Committee on Public Housing

Good afternoon and welcome to today's New York City Council hearing from the Committee on Public Housing. At this point, I'd like to remind everyone to please silence your electronic devices, and at no point is anyone to approach the dais. If you would like to sign up for in-person testimony and haven't filled out a slip, please feel free to fill out one outside at the table in the hallway.

Chair, we're ready to begin. I'm calling this meeting to order.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this hearing in the Committee of Public Housing for New York City Council. I'm Councilmember Chris Banks, chair of the committee, and I'm glad to be joined by my colleagues, Councilmember Marte and Councilmember Escarcion. Today we will hold an oversight hearing on the work orders systems used in NYCHA and PAC developments. Which residents use to request repairs and notify property managers of conditions in their homes.

NYCHA has 2 separate systems, the CBO TRACS and the residents' complaint, and the Maximo TRACS that tracks the work order. NYCHA uses work order data to schedule repairs, direct resources, and measure compliance with the 2019 HUD agreement. A number of the open work orders has risen and fallen across mayoral administrations, but in the past, the city has committed one-time money to bringing the backlog down each time before it rises again.

The work order system is the main way for residents to report that something is— in their household needs repair. But residents and the public have limited ability to see how the system performs. NYCHA's work order system only serves developments that NYCHA manages. However, each PAC property manager uses its own system. So residents have complained that their open work orders disappear from the NYCHA system and that the history of the issue does not carry over to PAC.

NYCHA's work order system serves only developments that NYCHA manages. When a development transfers— transitions to PAC, its work orders leave NYCHA system and are then tracked by private management. It is unclear what happens to the open work orders at that point and whether NYCHA keeps track or communicates with the PAC partners of their progress. And NYCHA's public data on work orders only goes back 1 year, so the public cannot track trends.

You know, residents of both NYCHA and PAC developments have reported that work orders take too long to address. They wait for repairs without knowing when a worker will come, and they tell us that no one updates them On the status of their requests. You know, PAC residents tell us they are unsure where to call or where the property manager— when the property manager does not respond.

We need today's hearing to shed light on a process that has frustrated and confused residents who are trying to live in dignity. A work order system that is managed properly can improve the well-being of residents within days. So this hearing is our chance to hold NYCHA accountable while also learning how PAC partners handle repairs. We're asking NYCHA and PAC partners for more transparency moving forward.

As more PAC transitions occur, residents need a commitment to timely and complete work orders regardless of who manages the building. I would like to first of all thank my staff, Michael Lambert, Kyle Graham, along with the Public Housing Committee staff, Jose Conde, Samia Shell, Charles Kim, Spencer Chun, and James Wu, and Noah Schlossberg for all the work they've put into this hearing.

Next, we will now welcome, as we have done traditionally in my committee since I've become chair of this committee, we will now call up the pre-panelists. So please approach. We have Jeremy Estrada Perez, Keith Ramsey, and Methane Scarsi. Good evening. And we've also been joined by Councilmember Nurse. And we also have Carla Hollingsworth as well, and we have Patricia Dickey who's on Zoom.

We will begin with, uh, Mr. Methane Scorsese. Thank you, good to see you. Likewise, thank you. You have 3 minutes. All right.

Good afternoon, Chair Banks, uh, members of the Public Housing Committee. My name is Mateen Sarsi, and I serve as the co-chair of the Housing, Land Use, and Zoning Committee for Manhattan Community Board 9. I'm also an employee of the New York City Housing Authority. However, I'm testifying today in my personal capacity, and the views expressed in this statement are my own and do not reflect any official policy or position.

Um, I think one of the unique things about my experience having come from City Council is being able to problem solve issues. And there was a period of time in NYCHA where I was directed to look at community centers. And so I think one of the cool things about what NYCHA is kind of doing, at least on the Section 9 side, was a lot of their reorganization really helped to uncover the extent of the disinvestment at NYCHA.

Not just in work orders, but also in HPD violations, which now exist online. And there's a lot more information that tells us how bad the situation really is. Part of the problem that I kind of see, and I saw— I don't know if it's changed in the 3 years that I was working on this particular project— but a lot of the property management operations are very siloed. which worked really well for uncovering a lot of the issues.

But now when you actually have to address them, it actually becomes almost impossible just because now you have a unit with a variety of issues. And if it takes a tradeskill a certain amount of time for each one to follow up, yeah, you're going to see delays for about a year or more. And so one of the things that I think worked really well when we were doing community centers, and I've tried to pass on those notes, is what it actually looks like when we're working with a variety of people.

And so just on the community center side, what it looks like to have trade skills, a variety of trade skills working on a location at the same time with capital projects, because there are things that capital projects does that operations doesn't know about and vice versa. And when you tend to have multiple teams in one room, you tend to see a lot of expertise come back and forth.

And if you use community partnerships, at least in terms of community centers, there's collaborative ways that you could work with people to address a variety of issues. Despite a lot of work order reform that's been ongoing, I'd say one of the bigger issues that we have is the fact that the app itself doesn't have a process for maintenance to actually produce a variety of work orders.

Instead, it gives the resident to, you know, essentially passing the buck for them to figure out their own repairs. So they have to call a planning person who would manage about 3,000 apartments if they're there or if there's a position. And then even within that planning, it's up to the resident to figure out the order in that planning, whether, you know, whether people show up in a certain, like, time set.

And it doesn't seem like the app is connected to the software tool that's currently used. 30 seconds to wrap up. Thank you. And so as, as kind of a result of that, you know, you tend to have these like big gaps in the work orders. A lot of the times there's not a real way to kind of like reach out to certain folks if there's somebody in the planning unit that's not there.

And so again, at the end of the day, my 2 biggest things are the fact that you don't have teams of multiple trade skills dealing with a variety of repairs at once, and a software program that actually connects the app to the property management system. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony. Now we're going to move to Ms. Carla Hollingsworth. Thank you. Good morning, Chair. Pull the mic a little closer, Ms. Hollingsworth. Thank you. Good morning, Chair, members of the committee. My name is Carla Hollingsworth. I'm the secretary of the Stuyvesant Gardens 1 Tenants Association. I submit this testimony concerning conditions residents are experiencing during the ongoing PAC construction at Stuyvesant Gardens 1.

Our fundamental concern is simple: what residents were told they would receive through this conversion greatly differs from what residents are actually receiving. Residents were promised major renovations and improvements, yet work that has only recently been completed is already experiencing serious failures. Residents have temporarily relocated for construction and then returned to apartments represented as newly renovated, and then had to be relocated again because of conditions including serious leaks, sewage backing up into apartments, falling ceilings, And other failures occurring during renovation.

This raises a basic question: if recently completed work is already failing, why are the contractors being permitted to continue moving from apartment to apartment without first determining why that work failed and whether the same problems are being repeated elsewhere? Residents should not become the quality control inspectors for a multimillion-dollar rehabilitation project. Several residents have reported attempting to open newly installed windows only to have the window frame and all come inward and fall onto them.

Residents have subsequently been instructed not to touch or attempt to open their windows. A newly renovated apartment should not be considered complete if a resident cannot safely operate the windows. We want to know who installed these windows, who inspected them, how many failures have occurred, whether all similarly installed installed windows have been inspected and why construction is continuing before the cause of these failures has been addressed.

