conference celebrating the start of an $87 million roof repair project at the Queensbridge Houses—the largest public housing project in the nation, according to the administration—the mayor pushed back on attacks on his housing authority Chairwoman Shola Olatoye and the “NextGeneration NYCHA” plan she commissioned for him. Critics, including Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., have argued that NextGeneration’s development provisions could cost NYCHA residents precious green space and badly strain city resources and infrastructure.

Mr. de Blasio repeatedly emphasized that 13,500 of the new apartments would rent for below-market-rate, and that the city would plan construction in concert with residents—two things he said were missing from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal for “infill,” which would have focused mostly upscale development on NYCHA space. The liberal mayor also stressed that new construction would create revenues that would other wise be unavailable to the authority, which currently runs deficits of hundreds of millions of dollars each year, and has a $17 billion backlog in repair work.

The mayor even promised that any parking or recreational space sacrificed to new construction would be restored in some form to residents.

“We’re going to make sure any facilities that people have, whether it’s parking, playground, whatever a development, are made whole, even if it means someplace else in the same development. We’ll make sure people have the same amenities,” he said. “We obviously will account for any infrastructure needs.”

He did not elaborate on the details of how such adjustments would work.

Of course he didn't because there's no place to put that stuff.

NYCHA selling off its open space to developers

From the Daily News:

The housing authority is quietly selling off parking lots, green space and playgrounds to developers — a spree that will create more affordable housing and help ease NYCHA’s budget woes.

NYCHA has sold small parcels here and there over the years, but in 2011 began to ratchet up its sales effort, a Daily News review found. Since 2013, they’ve sold off 54 plots with 441,000 square feet of public land to private developers, records show.

Most of these parcels are related to 12 projects where NYCHA has sold vacant or what it deems “underutilized” land to developers to build affordable or senior housing. On some parcels, the housing is now up; on others it’s in the works.

Recently, tenants say, NYCHA officials have visited their developments in search of more potential land to sell, with plans for more “For Sale” signs later this year.

Agency officials wouldn’t discuss details, promising to lay out their plans in May when Chairwoman Shola Olatoye unveils her “Next Generation NYCHA” plan.

Sounds like NYCHA's going private

From the Observer:

Shola Olatoye, the chairwoman and chief executive officer of the New York City Housing Authority under Mayor Bill de Blasio, said today that partnerships with private real estate interests may be the future for the cash-strapped agency.

Speaking at a hearing of the City Council’s Committee on Public Housing, Ms. Olatoye indicated that the housing authority could look to selling stakes in its 2,563 buildings across the city in order to fill its infamous budget deficits, in the absence of federal funding streams. She said a recent deal in which the housing authority formed a limited liability company with two private developers to co-own and manage six of its non-project properties in order to qualify for $465 million in loans and tax abatements could prove to be a model for arrangements going forward—as could the ongoing programs of rezonings and monetary incentives the city has used to encourage builders to construct below market-cost apartments.

“We don’t know what the future holds. But I think it would be irresponsible for us to not take advantage of tools that, frankly this city has utilized and pioneered to create thousands of affordable housing units,” she said.