Standing right beside Mayor Bill de Blasio, Rep. Nydia Velazquez on Tuesday called for a thorough shake-up at NYCHA following a meeting with US Housing Secretary Ben Carson in Lower Manhattan.
“There must be top-to-bottom reforms that need to take place — transparency and accountability,” she said outside the Federal Building in lower Manhattan.
The mayor added that there was agreement a federal takeover of NYCHA was not the best option — even though Carson has not ruled it out.
“I think there was a broad agreement that we’re going to do all together to avert it. But both HUD and the city of New York believe there’s a better way — and that better way is to come to a settlement,” he said.
Carson did not attend the press gaggle after the hour-long meeting, which included Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Queens) and Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan).
It was the second time in recent weeks that de Blasio and Carson met ahead of a proposed Jan. 31 deadline for City Hall and the Manhattan US Attorney’s office to come up with a plan for rescuing the city’s public housing developments.
In November, Manhattan Federal Judge William Pauley nixed a negotiated settlement between City Hall and federal prosecutors that would have injected $2.2 billion toward capital improvements, while providing the feds with oversight of NYCHA.
Last week, de Blasio released a new plan he claimed would raise $24 billion for NYCHA — out of a current capital needs estimate of $32 billion — over the next 10 years.
The plan relies on selling air rights, building a mix of market-rate and affordable housing on underutilized NYCHA land, and putting one-third of the 175,000 public housing units under private management. It also counts on a significant amount of federal and state funding that isn’t assured.