The city’s new public housing chief is vying for $30 million in new federal funding — despite the agency’s highly-publicized recent history of money mismanagement.
New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) chairwoman Shola Olatoye seeks the grant to revitalize existing complexes and build new mixed-use developments on its properties in the South Bronx’s Mott Haven neighborhood.
Specifically, Olatoye said, the agency would use the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development monies to rehab the 16-building Betances Houses, improve streetscapes and erect new senior citizens’ and affordable housing.
“We’re not just building housing, we’re building communities,” Olatoye told a rapt crowd at Betances Community Center on E. 146th St. Wednesday night as she unveiled the ambitious 170-page plan.
She stressed that unlike in the past, this time the agency would put the money to good use.
“I’m not saying trust us. I’m saying judge us by our actions,” she told the Daily News.
NYCHA was mired in scandal and scarred by poor performance during the Bloomberg administration.
A 2013 Daily News investigation revealed that NYCHA sat on $50 million in City Council funding in recent years that had been earmarked for fixes to crumbling buildings.
Olatoye feels her agency deserves another chance, saying: “This mayor, unlike previous administrations, has for the first time made public housing a centerpiece.”
NYCHA will vie with 50 other communities nationwide for a HUD Choice Neighborhoods Implementation grant. This past summer the program awarded $30 million each to two housing authorities in Pennsylvania and one each in Connecticut and Ohio.
The sweeping Mott Haven plan was not universally welcomed. Some residents worried that sparkling improvements could result in costly rent hikes.
“It’s good, but if we do change, what’s going to happen to the residents that are already here?” said Tyshell Jenkins, 30, a lifelong Betances Houses resident.
A spokesman for HUD said he could not provide a timeline for when the grant winners would be announced, adding that a federal law required the department to first alert Congress.