Residents were initially told that there was no asbestos. Nevertheless, asbestos-containing material has been identified, and residents have observed work in which asbestos-containing material is being encapsulated rather than removed. Residents deserve complete transparency concerning where asbestos-containing material remains what was encapsulated, what was removed, who performed the work, who inspected it, and what procedures will protect the residents and workers if those materials are disturbed during future construction or repairs.

A number of first-floor apartments were altered to provide wheelchair accessibility, even though the residents occupying those particular apartments did not require accessible units. We want to be very clear: accessibility is not the problem. Accessible apartments are necessary and important. The issue is what happened to the existing residents. 30 seconds to wrap it up. Hallways were widened, bathrooms enlarged to accommodate roll-in showers.

As a result, usable space elsewhere in the apartments was reduced. Residents were not shown the altered floor panel— floor plans beforehand. Some residents returned from temporary relocation and discovered that Furniture and belongings that fit into the apartments before construction no longer fit. One resident, after seeing her altered apartment, refused to return because she said that she can't fit.

She's being threatened that she will lose her subsidy if she doesn't go back. You finished? No, I'm not. I'll give you 30 more seconds. Okay, thank you. Residents should not discover permanent alterations to their homes only after the work has already been completed. Residents also have repeatedly requested information concerning the contractors and workers performing construction at Stuyvesant Gardens 1.

We have been told that ETC manages approximately 22 contracting companies working simultaneously at the development. We've repeatedly asked, who are these companies? What is each— what work is each company performing? Who's responsible for supervising and inspecting their work? Who is accountable when that work fails? We have gotten no answers to date. Also, they keep telling us that it's $380,000 per unit to renovate our development.

And if you look at these apartments, somebody needs to look at these apartments because it is not— if $15,000 goes into an apartment, that's a lot. Thank you, caller. Appreciate you. that if you— for written testimony, since you've been able to— unable to complete your full testimony. Okay. All right. Thank you for your testimony again.

Um, we are now going to move on to, um, Keith Ramsey. Yes. Okay. All right. Good afternoon. Uh, our priority Our priority in Eastchester is simple: to make sure resident repair requests are handled quickly, transparently, and thoroughly. To achieve this, we implemented PropertyMeld, a platform that gives residents a familiar streamlined experience, much like that, that NYCHA app.

Through PropertyMeld, residents can submit work orders directly from a phone or computer, track progress in real time, and message maintenance staff. At the same time, we ensure no resident is left behind, that anyone Who prefers traditional non-digital methods can call or visit our onsite office or contact the Wavecrest repair team, and the staff will log and track the request directly into the system for them.

The data shows the approach is working. Since launching Property Melder, Eastchester Gardens, 3,280 work tickets have been created. 98% of those work orders have already been completed. Leaving just 1% currently open. The median response time to a request in the Eastchester Gardens is approximately 24 hours. Over the last 90 days, our average completion turnaround has been 3.3 days.

Most importantly, our residents are rating this service at an average of 4.1 out of 5 stars. A major reason for these results is better communication. When residents put in a request, they can select their preferred appointment windows and receive Automated notifications at every stage. Every message, update, and action is timestamped and documented so nothing falls through the cracks.

Finally, technology is only as good as the people behind it. Accountability rests with our on-site property manager and dedicated management team at each Chester Gardens, supported directly by the Wavecrest repairs team. They monitor and track tickets daily, follow up with the residents, and ensure repairs are resolved properly and promptly. We're proud of the response time and responsiveness and the accountability we have built, and we remain dedicated to continuing this high standard for every resident in Eastchester Gardens.

Also, we have created a joint tracking system that's the first in this city with the New York City— with WavePress, I'm sorry. Wavecrest and the Eastchester Gardens Resident Association called the— we call it— what's the name? It's called the RA Ledger Evaluation List. Yeah, Evaluation List. And what it is, every 2 weeks we get open, stalled, or defaulted tickets, and if there's a problem, we straighten those things out ourselves.

So we get a biweekly list. Ain't no New York City Housing Authority Property manager ever gave us data on the the open tickets. We have done this.

Do you need another thirty seconds or? No, but I would like to if at all possible. I would like to give you somebody in one of these pamphlets of how Eastchester gone was an ugly duckling to a beautiful butterfly. Excellent. Are you a you're a resident of Eastchester obviously? Oh yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you for your testimony.

You're welcome.

Uh, we will, uh, now, uh, Layla Glasgow, if you can approach the dais, and we will go to Jeremy Estrada. Jeremy, you can begin your testimony. All right. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, I am very happy to be here. My name is Jeremy Estrada. I am a housing organizer. I have been a housing organizer for 6 years.

I am from Western Queens. My mother lives in Brownsville. I would like to start with my mother. You see, recently my mother had gotten a work order done for her cabinets. This was done On August 20th, 2026. She was only given one phone call, which was an update that she wouldn't be able to get her kitchen cabinets and sink until October 20th, 2026.

This, as her son and as an organizer, Really, you know, enraged me in a way because how are we going to, you know, how is my mother going to leave her dishes on the floor? Unfortunately, a lot of NYCHA developments suffer with roach issues and rodent issues. I would just like to say that NYCHA needs more funding to repairs and also needs more clarity to the individual tenants that live in NYCHA developments.

From my personal experience, I have done a lot of things with Queensbridge Houses, Astoria Houses, and Ravenswood Houses. And I have seen quite a number of repairs that have not gone That have not gotten repaired in months. One of my— one of the most shocking things that I have experienced was this girl who lived in her apartment.

And unfortunately, her crack— her floor was cracked. And underneath those cracks was asbestos. I bought a test kit for her. And I tested it myself and it came out positive for asbestos. It is clear that, I mean, she put in the work order and she didn't get it until months later. I feel like we need to be more quick with repairs.

It shouldn't really take this long, especially with something as minor as cabinets to something as serious as asbestos. Thank you so much. I yield my time. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now, uh, go to— and thank you for your testimony.

Uh, we will now go to, um, Patricia, Patricia Dickey, who is on via Zoom. Good afternoon, committee. My name is Patricia Dickey and I reside in housing. And when it comes to work orders It's half of the time they're not completed. It's a long delay. You have to sometimes get tickets closed out to get the work that you need right then and there.

There's months apart when you need work. If you call this month, sometimes it's for the next year. And then, then when they come to do the work, they'll say that you wasn't home. They'll close the ticket, and then you have to read and get and call the customer service number again. Half of the time, you're left to do your work on your own or just manage to live month to month just to make sure you can live decent.

Sometimes you can't even get a hold of somebody to get a ticket order number because it's like you stay on the phone countless times and a long time at that, and you spend half of the day. And then when you do get a ticket, they tell you you have a ticket for that already, and you have to then have it closed out, and then you have to find a maintenance worker to close that ticket, and then it leaves you back at square one.

With no work done and not even a work order ticket number. Ms. Dickey, does that conclude your testimony? Absolutely not. I'm sorry, my thing was moving over. That's all right, take your time. Also, I would like to say there needs to be a better system because they saying the app, but when you go in there, it's like app glitches, and sometimes you're not even able to like Get the order number, the work order number, and then when you go and try to repeat the order number to them, they tell you that no longer exists.

And it's like, it's really frustrating because you sitting here and you don't know when somebody's going to come. And then when you expecting somebody to come, next thing you know, the ticket is closed. So my experience with work orders are very like, half of the time I'm unsuccessful and I'm left just to Does that conclude your testimony?

