NYCHA’s using community input to plan for what to build after three public housing towers are demolished. But the plan means a loss of public housing, and it confronts deep distrust from some tenants.
Public housing advocates aiming to influence the direction of a seismic policy shift HUD proposed in May say they see some signs that the department is receptive to their recommendations.
City Limits toured New York City, Yonkers and Newburgh with Community Voices Heard, to see where the stimulus money went and hear where advocates for low-income families believe it should go.
Opponents of the Harlem Children’s Zone’s plans to open a school in the St. Nicholas Houses are organizing a grassroots effort aimed to prevent it.
The state legislature’s eleventh-hour vote last month to expand New York’s charter schools will add 114 new charters to the 99 currently operating in New York City. But while the new law paves the way for new schools, and perhaps for millions in federal education funding, it doesn’t create new space for the new schools—or for the current charters, which are bursting at the seams as they add students, year by year.When a new school opens, it generally begins with one or two grades – typically, kindergarten and first – and “grows up the grades” over time, adding a new kindergarten cohort every year, as older children progress. This means that schools that aim to encompass K-8 begin small and eventually expand to a much greater size. City Department of Education (DOE) officials say that 62,500 students will attend charter schools this fall. But rough estimates by the New York City Charter School Center suggest that about 140,000 students may eventually attend charter schools in New York City, once all of the charters reach capacity.
It’s been six months since the New York City Housing Authority went back on a promise to help 2,600 low-income New Yorkers pay the rent. In that time 27 families that left the city’s shelters for homes of their own have returned to the shelters, homeless again, according to Judith Goldiner of the Legal Aid Society. And thousands who thought they had a life line are still waiting for help.Nilsa Melendez is one of them. The 44-year-old receptionist fled an abusive marriage and has been living in a shelter with her 14-year-old daughter since November 2008. In August 2009 she finally got a Section 8 rental assistance voucher.
In a move signaling the biggest changes since the advent of public housing 70 years ago, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development told Congress last week that it wants to radically overhaul how the nation houses its poorest citizens.The proposed changes aim to increase the social and physical mobility of public housing residents and turn existing public housing developments into mixed income communities with market rate tenants. The changes also aim to attract private investment to those existing public housing developments. Such investment would help pay for costly, long-delayed repairs, which the agency projects total $20 billion. Public housing that receives such investment would remain under the control of the local housing authority for 30 years.In testimony before the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee last week, HUD Commissioner Shaun Donovan outlined the Preservation, Enhancement and Transition of Rental Assistance Act (PETRA). Under the voluntary program, local housing authorities would no longer get one stream of federal funding to run dedicated developments and another to administer portable voucher programs. Instead all public housing residents who meet income limits would be given rental vouchers.
The Harlem Children’s Zone wants to launch a school at a public housing development. But some tenants worry that their children’s needs won’t be met.
Many New Yorkers who haven’t returned their census forms fear that doing so could cost them their apartments
In a Q&A with City Limits, NYCHA general manager Michael Kelly says new financing deals have narrowed a gaping budget gap. Yet multimillion-dollar challenges remain.
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