Problem-plagued NYCHA still struggling, despite federal aid
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
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supportive working
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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 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 2022,
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
home for two weeks, making
her dwelling uninhabitable
and forcing her to stay with
her sister.
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 complez.
Though he noted that that
number could be higher as
some tenants may not fi le for-
A building at the Linden Houses in East New York. Photo by Ben Brachfeld
Continued on page 18
Homes still in the cold
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