Yes. I hope something can be fixed about this. And like I said, I just really wish it was something better that we can do than to have tickets just keep piling up and no work to be done. Thank you. All right. Well, does that complete your testimony, Miss Dickey? Miss Dickey. Miss Dickey. Yes, that completes it. I'm sorry, my Wi-Fi was doing a little in and out.

Okay, that does that complete your testimony? Yes, it does. Please stay on because I have some questions for you. Okay, no problem. All right, thank you.

Now we will move next to Miss Layla Glasgow. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, uh, Mr. Chair, members of the City Council. My name is Leila Logiziko, and I am the Democratic District Leader representing Chelsea. And I'm here today to speak specifically about the conditions at Fulton Houses and Elliott Chelsea Houses and about what appears to be an increasingly dangerous gap between NYCHA's obligations on paper and what residents are experiencing on the ground.

These buildings, as many of you know, are slated for demolition despite massive and continued opposition from tenants as well as the broader Chelsea community. These buildings have not ceased to be people's homes. And yet NYCHA and its development partner Related Properties have failed to provide adequate response to basic maintenance. Let me give you a couple of examples.

Recently, a tenant became locked into— in her own apartment. Because NYCHA was unable to send a locksmith to untrap the tenant, the fire department had to break her door to get her out. The door has still not been repaired to this day, and she has now been told that the repair will take many weeks and maybe months because a carpenter is not available before at least 2 to 3 months.

That is putting her and her household at risk. At Fulton Building 11, the front entrance door has been broken for weeks. Multiple tickets have been submitted, but repairs still await. These are not cosmetic issues. A functioning apartment door or functioning building entrance are among the most basic elements of safety and security in residential housing. And these conditions are particularly troubling because Fulton and LUHLC are supposedly covered by a special interim program, the Meanwhile Plan, designed specifically to prevent this deterioration.

The Master Development Agreement provides for a Meanwhile or Bridge Plan. NYCHA's own public material described its purpose very clearly. NYCHA would continue to manage the existing buildings until they were vacated While the development partner, Related Properties, would add capacity to NYCHA management through additional security, pest control, building system repairs, and in-unit repairs. NYCHA later described the bridge plan as providing pest management, work ticket closeout, supplemental security, and support for heating and elevators.

None of this has happened. What residents are experiencing does not at all resemble this description. Anecdotally, residents also report calling NYCHA for repairs and being told, in substance, your building has been privatized, we do not handle it anymore, by NYCHA respondents. But NYCHA itself stated as recently as April that it remained the property manager for all Fulton and Lower Chelsea buildings and specifically instructed residents to continue submitting maintenance requests through NYCHA.

There should be no ambiguity for a tenant about who fixes a broken door. There is another deeply troubling pattern. Residents who have declined or resisted relocation report that they— when they submit repair requests, the conversation turns instead into relocation. If I can have 30 more seconds, Mr. Chair. Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Tenants are asked again to move even though they have already said that they do not wish to move, and their repairs are delayed even beyond what is the average.

I will just wrap it up by saying that residents routinely describe an extraordinary lack of timely response. Problems remain unresolved. Calls are passed from one entity to the other. Let me just skip all of that. So, okay, so here are the asks that I would like to place in front of the City Council. I ask that the City Council establish very concrete who is responsible today for every category of repair at Fulton and Lower Chelsea, what services the Meanwhile or Bridge Plan is actually providing building by building, how quickly work orders are being completed, and whether residents slated for relocation are receiving the same maintenance service as every other NYCHA tenant.

Thank you for your testimony. Thank you. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you.

I just have a couple of questions for the panelists, particularly Mr. Estrada and Miss Dickey. Um, and I'll actually start with, uh, Miss Dickey, who resides in Pink Houses. Um, Miss Dickey, uh, since September 9th, you've been living without proper kitchen cabinets and relying on a temporary— using a temporary slop sink, which I believe 19 Gave to you.

How has this setup impaired your ability to manage your household and take care of your family? It's extremely hard. First off, I have diabetes, like I go to dialysis, so I need my function of my kitchen to work because I have to eat in a certain way. And then I have grandchildren that's here and it's like I'm using half of my kitchen and then I can't lift stuff and everything is all scattered and they attend school.

So when I have my counter along with my sink, I was able to put things there because I can only use one of my arms. And it's like I'm left to just be moving halfway across my kitchen and it's really hard. And when NYCHA staff told you that the remaining repairs wouldn't be finished until March of 2027, a 6-month But wait, what reason did they give you for that extreme timeline?

And did they claim they were backed up in any work orders or that they were waiting on skill trades? Yes, they said that they was backed up and that they was also waiting, that there was actually no appointments available until then. And then reason being, we had a paint order. I had a paint order before for them to paint my whole house that was standing, no longer how long I was waiting for that.

And they told me that was the reason of being holed up because I had to have that canceled out. So that took an additional 2 weeks to close because everyone kept sending me around calling this one just for somebody to close out a ticket so I can get the ticket in to match the work that needs to be done.

Okay. Thank you for that. And during their initial visit or any time before my office stepped in, did NYCHA conduct any assessment On whether the living, or whether living with an incomplete kitchen for 6 months posed safety or accessibility risks for you and your family? Never. It was only like when you came in and stepped in, you understood my, like, what I was thinking.

Like, 6 months is a long time. Like you said, the holidays, as we chatted, the holidays is going to be coming up. And as you said, just to sit down and eat as a family correctly. That's a huge part of my day. I want to hear what's going on with my grandkids and sit in my kitchen comfortably.

That's where we link up at and to sit down. But because my kitchen was so dismantled, even when you stepped in, you couldn't understand my housing. No one from housing ever said that. It was just like, here's this sink and that should be fine. And how difficult was it for you to get any clear updates or straightforward answers from the development management before you reached out Very difficult.

I can't believe even the change that happened. I was almost like, wow, I wish I would've reached out to you immediately when this happened because it took a whole lot off of me. Things started to move. They're actually here now prepping and doing my work because you stepped in. This would've never happened. I would've still waited till March and it just would've been dragging.

It's like they're calling now, emailing, Things that should be done in place anyway, but now it's like it's less of a hassle. I feel like that's something that's going to be done. But before, I had to call all day. As soon as the office opened, I'm on my phone trying to see about ticket orders all day. Thank you for your testimony, and I do apologize for your experience.

No problem, and I thank you so much for all that you have done for me. Thank you, Miss Dickey. For Mr. Estrada, um, can you walk us through what your mother communicated to you about her daily routine during those 4 weeks while her kitchen was gutted and how she managed basic tasks like cooking, storing food, uh, with her pantry forced into her living room?

That is correct. Her pantry was, uh, forced into her living room. Beans, lentils, etc., all were left basically behind her husband's chair in the living room, as well as pots and pans. She handled it very difficult, I guess you would say. Her husband suffers from asthma attacks. And when they took out the Cabinets, they left the plaster on there, right?

They plastered over it, great. But the plaster left fine dust particles. So whenever her husband would come into the kitchen, even to go as simple as use the fridge, he would catch difficulties with breathing. So one of the— I believe he caught 3 asthma attacks and had to go to the hospital for one of them. This was also just a sanitary issue as well as just a health issue, especially when it comes to her husband.

