New York City is its own worst landlord: NYCHA

New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams last week visited sites of buildings owned by those he considered the the worst landlords in town. His annual publicity stunt included a grand visit to 80 Woodruff Ave. in Queens, among the 80 buildings he had denounced, demonizing an owner who I said it is struggling with rising property taxes, insurance costs and tenants not paying rent even when they make improvements.

Here are some buildings Williams missed, though. Tenants at 1305 Loring Ave. in Brooklyn, 1635 E. 174th St. in the Bronx and 1835 Lexington Ave. in Manhattan were all without gas this month; multistory buildings with elderly tenants, like 3031 W. 25th St. Brooklyn or 310 E. 115th St., had elevators that didn’t work. The same owners have long been plagued by heat, hot water and electricity outages.

All of these buildings are owned and managed not by the so-called greedy private slum landlords that Williams likes to target, but by the city government he works for: the New York City Housing Authority.

Williams and Mayor Mamdani seem to think that private housing ownership is inherently problematic and that “social housing” is the answer – in the form of the 200,000 new government-sponsored housing units that the mayor has proposed. Mamdani plans to go after private landlords in the coming weeks, with his promised “rental fraud” tour of the five boroughs, de facto show trials for landowners.

Meanwhile, back to the real world. NYCHA, the city’s largest landlord, is regularly the target of hundreds of complaintsincluding 400 concerning heating, hot water and elevator breakdowns in one week this month alone. It’s a 177,000-unit system plagued by what the liberal Community Service Society calls “chronic neglect.” Its website includes an ongoing feature called Overview of service interruptions.

That should be more than enough to make progressives question their commitment to government-run housing.

Since 2019, NYCHA has been under federal oversight, due to ongoing problems with mold, lead paint, heat and elevators. As the Authority’s 2025 financial statement soberly states, “NYCHA is not yet in full compliance with the requirements of the agreement.”

Progressives say public housing’s problems are the result of the federal government’s declining support for the system. But since 2015, federal support for NYCHA has increased, from $934 million to $1.5 billion in operating grants between 2014 and 2024. Meanwhile, NYCHA, faced with billions in repair needs, can’t even keep its annual operating budget in the black, recording a loss of $4.49 million.

One notable reason: Tenants aren’t paying their rent, a problem for both public and private landlords in the city, where eviction is nearly impossible thanks to extreme tenant protection laws and a COVID-era hangover. As the Authority says, operating losses are linked to “a reduction in tenant rental income and an increase in the costs of employee social benefits”. The combination of non-paying tenants and public sector employees with generous retirement and health benefits is a recipe for red ink. The Authority increased its rental income in 2024, not because more tenants paid on time, but because of COVID rescue funds.

NYCHA’s current leadership, led by Lisa Bova-Hiatt, is playing a pretty bad hand, emphasizing the need for new capital funding through the state’s Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program, which channels private capital toward project repairs — but only if tenants vote to approve. They have even decided to sell land for private development, such as at the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea homes, where part of the site will be developed for market-rate housing in an upscale neighborhood.

These are welcome, if partial, steps toward ameliorating the chronic maintenance problems of city-owned housing. But the fact that they are necessary should highlight the folly of repeating the mistake of public housing, without doubling down. Keep in mind that NYCHA housing was originally intended to be self-sustaining through tenants’ rent payments.

Imagine if the boiler explosion and building collapse of the Mitchel Houses in the Bronx in November had occurred in a private apartment complex. Mamdani and Williams probably would have reported the owner and held an outraged press conference. Instead, it was simply an extreme example of the neglected maintenance problems that arise every day in the nation’s largest public housing system.

Rather than advocating for more public housing and demonizing private landlords, City Hall should work with landlords to ensure that tenants pay their rent – ​​the oxygen of building maintenance – and that rising property taxes don’t put pressure on struggling landlords in outlying boroughs. In other words, working with private owners of social housing rather than against them.

Denouncing landlords won’t solve New York’s housing crisis. It won’t even help tenants.

Husock is a principal investigator at American Business Institute.