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�� COURIER L 14 IFE, JANUARY 21-27, 2022 Problem-plagued NYCHA still struggling, despite federal aid A building at the Linden Houses in East New York. Photo by Ben Brachfeld BY BEN BRACHFELD The New York City Housing Authority converted several Brooklyn properties to private management late last year, but tenants say they have not yet gotten a reprieve from the myriad issues endemic to NYCHA, while also facing new problems often seen in privately managed buildings. East New York’s Linden Houses is one of six Brooklyn properties that underwent Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) conversion last month, bringing in over $400 million for repair work there and at the neighboring Penn Wortman Houses, which together house nearly 2,000 apartments in 22 buildings. Concurrently, as part of the feds’ RAD program, management at the Linden Houses was taken over by a consortium of developers, with C+C Apartment Management assuming duties at the sprawling complex. “After numerous tenant meetings in coordination with NYCHA over the past year and assuming management responsibilities on Dec. 29, we are working around the clock to ensure a smooth transition and provide our residents with the high-quality services they deserve,” said Marc Kaplan, chief operating offi cer of C+C. “Engagement with residents is critical to any management change, and we look forward to continuing to develop a responsive, supportive working relationship with our residents as we begin comprehensive upgrades across the campus.” NYCHA, with a $40 billion backlog of unmet capital needs at its deteriorating complexes, which house 350,000 New Yorkers, was, to put it lightly, a bad landlord. The authority oversaw constant outages of heat, hot water, gas, electricity, and elevators, and allowed residents’ apartments to fall into dreadful states of decay in which residents must navigate a Kafkaesque bureaucracy in order to fi x anything. Linden Houses alone has capital needs approaching $355 million, a NYCHA spokesperson said. As such, many residents were cautiously optimistic about the arrival of private management, postulating that the situation could not get any worse than it already was. Weeks after conversion, residents are still dealing with many of the old problems while also facing new issues previously unbeknownst to public housing tenants, but all too familiar to those living in private housing. For one, the heat went out for hundreds of residents on the day that C+C took over, and many have not had heat in their apartments for two weeks during the coldest spell of the year, which has seen temperatures drop as low as 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Diane Ryan, who has lived at Linden Houses for 50 years, hasn’t had heat in her apartment for two weeks, making her dwelling uninhabitable and forcing her to stay with her sister. “I had my space heater on and I had my stove going,” 70-year-old Ryan said. “I’m at my sister’s, I can’t go back in there. It’s too cold.” The management company has visited Ryan’s apartment on several occasions, she said, but offered no answers on when she’d have her heat back. “They came three times one day and didn’t do nothing,” she said. “They came back a day later, they didn’t do nothing again.” Ryan is far from the only tenant in her predicament: C+C gave out 150 space heaters to tenants dealing with heat outages in the past two weeks, according to Linden Houses resident association president Carol Barnes. Some are now anxious to use them after the deadly fi re in the Bronx earlier this month, which killed 17 people and has been attributed to a malfunctioning space heater, likely in use because tenants were without heat. Kaplan said that, as of Jan. 13, there were still about 20 outstanding heat complaints throughout the complex, though he noted that that number could be higher as some tenants may Continued on page 18 ��