And when NYCHA initially informed your mother that they wouldn't return until October 22nd, which I believe is the date, leaving the senior resident's apartment in a state of complete disrepair, For a full 2 months. What explanation, if any, did they give? So during my initial testimony, I said that they communicated very little with her. So, but one of the things that she has told me that, you know, what happened was that they said that they were backed up, which Especially since someone who has a health issue in there should have probably taken priority.

It shouldn't have taken 2 months of waiting to get a repair. And once my office had intervened following the intervention we did on September 14th, NYCHA completed the entire job In just 3 to 4 days. Am I correct? You are correct. I reached out to your office because I knew of the resources that I know of from housing organizing to reach out to the local electeds so they could put pressure on NYCHA.

Does it need to happen? No, it shouldn't need to. But yeah, when we— when I contacted you and gave you my mother's information, we door knocked her together. And I translated for her. I would say we spoke together on Tuesday. Was that day a Tuesday? It was Tuesday. Yes. She had gotten her repairs on Thursday with the cabinets installed, and then on Friday they connected her sink.

Thank you again for answering those questions, and sorry about the experience of your mother, but we're glad we were able to you know, make the calls to get that done. Thank you. To the panel, thank you. Thank you. No, we need them to call NYCHA. NYCHA need to do their job.

Next, we will welcome testimony from NYCHA. I will now turn it over to the committee counsel to give the affirmation. And you may approach. Good afternoon. Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in your testimony before the council members and to respond honestly to council member questions? I do. You may begin your statement.

Chair Chris Banks, members of the Committee on Public Housing, other distinguished members of the City Council, NYCHA residents, community advocates, and members of the public. Good afternoon. I'm Daniel Green, NYCHA's Executive Vice President of Property Management Operations. I am pleased to be joined by Heather Beck, Executive Vice President and Chief Real Estate Officer. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss our efforts to improve the repair process to better serve residents and enhance their quality of life.

Providing and maintaining safe and decent homes is at the heart of our mission, and everything we do is centered around our work to ensure that the Authority remains a vital resource of affordable housing in New York City, today and for generations to come. Despite the significant challenges of stewarding aging buildings that have long been underfunded by the federal government, we have made considerable progress these last several years to become a better landlord, and we are pleased to share some of the details today.

In addition to the operational improvements, We're implementing, we know that addressing the significant capital needs of our buildings is critical to reduce the number of repairs needed, and Section 8 conversions through the— through programs like PACT and the Trust are a primary tool to address capital needs. These programs enable us to renovate buildings from top to bottom and bring in partners for their day-to-day operation.

First, I'd like to explain the work order process at NYCHA. Residents can submit repair requests by calling NYCHA's Customer Contact Center, or CCC, or by using the myNYCHA app or website. A ticket is then created for a maintenance assessment in which a maintenance worker assesses the repairs needed and performs any standard repairs. If complex repairs requiring skilled trades such as paint, plaster, carpentry, plumbing, Or if lead or asbestos testing is needed, the maintenance worker will create tickets for NYCHA staff or vendors to complete the repair.

Residents can then call their neighborhood planner to schedule skilled trades appointments. The creation of the Neighborhood Planning Unit was one of the significant changes set forth in NYCHA's 2021 Transformation Plan. Our vision for significant and sustainable change to NYCHA property management operations as well as our overall organization. Developed as part of NYCHA's response to the 2019 HUD agreement, the transformation plan established a strategic roadmap for addressing the authority's challenges with a particular focus on the agreement pillar areas of heat, elevators, pests and wastes, lead, mold, and inspections.

Through the transformation plan's neighborhood model, we created smaller property management portfolios They're easier to manage and feature increased accountability and resources. And as I noted, we established several neighborhood-based roles to strengthen support for the properties and residents across key operational areas. The Neighborhood Planner and the Neighborhood Secretary help schedule skilled trade work orders and improve coordination and communication with residents.

Neighborhood Service Coordinators provide residents with on-the-ground accessible points of contact, enhancing resident awareness of NYCHA activities, and initiatives, and neighborhood contract managers review vendor work orders to ensure residents receive quality services from contractors. Additionally, NYCHA aligns central office services with the new property management structure. These reforms ensure that frontline leaders are supported and equipped to manage buildings effectively and deliver high-quality service to residents.

Work order reform, another key Transformation Plan initiative, decentralized skilled trades and streamlined the work order scheduling process. resulting in more efficient scheduling and completion of repairs. The programs assign skilled trades to each neighborhood and to developments in some cases, in contrast to the previous borough assignments. This eliminates delays due to travel times and allows skilled trades staff to become better familiar with the unique needs of the developments they serve.

In addition to focusing on reducing wait times and repair backlogs, NYCHA is committed to improving the resident experience of the repairs process. Residents now receive automated communication through mail, email, and/or robocalls at key intervals for maintenance and skilled trades repairs, such as when work orders are created, scheduled, or upcoming. Ensuring that appointments are not missed is central to improving the resident experience.

In partnership with the Federal Monitor, NYCHA has reduced its missed skilled trade appointments to only 2.7% of the 17,000 skilled trade appointments in July 2026. down from 10.9% 2 years ago. In a resident satisfaction survey implemented in 2025 that surveys residents after every work order is completed, 78.6% of residents are reporting satisfaction rates of excellent or good in July of 2026.

NYCHA is using technology to better serve and communicate with residents. For instance, the Pest Management Department launched a text messaging pilot in late 2023. Residents who not— do not answer the phone to confirm appointments receive automated text reminders, resulting in an additional 2,400 appointment confirmations monthly. NYCHA's landmark lead abatement program, Tempo, also uses text messaging to coordinate hotel relocations with residents during the lead abatement process.

Notably, NYCHA partnered with the Federal Monitor and others to build comprehensive performance management dashboards that are updated regularly to track performance in key metric areas, such as overall work order volume and backlog, work order production, service level times, quality assurance, and missed appointment tracking. Our data-driven focus on performance results is also reflected in maintenance performance. Of all trades, NYCHA maintenance workers have the heaviest daily workload, receiving approximately 98,000 new maintenance work order— new work orders per month.

Despite the immense workload, NYCHA is completing basic maintenance repairs in occupied apartments in less than 4 days on average, with its onsite maintenance teams. At the same time, since 2024, NYCHA has been inspecting all of its public housing apartments each and every year, completing basic repairs during the inspection and creating any additional work orders needed for skilled trade repairs.

Despite apartment inspections increasing the number of work orders created, we have reduced the borough-based skilled trades backlog by 14%. Since 2024, down to 282,000 work orders. To put this backlog in perspective, during 2025 alone, 2.5 million new repair work orders were created and 2.49 million were closed or more in limited circumstances canceled. Despite these positive trends, some residents at NYCHA experience particularly challenging repair conditions due to the aging infrastructure and compounding repair conditions.

And so NYCHA created new programs to address apartments with high repair needs. Maintenance CARES provides maintenance workers a means to— of escalating high-need apartments requiring critical repairs directly to me. Since launching in February 2025, 1,164 apartments with major repair work needed have been resolved through the program, with over 100 apartments resolved in just the past 30 days alone.

In the fiscal year 2027 budget, the administration invested $20 million in new expense funding to support NYCHA's Critical Repairs Initiative, or CRI, which will build off maintenance CARES and enable residents to contact a call center to escalate repairs to address severe conditions. CRI is an important component of the Mayor's Housing Plan, inspired by the independent, empathetic case management approach fostered through the Mold Ombudsperson Call Center, or OCC, an independent court-appointed entity that has worked with NYCHA case management staff to assist tens of thousands of residents with leak and mold complaints.

