
Finances To Be Gathered For Repair And Maintenance Work In New York
With an aim to garner support in financial terms for rectifying the plummeting conditions of public housing in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio can announce a plan that would involve help from the city forces.
The beginning is supposed to be made with bringing an old plan of using some barren land under the housing projects in developing private residential apartments. The plan is also to transfer many employees of the New York City Housing Authority to other relevant agencies. Money is to be raised from penalties imposed on residents for wrong parking. There is to be a hike in the rent of the houses.
Such steps needed to be taken in view of huge budget deficits and the poor conditions of more than 178,000 apartments where about 400,000 residents of New York live. The Housing Authority has realized it is operating at a deficit of $98 billion. This way, New York's single largest housing stock is under peril. Public housing is one of New York’s largest assets. Administrators have to do their best to fish it out of the mess it finds itself in.
Democrat de Blasio has put in all he has for the sake of improving the quality of life in the city. He plans to catch up on the losses in terms of maintenance and repair set by Nycha, a housing agency, in 2001. The losses suffered are to the tune of about $1 billion in federal capital subsidies.
The city had subsidized public housing in 1934. Amounts have been set apart for maintenance and repair, while a number of contracts have been transferred to other agencies.