A Tale of Two New Yorks Billions for Amazon but rats, lead paint and mold for public housing.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tale-of-two-new-yorks-1542413122
New York’s Democratic kingpins Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio are getting hit from right, left and center for showering Amazon with some $3 billion in subsidies. The corporate welfare is even more outrageous when juxtaposed with New York City’s dilapidated public housing that the Governor and mayor have long neglected.
This summer the Justice Department sued Nycha for sweeping its disrepair under a shabby rug. Nycha agreed to a court-appointed monitor to oversee $1.2 billion in repairs over the next five years. On Wednesday in a 52-page ruling, federal Judge William Pauley III, a Bill Clinton appointee, rejected the settlement as inadequate and perhaps unconstitutional.
According to the New York State Department of Public Health, 83% of Nycha’s inspected units contained a hazardous condition. “Somewhat reminiscent of the biblical plagues of Egypt, these conditions include toxic lead paint, asthma-inducing mold, lack of heat, frequent elevator outages, and vermin infestations,” the judge noted, adding that the authority “whitewashed these deficiencies for years.”
While Mayor de Blasio agreed to spend an additional $1.2 billion to fix Nycha’s 326 complexes that house 400,000 people, conditions are so awful that the authority estimates it needs $32 billion for repairs. “NYCHA’s current capital needs would not be met until the year 2166,” the judge wrote.
Judge Pauley added that a special monitor “would bring about an unwarranted—and as far as this Court is aware, unprecedented—judicial usurpation of responsibilities that Congress has expressly entrusted to” the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and “raises serious concerns implicating the separation of powers and the delegation of equitable judicial power.”
Courts have become all too eager to offload responsibility for fixing the problems of the political branches to special monitors, which blurs democratic accountability. But as Judge Pauley points out, Section 6 of the U.S. Housing Act gives HUD “a robust arsenal of remedies” for failing public housing agencies, including private management and federal receivership.
Fixing Nycha “requires political will at all levels,” the judge concludes, and may even necessitate “abrogating collective-bargaining agreements and vendor contracts.” But neither politician will take on the public unions whose wages and pensions are bleeding New York’s budget. They also refuse to allow private management, much less private ownership, or to tear down the monstrosities the way Chicago did with the notorious Robert Taylor and Cabrini-Green homes.
Nycha’s biggest complex is located next to Amazon’s new campus in Long Island City. Will residents have access to Amazon’s helipad?
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