Speaking of mold and leak complaints, our progress in tackling mold and leak work orders is another key example of the advances we're making. Working closely with the OCC as an independent court-appointed data analyst, NYCHA has been able to better prioritize repairs and allocate limited personnel and financial resources. Since our various backlog initiatives began in 2022, In 2023, more than 69,500 mold inspections and mold removal, mold-resistant paint, tub enclosures, and plumbing work orders have been closed as of August 2026 through specialized targeted efforts.

In 2025, we also rolled out the Mold and Leaks Restore and Renew program aimed at adding more skilled trade resources and staffing to further reduce the backlog of skilled trade repairs needed as a result of mold and leaks. The Mamdani administration added an additional $10 million of support to the program over the next 2 fiscal years and is expected to help NYCHA expand the program to more sites in the coming years.

Approximately 4,000 work orders have been completed via the initiative so far. It started last year, and the program's goal is to address 10,000 mold and leak work orders in total over the next 2 years. NYCHA has made significant progress year over year to improve conditions in residents' apartments and buildings, a commitment reflected in the improvement in HUD physical inspection scores for NYCHA properties.

HUD's new inspection standard, known as the National Standards for Physical Inspection of Real Estate, or INSPIRE, were unveiled in 2023 and implemented for NYCHA in 2024. As of September 16th, 2026, I'm pleased to report that our average score has risen to 79.5, up from 32.5 in 2022 and 2023. The number of developments that passed these inspections has also improved to 89% of developments passing. so far this year, up from 15% in 2022 and 2023.

In addition to our operational improvements, NYCHA has carried out several reforms to enhance transparency and accountability in recent years. NYCHA's Quality Assurance Unit, developed in response to the HUD agreement, improves performance and accountability by ensuring that maintenance and repairs are completed to industry standards in alignment with our existing policies and procedures. Additionally, NYCHA's website now features a range of publicly available data and information, service outages, individual work orders, and lead paint testing progress can all be tracked.

Reports are available with extensive information about our properties' capital needs and our progress in meeting the various mandates of the HUD agreement. I'd like to now turn things over to my colleague Heather Beck, Executive Vice President and Chief Real Estate Officer, who will discuss work orders at the PAC developments. Thank you, Dan. As Dan stated, the key to reducing our need for repairs and enabling NYCHA complete repairs as swiftly as possible is investing in our buildings' significant capital needs.

And that's why NYCHA is so focused on pursuing strategies that generate billions of dollars in investment for our portfolio. Through massive infrastructure upgrades and comprehensive renovation— renovations, NYCHA's major housing preservation and stabilization programs like the PACT and the Trust will reduce our building maintenance maintenance and repair needs. This will enable us to focus our resources where they are needed the most.

The PACT program transitions day-to-day responsibility of the property to new private property managers. However, NYCHA maintains an important oversight role of these properties in several key ways. NYCHA maintains administration of the Section 8 subsidy and ensures that PACT partners comply with specific Section 8 subsidy requirements. which includes inspections and waitlist policies. We also conduct site visits to monitor PACT partner activities and respond to inquiries or issues.

If performance gaps are identified, NYCHA works with the PACT partner to identify specific issues as they arise and agree on project solutions, and we monitor improvement and work on those plans. We also analyze work orders for the categories including pests, mold, leaks, elevators, and heat on a monthly basis to ensure that they are being resolved in a timely manner.

Our monthly reporting indicates that work orders at PAC sites in these 5 areas are typically resolved within 1 day, and anyone can view that progress on our website. In 2023, NYCHA launched an online PAC dashboard that displays quarterly data on maintenance and repairs, Tenancy proceedings and construction progress. Partners such as the federal monitor have acknowledged our progress.

Although we have made significant strides forward in our work to better serve all of our residents, yielding tangible results in terms of residents' living experience and the conditions of their homes, we acknowledge that there is still work to do to further reduce NYCHA's work order backlog. With continued transformation as our guide, we will keep innovating and collaborating with all of our stakeholders to enhance our operations and delivery to residents to ensure that they have homes they deserve.

Thank you for standing with us as we strive to improve residents' quality of life, and we appreciate your partnership and support. We are here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you for your statements, your opening statements.

I guess we'll just dive straight into the questions. When it comes to the data, how many Section 9 units did NYCHA have by the end of 2022, end of 2025, and as of today? Thank you, Councilmember, for your question. So at the end of fiscal year 2022, city fiscal year, Um, NYCHA had 162,143 units, 156,502 were occupied.

As of, uh, uh, 2026, I believe was the next year, uh, NYCHA had a total of 145,000 units— 145,347 units, 134,605 of which were occupied. And as of today, NYCHA has roughly the same numbers, 145,347 apartments and 134,531 of those are occupied. And then for the Section 9, what were the open work orders for Section 9 on June— sorry, June 30th, 2022?

2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026? So I have the numbers today. So thank you, Chair, for your questions. I have the numbers today from 2024 through 2026. We will follow up with your office with the earlier years. In 2024, the number of open maintenance work orders was 583,101. As of June 30th, 2025, we had 596,000. And then as of June 30th, 2026, we had 592,381, and that's for corrective maintenance work orders.

And what are the total number of work orders open today in Section 9 and in PAC respectively? Thank you, Chair, for your question. I'm going to first address the Section 9 side. So as of September 21st, 2026, NYCHA had 606 6,583 open work orders broken down by maintenance, borough skilled trades, other crafts, and vendor work orders. And so if I give you the breakdown, that's— I'm just going to give you approximations just to speed it along.

Approximately 17,000 maintenance tickets were open as of, I guess it was as of yesterday, 310, about 311,000 skilled trade tickets, 58,000 work orders assigned to quote unquote other crafts, vendor is $221,371 for that $606,500 total. And what is the total number of work orders, um, including, uh, NYCHA-wide, including Section 9, Section 8, and PAC? And what would the estimated cost be to resolve this, or the total?

Thank you, Chair, for your question. I'm just going to allow Ms. Beck to give the PAC numbers before we get into that next question, just to give it a more Sure, thank you. Again, so we collect work order data on the HUD key pillar areas, so that includes work order information on elevators, heat, leaks, mold, and pests.

So that is, you know, a subset of the work orders that are created at each of our properties, and we collect that information at the end of every month. So the information I have for you is as of August 31st. Okay. Okay. It's very likely that some of the work orders that were opened on the 31st have been resolved and closed, but I just want to make sure that that is clear.

So as of August 31st, there are 409 open work orders in the PACT portfolio among the 82,000 work orders that have been created over the past 6 years. So that's about 1 work order per 100 units. And again, Because our PACT partners are responding and closing or resolving work orders typically within 1 day, we would expect most of those 409 work orders to be closed at this point in September.

Okay. And then the question that I posed just now. So one note before I give this answer. On Section 8, NYCHA does not maintain records of open work orders within the Housing Choice Voucher Program. Apartment conditions are monitored through the regular annual housing quality standards inspection, and as such, we're not able to estimate the total cost to resolve those work orders for Section 8.

For Section 9, I think the critical number here is our physical need assessment, which is the $78 billion, which will be reassessed in a couple years. That really is the number to address comprehensively all the all the root causes and all the physical conditions necessary to address it. On average right now, we're seeing 2.5 million work orders created at NYCHA.

