Mayoral candidate Bill Thompson
Call it mayoral control for the city’s housing authority.
Bill Thompson, a Democratic candidate for mayor and the 2009 runner-up, will call for an overhaul of the city’s beleaguered public housing authority at a forum Thursday night. His plan would dismantle the New York City Housing Authority’s governance structure, and replace it with a panel of unpaid mayoral appointees.
“The board will be made up of volunteer members consisting of housing, government, and finance experts as well as current NYCHA residents,” a Thompson spokesman said in a statement to The Insider. “Including public housing residents will be crucial in ensuring the voice of the residents is adequately represented and their needs have a real, meaningful platform to be addressed.”
NYCHA has been the subject of much criticism and many overhaul plans in the past. The Daily News wrote a series of damning articles about the agency in 2012, highlighting its failure to spend over $1 billion in federal money on improvements to 334 developments across the city. Editorial boards and public housing advocates have also taken the authority’s board of directors to task for raking in six-figure salaries and living luxurious lifestyles while tenants suffer in substandard dwellings.
Under Mr. Thompson’s proposal, NYCHA’s four-member board would be done away with and replaced by mayoral-appointed volunteers. NYCHA Chairman John Rhea announced a similar plan last summer. A revamped board would include five members, four of them unsalaried and two of them residents of NYCHA housing. Mr. Thompson’s plan sketches out in more detail exactly which types of appointees would populate the board.
A bill is currently under consideration in the state Legislature.
Two of the board’s members, along with the chairman, are currently appointed by the mayor, but also receive lucrative salaries and city-funded drivers. Mr. Thompson’s spokesman said their plan would place the onus on the mayor when NYCHA fails its residents.
“The mayor will take direct responsibility for all board appointments and policy set forth by NYCHA, reforming the status-quo which does nothing but offer plausible deniability to the mayor when housing policy goes south,” he said.
A NYCHA spokeswoman referred The Insider to the mayor’s office for comment. It did not immediately respond.
Mr. Thompson is one of five Democrats competing for the party’s nomination.