The New York Metropolis Housing Authority is broadly thought-about one of many Massive Apple’s worst landlords, but its prime execs live giant in mansions on big taxpayer-funded salaries – at the same time as residents generally wait years for fundamental repairs.
The cash-strapped, city-owned company noticed all 104 of its upper-management honchos pocket $22 million mixed final yr – all made a minimum of $140,000 yearly, and 74 pulled down $200,000 or extra, a Publish examination of NYCHA data reveals.
That’s greater than double NYCHA’s almost $11 million spending on exec salaries in 2015, when its upper-management crew was 34% smaller, totaling simply 79 execs.
Main the best way is CEO Lisa Bova-Hiatt, whose base wage is an eye-watering $399,999.
She owns a $1.4 million dwelling on Staten Island’s tony Todt Hill, a few mile from NYCHA’s Todt Hill Homes.
David Rohde, NYCHA’s government VP for authorized affairs, pulls down $301,198 and lives in a $2.8 million waterfront property on the North Fork of Lengthy Island.
Regardless of execs dwelling excessive on the hog, the embattled authority — which noticed 70 previous and current staffers arrested in 2024 and later convicted following the largest single-day bribery takedown within the U.S. Division of Justice’s historical past — presently has 610,000 open work orders.
NYCHA additionally estimates it wants $78 billion to restore its getting older infrastructure, which homes greater than 511,000 residents throughout 335 public housing initiatives.
“NYCHA executives are cashing out off of the struggling of residents, and dwelling giant on the taxpayers’ dime,” ripped Rev. Kevin McCall, a civil-rights activist and longtime NYCHA critic.
“They turned public housing into a brand new hustle, with residents an afterthought, reasonably than saying ‘let me not take a elevate’ so the cash can return into fixing the infrastructire, in order that the dwelling situations have fundamental dignity.”
NYCHA’s personal inside information reveals it takes 449 days on common – or roughly 15 months– to resolve tenants’ non-emergency restore requests like clogged tubs and damaged fridges, in comparison with 370 days simply two years earlier.
Some restore requests — for routine fixes like defective pipes — stay unresolved greater than 5 years later, based on residents.
As of final month, paint jobs took a median of 616 days to finish, electrical work 237 days, plumbing 233 days, and elevator restore 101 days.
For a lot of tenants dwelling with mould, rats and different vermin is the norm.
Leila Inexperienced, 63, of the McKinley Homes in The Bronx, mentioned NYCHA officers shouldn’t be dwelling the excessive life when her dwelling of 30 years is a wreck and routinely infested with roaches and rodents.
NYCHA administration has but to handle requests she put in 5 years in the past to repair plumbing leaks, cracked partitions and flooring injury, Inexperienced added.
“We should always be capable of dwell in a good, clear place with out roaches and rats and be capable of dwell like regular individuals,” she mentioned. “They do a poor job as a result of they don’t restore something — and don’t even reply the telephone if you name.”
NYCHA reps, nonetheless, insisted Friday there’s no open work orders to make repairs in Inexperienced’s condo.
They insisted her lavatory is freshly painted and that employees would quickly paint the remainder of her condo, change her flooring tiles and make different enhancements.
Though Mayor Zohran Mamdani inherited lots of NYCHA’s issues when he took workplace in January, the silver-spoon socialist shortly got here underneath hearth from public-housing residents for briefly banning them from testifying at “rental ripoff” hearings his workplace started internet hosting citywide.
The owner-bashing periods goal non-public property house owners, conveniently ignoring that the Housing Authority routinely tops a yearly checklist complied by town Public Advocate of NYC’s “worst” landlords.
“The mayor is accountable for NYCHA and should deal town being the worst landlord,” mentioned McCall, who started internet hosting impartial hearings citywide to handle points NYCHA residents face after they had been shut out of Mamdani’s “Rental Ripoff Hearings.”
“This isn’t nearly neglect. That is exploitation on the highest stage.”
NYCHA’s upper-management crew underneath Mamdani has grown by two staffers, to 106, together with former Deputy Comptroller Erin Villari, who was employed because the authority’s $276,710-a-year chief administrative officer in February.
Six different six-figure jobs are presently vacant and should be crammed, based on NYCHA’s newest employees organizational chart dated March 9.
Frances Garcia, tenant president of the McKinley Homes, mentioned residents on the decaying five-building advanced just lately went by way of a hellish winter the place they had been routinely with out warmth, fuel and scorching water – even throughout an historic chilly stretch wherein NYC temperatures had been generally decrease than elements of Antarctica.
“I needed to stroll round with two bathrobes on,” she mentioned. “When it’s actually scorching prefer it was a couple of days in the past, we get warmth, so why aren’t we getting warmth when it’s chilly?”
Regardless of NYCHA officers’ sky-high base salaries, some blue-collar staffers pocketed much more money final yr by racking up big quantities of extra time. Senior officers sometimes don’t get extra time.
Jakub Markowski, a Housing Authority supervisor plumber, was town’s largest OT hog for the fiscal yr that ended June 30.
He scored a staggering $331,814 in additional repay 2,558 OT hours labored — rocketing his yearly earnings to $465,034.
NYCHA then attributed the obscene OT to “in depth plumbing and heating calls for which are mandated and monitored by legislation.”
NYCHA spokesperson Barbara Brancaccio defended higher administration’s salaries, saying “their compensation is commensurate with their civil service titles and reflective of the scale of the company, the scope of their tasks, and their stage of expertise.”
She additionally mentioned that whereas NYCHA has a backlog in work orders, loads of repairs are nonetheless getting finished.
Final yr, NYCHA was slammed with 2.5 million new repair-work orders, however resolved 2.49 million, mentioned Brancaccio.
“NYCHA’s senior administration crew is comprised of devoted public servants with many years of confirmed public coverage and authorities experience,” she mentioned.
“These exceptional professionals have joined the Authority throughout a pivotal interval of large and historic organizational reform to make sure the company’s compliance with federal and native legal guidelines and rules, together with the mandates outlined in” a landmark 2019 settlement settlement with the U.S. Division of Housing and City Growth requiring NYCHA to handle long-standing, systemic well being and questions of safety at its public housing websites, mentioned Brancaccio.
Matthew Rauschenbach, a spokesperson for the mayor, insisted NYCHA tenants had been by no means prohibited from taking part within the Rental Ripoff Hearings, including “investments in NYCHA shall be central to our forthcoming housing plan.”
“We’ve already begun our engagement with NYCHA tenant leaders and look ahead to rolling out strong, borough-by-borough engagement quickly in order that we are able to convey the voices of NYCHA tenants again to Metropolis Corridor to tell our work,” Rauschenbach mentioned.