So to put that backlog in perspective, we have 600— on the Section 9 side, we have 606,000 work orders as of today. But every year we're seeing 2.5 million work orders created, and we're addressing about just over 2.4 million of them. With some, with some, you know, small number of cancellations in there. So that level of effort, which we're at, by the way, the highest level of closing repairs that we have been, you know, in any recent year, really, we have to turn to our physical needs assessment because we need those comprehensive repairs in order to see that, that number really truly decline.

When was the most recent needs assessment done? The most recent one, I believe it was done in 2022. If I'm not mistaken, 20— and published in 2023. And published in 2023. And that is the $78 billion. And it will be— and it will be refreshed in, I think, 5 years from then. So 2027. Yep. So that's handled by our asset and capital management.

So they would be able to give you that schedule in more detail. All right. I'm the property management guy. But really, really the volume of work orders that we're experiencing right now is very high. Because one thing I think it's important to note historically, before 3, 2 years ago, we never inspected every apartment every year. So now we're inspecting 100% of our apartments every year.

And when the maintenance worker goes in there, they're creating repair tickets because we're finding conditions that we probably have never found before. We're proactively going into apartments, creating the work orders and prioritizing them. Okay. Sorry. Thank you.

Why haven't we seen the number of work orders in Section 9 developments drop if units are moving to PAC? Thank you, Chair, and it's a very, very excellent question, and I actually jumped— I unfortunately jumped the gun and got a little bit ahead of myself there. I should have waited for your question. You sure did. My apologies.

So what changed really is how work orders are created. At NYCHA, we're seeing a historically high number of work orders created because of the reforms under the 2019 HUD agreement and some of the HUD changes. So right now, again, we're inspecting about 140,000 apartments per year, give or take, to do that, to do those individual apartment assessments.

And when the maintenance worker does that, he or she are going to be generating more tickets. So we're identifying more repair needs that previously probably went unreported. NYCHA was only in the past only doing 50% of those inspections. And if we didn't get into that unit that year, it would be 4 years before the next inspection. Now we're going in every single apartment every single year, and that's generating more work orders.

We're meeting our annual demand. We're doing— Before, let me ask this. I want to know what was the average time of completion for work orders in 2026, and based off of the priority level, including like emergency or non-emergency? Sure. So as of August 2026, the average hours to complete emergency work orders at Section 9 in NYCHA was 11.1 hours, which is well below the 24-hour target.

And the average day to complete non-emergency work orders was 55.6 days. And that encompasses all trades, including maintenance. And maintenance has the top SLA, which is 4 days. And NYCHA-wide, how many work orders have been open this year? For longer than 6 months, 1 year, 2 years? Yes. So I have— thank you, Chair, for that question. So overall, so 15% of the work orders that are open right now are between 6 months and a year.

Give me a raw number. Raw number. Okay. I'll give you that raw number. Give me one One moment, I have it here. So 181 days to— that is 90. So we have 93,000 work orders that have been— Give me 6 months, give me a year, and then give me 2 years. Okay. So on 6 months, it's 93,128 work orders are open that are older than 6 months.

And then for 1 year, we have over 1 year, we have 331,000. About 332,000 work orders that are open longer than 1 year. The majority of those work orders are for paint. And what about 2 years? So 2 years, it's— I have the total number more than 1 year. I don't have it broken down by 2 years, but I can definitely follow up with that information.

I have it. So the 331,000 is anything older than a year. So it would include anything older than 2 years. Yes. But that's the total number. But I don't have that broken, broken out. But I could get a little bit more details in terms of what those work orders are to give you the breakdown. Because that's kind of helpful to us.

Let me then move to this question. And what is the breakdown for the total parent work orders and total child work orders? Sure. So of the 606,000, I'm just going to say 606,000 just because it is a little bit easier to roll off the tongue. Let's say 1,000. 110,000 are parent work orders and 496,000 approximately are child work orders.

And then I'd like to give you the breakdown by by craft because that's important for understanding the breakdown for skilled trades. So right now our bricklayers have about 7,800 tickets open. Our carpenters, which we heard about some challenges that we have with carpentry tickets, about 83,000 open. That's actually down from where it was 2 years ago by about 4,000 work orders, but have about 82,000, 83,000 open right now.

Our electricians have 13,000 work orders open. Our glaziers who handle our glasswork have 2,700 tickets open. Our painters, and this is a critical number here, 150,000 work orders open for painters, and that's just NYCHA painters. Plasters is about 37,600, plumbers 16,700, and roofers 50,000. Now a lot of those work orders were just generated yesterday, but some of them are aging.

For exterminators, we have about 10,100 tickets open. For maintenance, we have about 16,700 tickets open. And putting that in perspective, we get 98,000 maintenance work orders per month. For the other crafts, which can include heating, which can include lead personnel, is about 47,000. For vendors, and this is another key number here, it's 221,000. And that's a big, big part of the 1-year-plus, 2-year-plus backlog is the vendor tickets, which I can talk about if you'd like me to.

Days to complete, like the skilled trades or vendor work orders increased from 77 in fiscal year 2022 and to 130 in fiscal year 2025. What happened? So the days to complete complete have come down for trades this year. What has increased is the overall SLA for trades, which is— so there's 2 different metrics that we use to analyze time at NYCHA.

First is the days to complete, and that will look at all the work orders that we closed in a given day or time period and how old those work orders were upon the date that they were completed. So that gives a good perspective of the work that we're getting done, where we're getting work done, how old is that work that we're getting done.

The second metric that we use to measure time is the SLA, and that's very important because that incorporates open tickets. So the open tickets age, and a lot of them are over that 1-year-plus category. They age, and they're tickets that are mainly paint tickets, but also floor tile tickets and some other big chunks that age for a long time due to resource constraints and due to also some of the challenges logistically with doing some of that work.

For example, floor tiles where we have about 57,000 tickets open. Those age because we need money for asbestos, which we— the City Council has provided to us and the state has also provided to us. But without that funding and also without relocation, we're not able to get that huge number done. But I can give you the data stickably as of today, which is illustrative of some of the improvements for the trades.

Okay. And when it comes to mold and leak backlog, it peaked at 97,136 in year 3 of the monitor And stood at about 62,000 in Q1 in 2026. How many of those 62,000 are older than a year? Thank you, Council Chair, for your questions. So as of September 14th, 2026, the total number of work orders for mold and leak— so mold and leak— is 63,972, of which 21,968, approximately 34%, are older than 1 year.

Skilled tradecrafts account for a total of 58,295 of those work orders, which is like 91%. And how many of the 62,000 are like child work orders waiting on availability of a skilled trade worker, or which is a trade bottleneck? About 58,000. 58,000 are skilled trades. All right.

I'm going to come back to my line of questions, and I'm actually going to turn it over to Councilmember Encarnación. Thank you, Chair. Hello, everyone. I'm Councilmember Elsie Encarnación. I represent District 8, East Harlem and the South Bronx, the most concentration of NYCHA developments in a district. I have a few questions. In your opening statement, in regards to work order reform, you talked about decentralizing the skilled trades, assign— and assigning skilled trades to each neighborhood.

How do you define a neighborhood? Thank you, thank you, Councilmember, for your question. So when, when the transformation plan took effect in, in 2022-2023, NYCHA was moved into about— currently now it's 28 neighborhoods. So, it was originally 30. We've since gone down to 28. It's geography, really. So, geography. So, for example, Neighborhood 5 in Manhattan includes East River, Wagner, Jefferson, and Wilson.

