A hand up — not a handout — for public-housing tenants? NYC says ‘no way’

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Key points

• The Furman Center on Housing reports more vacancies than NYCHA claims: 2.8% in Queens, for example, and 4.1% in East New York.
• Howard Husock is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "The Projects: A New History of Public Housing."
• It has transitioned 1, 100 families out of housing assistance since 2014 using a similar program.
• The average time on the NYCHA waiting list is 46 months – largely since the average tenant has lived in the projects for 306 months, or 25 years.
• President Donald Trump wants to offer New York City the tools it needs to do something concerning those challenges.

In practice, the New York City Housing Authority grapples with some obvious ills: Elevators break down all the time, crime and gang violence are common, and fixing up aging NYCHA buildings could cost up to $80 billion the agency doesn't have.

But some of the challenges facing the nation's largest public housing authority are less visible.

In practice, the average time on the NYCHA waiting list is 46 months – largely since the average tenant has lived in the projects for 306 months, or 25 years.

In practice, a significant number of residents, 31%, are "overhoused" – living in apartments with empty bedrooms – while others in need crowd into shelters. Only 34% of tenants are employed and report "wage income."

At matter is a new rule proposed by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner that would allow NYCHA and other public-housing authorities nationwide to adopt some form of work requirements as well as time limits for tenants – something like the rules that apply to cash welfare.

Housing assistance, notes Turner, should "actively promote pathways to independence, upward mobility and long-term self-sufficiency."

More than 200 local authorities – including those in Philadelphia, New Orleans and Los Angeles County – have remarked they backing the idea, joining what HUD has dubbed its Work and Dignity Coalition to push for the rule to become final.

NYCHA, by far the nation's largest housing authority, with 263, 000 units of public or voucher housing, is a notable exception.

While the newly needy are locked out, it can't stop the new rule from taking effect elsewhere – but it can continue its own status quo that lets 457, 000 tenants stay for a lifetime. HUD thinks a fresh approach can change that. But NYCHA sees only doom and gloom.

As HUD's proposal would do, it claims that Gotham's housing shortage is just too acute to set an "up and out" goal – even one that exempts the elderly and disabled.

In New York, a NYCHA spokesman informed me, the city's overall 1.5% housing vacancy rate means any time limit would put residents on the street.

"In a city where the average market-rate rent for a one-bedroom is between $3, 500 and $4, 500, time limits would, in effect, price tens of thousands of New Yorkers out of their homes, " he remarked. But on close inspection, the argument doesn't hold up.

For one thing, the 1.5% vacancy rate is an out-of-date 2023 US Census estimate. Obtain opinions and commentary from our columnists.

For context, the Furman Center on Housing reports more vacancies than NYCHA claims: 2.8% in Queens, for example, and 4.1% in East New York.

And high citywide average rents, pushed up by the priciest neighborhoods, hide the fact plenty of rents are much lower: In The Bronx, for instance, the largest share of available two-bedrooms have rents between $1, 500 and $2, 000.

NYCHA should welcome HUD's lifeline as a chance to create better apply of its massive housing stock.

But its resistance to the federal "work and dignity" concept. It includes supportive services to support residents find and keep employment, reflects the false assumption that low income is a life sentence – and that not even a five-year goal of earning more and moving up the income ladder is feasible for the poor to achieve.

Far better to adopt the principle that any job can be the start of upward mobility – and can provide an escape hatch from our modern poorhouse.

Notably, a low-cost public-housing apartment should allow tenants to save for the day when they leave the projects, thereby making way for others who need short-term assistance.

What's more, HUD's work and time-limit rules wouldn't have to apply to NYCHA's full population.

Meanwhile, the authority could, for example, apply it just to each year's new tenants – who comprise only 6% annually.

Meanwhile, the proposed HUD program isn't one-size-fits-all, but would let housing authorities set the rule based on local housing conditions.

Yet even a five-year time limit targeted only to new tenants would have immense benefits for NYCHA.

It would gradually overhaul the system's dysfunctional culture of deadly gang wars and despair by shifting tenants' focus toward the goal of a post-public-housing future.

It's worked in places like Champaign County, Ill. It has transitioned 1, 100 families out of housing assistance since 2014 using a similar program.

"Housing assistance was never meant to trap work-able individuals on government support their entire lives, " Turner remarked.

"Rather, it should be a temporary foundation to launch into a life of self-sufficiency."

New York City would benefit if NYCHA took his words to heart.

In short, a hand up – not a handout – for public-housing tenants? NYC is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.