Tenants Brace for Public Housing Privatization
Originally produced on October 16, 2023
Tenants living in New York City public housing have been bracing for change as the New York City Housing Authority, the agency which administers public housing, continues its plan to semi-privatize. Under the plan, called the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) Program, NYCHA will lease properties to private management companies; in return, these private management companies will fulfill long-neglected repairs and renovations.
NYCHA says money sourced from PACT partnerships will provide the $78 billion needed to repair and restore its portfolio of public housing developments. However, critics say the move undermines tenants’ rights, as under PACT, housing developments transition from Section 9, federally funded public housing, to Section 8, a federally subsidized housing program.
With the next City Council public hearing on the future of NYCHA scheduled for October 24th, public housing residents and activists say further education on the impact of public housing privatization is needed.
“The fact that we haven’t been educated on the privileges and rights that come with public housing is why a lot of tenants are easily swayed by [the promise of] repairs,” said Ramona Ferreyra, 43, a resident at Mayor John Purroy Mitchel Houses in the South Bronx and founder of Save Section 9, an organization dedicated to preserving public housing on the federal level.
Ferreyra, who has been on rent strike since September 2021, said that although rent will remain capped at 30% of the tenant’s income under Section 8, tenants will lose “the most robust rental rights in the United States.” Section 9 protects against eviction and landlord harassment as well as guarantees the right to counsel if a tenant were to sue the housing authority. Under PACT, Section 8 is project-based rather than tenant-based, which means that if tenants move from their converted development, their Section 8 status will not follow them.
“Everybody’s panicking,” said Gloria Molina Cervantes, 68, a retired nurse who has lived in Robert F. Wagner Houses in East Harlem for 34 years. She recalled informing her non-English-speaking neighbors about her development’s potential conversion to PACT:
“‘What? I never heard of that,’” she imitated her neighbors. “‘What? How could that be?’”
Cervantes said a switch to Section 8 was particularly scary for older residents like her living on a fixed income.
Despite the potential harms of the transition from Section 9 to Section 8, some residents welcome the change.
“Anything to make it better than what it was,” said Ronald Smith, 76, when asked whether he supported the conversion to private management.
Smith has been a resident at Frederick E. Samuel Houses, one of the developments in the midst of its PACT conversion, for 23 years. He said his positive opinion of the conversion was influenced by a management-sponsored visit to a remodeled apartment in Betances Houses in the Bronx, which converted in 2018.
Another Samuel resident, who has lived there for 18 years, seemed resigned. He called the current NYCHA management “terrible,” but he said he declined to attend any of the information sessions about the conversion because he was overall “discouraged” about living there.
About 100 residents have signed their new leases, according to Jihan Newman, the director of VPH Management, the company slated to take over Samuel. Newman said lease signing began two weeks ago and many residents remain skeptical.
“We’re dealing with a population of residents that have been overlooked and underserved for a very long time,” said Newman. “Helping residents get over that hurdle of not trusting what they hear from their managing agent is probably the hardest hurdle we have right now.”
Yet many residents, at Samuel and elsewhere, despite efforts from NYCHA, private management companies or advocacy groups, remain uninformed about the impending shift from NYCHA to private management.
“It’s the same resident leaders that show up,” said Beverly MacFarlane, at the weekly meeting of the New York City-based group Residents 2 Preserve Public Housing. MacFarlane, the tenant association president at William A. Taft Houses in East Harlem, added that these same leaders get burnt out.
“So many residents don’t even know the difference between Section 8 and Section 9,” said Robert Hall, the tenant association president at Gun Hill Houses in East Bronx, at the same meeting.
Cervantes, who was vocal about her support for public housing, represents this phenomenon well: she didn’t know that she lived in Section 9 housing until she attended Ferreyra’s Save Section 9 presentation at Wagner Houses two weeks ago.