So, all neighborhoods in close proximity to one another, which reduces travel time amongst the trades. So that was the predominant factor. Some neighborhoods, given like where NYCHA are located, are a little bit larger than others. But generally, we try to group things as geographically connected as possible. Are those the ones that you just named? Because they're all mine.

Are they all in— are they the only ones in that neighborhood? Yes. So that is Neighborhood 5 in Manhattan. So what that neighborhood— and I'll just use that as an example. So Neighborhood 5 has a neighborhood administrator who oversees the neighborhood, and then each of the 4 property managers at those properties report to the neighborhood administrator. The neighborhood administrator also has, who reports to him, a neighborhood planner and a neighborhood planner secretary.

So they are responsible for scheduling all of the skilled trade work for that neighborhood. Then— Do they all have the same amount of Roughly, yeah. We try to have about 5,000, about 5,000 units altogether in each neighborhood. So each, each neighborhood has— some neighborhoods have 3 developments, some neighborhoods have 5. I think our largest neighborhood is Neighborhood 4 in Brooklyn, which is Hughes, Van Dyke, Brownsville, Woodson, like, because it has everything is so close together.

So yeah. So you also mentioned that in your opening statement, and they're making real progress. You mentioned that NYCHA maintenance workers have the heaviest daily workload, but they're also completing basic maintenance requests in less than 4 days. What is considered a basic maintenance request? Thank you so much, Councilmember, for your question. It's an excellent question. So about 7 out of 10 times, we're completing the repair with the maintenance worker.

And so what that could be is I have a leak under my sink, I have a I have an issue with opening my window. I have a stoppage, a common one, a stoppage in my tub or toilet, so the water is not going down, or my toilet's running too much. So that would be, quote unquote, a standard repair.

We actually define simple repairs because when we do our 100% apartment inspections, we're actually required to go actually do the simple repairs when we do the inspection to convenience the resident, so we're not creating follow-up tickets for the maintenance workers. We also do the 5 Alive. So when we go in there, we're going to check the CO alarms, we're going to check the fire safety sticker, the window guards, and some other safety-related items there to make sure that the apartment is safe.

And those are the core of the basic maintenance work. But every trade has certain, what we call at NYCHA, failure class problem codes in Maximo, in the system, of what they're assigned, what they're expected to do. And so maintenance workers have probably the largest number of those failure class problem codes in their response. Yeah. And how many job vacancies do you have in the skilled trades unit?

Thank you, Councilmember, for asking. So as of today, we only have 44 vacancies. We have 1,750 skilled trades, and currently as of today, we have 44, which is one of the lowest numbers that we've had for a while. The highest trade that we have is plasterers, which is about 14 vacancies as of today. Plasterers, we've talked about it at prior council hearings, It's a unique trade to NYCHA, the amount of plaster work that we have.

So, going outside of NYCHA to find those individuals is difficult. So, that's why we started a plaster academy. On the maintenance side, I think we have about 30 vacancies as of today. We have 750 maintenance workers citywide and just 30. So, we're at very low vacancy rates overall. Yeah. And you have the budget if you had a line of people outside that were ready to take on that job, you have the budget to pay those people and fill those vacancies.

Yeah, we're pretty fast. I mean, I think when I pulled the numbers in August, we had like 60 vacancies, and now it's down to 44. It's cyclical because we just also went through what they call a skilled trade pick, where trades are moved around the city based on seniority. It's a thing that we have with the unions contracted.

But yeah, we're very low on vacancies, and that is also true for our caretakers, our janitorial staff as well. So we're able to fill things very quickly with our HR department. Can I ask one more question? You may. Thank you. I know earlier in your conversation with the Chair, you talked about the inspections that you have that you now do yearly.

Yes. These are done by NYCHA staff, the maintenance staff, you said? Who does the inspections? Predominantly NYCHA maintenance staff. So there's a special work order, apartment inspection work order, that they're trained to perform. So they're doing the vast majority. We did bring in a vendor We brought in a vendor during the first couple years because we were concerned.

We'd never had— before 2 years ago, we had never inspected every NYCHA apartment. So it was kind of historic for us. We brought in a vendor during the first couple years to help us. But right now we're really pretty self-sufficient. We also do have— it's a very, very difficult inspection regime by HUD. If we fail our Inspire inspection, we actually have to reinspect all the units within 60 days.

But you're inspecting yourselves and Is there anyone outside of NYCHA who inspects yearly or regularly any NYCHA properties or NYCHA units? Yes, thank you, Councilmember, for that question. Yes, that's the Inspire inspectors. So those report to HUD REAC, which is a division of HUD. And that's yearly? They're yearly, yes. If you get a certain score, they skip a year.

So if you get above an 80, they'll skip one year. If you get above a 90, they'll skip skip 2 years. And as I said, right now approximately 87% have passed their 2026 Inspire inspections. And I really attribute the passage rate to the apartment inspections. I think it's been transformative because now we're getting into every unit, and such as the conditions that were described by some of the panelists, which are very unfortunate, we don't want to have folks with missing cabinets.

We don't want to have folks with temp sinks. So now they can escalate those repairs directly to prioritize them in our very lengthy scheduled process because we want those folks to go first. We want to better prioritize. So through the repairs of the apartment inspections, our really diligent work of our maintenance workers, and prioritizing, I think we're starting to see a trend of better scores the past 2 years.

And I think we're doing— we're about 120,000 inspections deep this year. So we've already done 120,000, got about roughly 20,000, a little bit less to go. I think we're going to come very close to hitting the actual 100% this year. I think we're going to see this really be transformative for our residents.

I'll be honest, I don't know how you're hitting those numbers, if I'm being extremely honest with what I've been seeing on the ground in some of these apartments and knocking on some of these doors. It is extremely difficult for just all of our council staff. A large number of our constituent services are essentially helping push these work orders, taking— I mean, if I look at my staff's notebooks, it's all work order numbers.

It's all of them following up, calling. Poor Brian, hearing from me every single day. It is a lot of work that our offices are assisting with and helping with, and a lot of it is in-unit issues that we're seeing in apartments. And so I am very surprised that these inspections are going as well as they are. I know that you guys are working hard, but— Thank you.

But it's a really big issue, and a lot of these issues are just prevalent and really creating an unsafe environment for the people that are living in these apartments. It just is. I mean, we see it day in and day out, especially with the amount of NYCHA that we have in our development. It's really, really difficult to believe. believe that we would have this high of a percentage of passing inspection rates for these dilapidated, in many cases, apartments.

And I just have to be on record saying that. You know, thank you, Councilmember. And, and I just want to, um, just be clear, uh, I'm by no means a mission accomplished person. Uh, this— I, I'm at a development every day except for today because I'm here, uh, because I want to see the conditions on the ground, what the residents are experiencing, what staff are experiencing, and it's extremely tough conditions.

I visit apartments every week, and there are unacceptable conditions. What we're trying to do, though, is proactively identify those uninhabitable conditions and connect those resources with our trades, with our resources to get it done. That's why we started Maintenance Cares, so any maintenance worker in the city can email me and my team so that we can prioritize apartments like you see and your staff see every day.

We don't want folks living in those conditions, and then we try to work with residents to address that. The other thing that we're really excited about is, is the Critical Repairs Initiative, which is going to allow residents through a formalized process to escalate non-mold and leak repairs. They can already escalate mold and leak through the OCC, but now missing cabinets, temporary sinks, damaged floors through the CRI program, residents are going to be able to leverage off of that and come into us.

And we have some additional money as well. to support us on the overtime, which is critical for doing many of these jobs as well. So we're very appreciative to the administration for supporting the CRI program, and we think it's going to be also transformative to again push those repairs because we don't want folks living in those conditions.

We want to find them and correct them. I'm just saying that it's not our staff's responsibility or job to be continuously following up on NYCHA work orders. It's also not really the residents. Like, these things should be working seamlessly. You guys should be wanting— property managers should have access to work orders from the planning unit, understanding, calling, and reaching out.

That is part of the job of property management, right? We are not and should not be the ones, and neither should that be falling on residents' backs to be constantly calling and following up and figuring out where their work orders are, when a person's coming, if they came missing work. It is an extremely intensive, on- on the residents, on our staff in order to do this.

And I think that there has to be a more fluid method for you guys to be actively going out and following up on these work orders and not the other way around. Understood. Thank you, Councilor. Thank you, Councilmember. Uh, we are also joined by, um, Councilmember Osei, who's joined us via Zoom. All right.

I guess I'm going to move forward to my line of questions, back to my line of questions. Understanding Maximo. How do work orders typically specify response times for repairs in the Maximo system, including for emergency and non-emergency work orders? And also, how does the Maximo represent the required practices for maintenance worker to follow up on specific repairs?

Thank you, Councilmember, for your question. Just bear with me for one moment. Okay. So— and I should say thank you, Chair, for your question. So we have 9 Priority levels for work orders. And I'll start with the highest priority, and I'll move down the group. So, we first have what we call a Priority 9 work order, which is defined as a, quote unquote, super hazard work order.

An example could be an elevator out of order with a passenger stuck, or a gas leak. And so, the response time for Priority 9s should be within 1 hour. Okay. is what we're going to target for under our procedure manual. For hazard, for the next classes would be a Class 8 or a hazard, which are really pretty rare.

Class work orders that are Priority 8, we're talking about sidewalk shed violations or rubbish violations by the Department of Sanitation. The next category is very important, which is Priority 7, which is a 24-hour response period. And this is deemed a critical work order, but we basically on a day-to-day just define it as an emergency. The key thing for priority 7 is just leak from above.

So leak work orders would be priority 7s, stoppages priority 7s, CO detectors that are not working, exit signs in those. But the biggest one that we focus really intensively on is the leaks in the— Similar flooding condition work orders. Priority six is really reserved. The predominant one is mold and mildew. So that was kind of a category that was used under the bias case.

So mold leaks is priority six work orders. Priority five is is stoves again not really seen that much. The the other big category I'll just skip to it is priority three, which is the routine. routine work orders. So painting, you know, non-emergency type repairs. So Maximo prioritizes every work order. The dashboard that I actually have up right now in Maximo, you can refresh it any minute and it will pull up any new ticket that has been created under those priority codes.

Our superintendents and assistant superintendents, one of their primary jobs is to monitor Maximo throughout the day to see what tickets are coming in and then assign them to the maintenance work orders based on their priority. So when the main— I'll pause. Yeah, and when it comes to supervision obligations from supervision represented in Maximo, how are the supervisory inspections of work orders logged?

So the supervisory inspections are logged through Maximo. It's different. It's an inspection ticket called an IN ticket. And so So, we've done a lot of work. There's different types of inspections depending on different types of work orders. Over the past couple of years, we've worked with the Monitor to greatly increase the completion of skilled trade supervisory inspection work orders.

It was low 40s, 50s. Now we're up in the high 70s, 80s percents for completing the supervisory inspections. And that's actually completing the inspection, getting, you know, going into the apartment and attempting it. On the maintenance side, we do, we do have follow-up work orders for like mold and leaks. We do a quality insurance inspection as part of the BIAS procedure.

Right. And that applies to a large group of work orders. We're actually rolling out a new inspection work order for maintenance workers for the apartment inspections. So the superintendent will get a certain number of work orders. They'll get it— the superintendent will actually get a work order assigned to them through Maximo on their handheld. And they'll have to go out and check apartment inspections that were done by the maintenance worker to make sure they're being done properly.

Okay, and when it comes to notification protocols represented in Maximo, how are notices to residents logged? So Maximo does have a communication log function in it. So notices should be given in advance of the work order. They're auto-printed and delivered to the resident in some cases emailed and mailed to the resident, especially in advance of skilled trade appointments.

Maintenance tickets where our turnaround time is so fast that we're really coming, you know, we're really contacting the resident and letting them know that we're coming, or we're, you know, we're coming right soon after the ticket was created. But also in Maxima, we are able to call the resident if they have an updated phone number in the CBIL system.

Maxima links to Siebel so we can actually call the resident and that logs into the communication log of Maximo so we can make sure that— that's a big issue. So missed appointments has been a big focus for us on skilled trades. And how does NYCHA use the data from Maximo to assess like work orders for non-conformance? I mean, we look at— my staff and I, we review Maximo every single day, minute, you know, from from my position down to the borough VPs, to the skilled trade directors, et cetera.

And when it comes to vendors, how does NYCHA use the data information from Maximo to assess the vendor issues? That's still an area that we need to, I think, develop more and work on. We're working with the Monitor on a vendor manage— better vendor management protocol. We do have a statement of services that has to be signed by our superintendents and overseen by our neighborhood contract managers. which arose a couple of years ago from the scandal that we had with DOI recommendations.

So, but data is definitely something that we could leverage more on the vendor side, which is— I just wanted to note, vendor is predominantly with, in my world, paint and tile. That's the vast majority of it. And how does NYCHA use— well, when it comes to the performance indicators, does NYCHA get it from the work orders? Yes, yes.

And has Maximo improved such that NYCHA can determine work order, the work order trend, or asset needs based on work orders in the system? We do use it for— we do use it for those assessments. From my— in my world, on the property management healthy home side, we use it definitely heavily for lead abatement planning and protocols.

We also use it for the Building Line Initiative protocols to identify lines that have high numbers of leak work orders to prioritize them for repair. Okay. And when it comes to like work order closure without repair, in 2016, after the Butler House fire, DOI inspected 240 apartments in 5 developments to check whether the maintenance staff were inspecting and reporting safety items on work And they found that staff had falsified documents claiming to have performed safety checks they had not performed.

What controls did NYCHA put in place after the report to confirm that, confirm that, and what worker enters a work order that matches the condition of the apartment? Thank you, Chair, for that question. That's a report that predates my time a little bit at NYCHA, but I can talk about the HUD agreement. I was the Chief Compliance Officer for NYCHA for the first few years of the HUD agreement.

We've put in numerous controls at Maximo to prevent deceptive practices, including photograph requirements, labor logs. Okay. In addition, we have a quality assurance team, a compliance team, an environmental health and safety team that also follow up on work orders to check on conditions. And if any malfeasance is found— Is timestamp also used? Everything is time— everything is addressed in Maximo that, as far as I understand that term, timestamp.

Location verification as well? Location, yes. Yes, each work order is somewhat different on location. Yes, location, everything is tied to an apartment string, a room, you know, in the apartment. So how many closed work orders did NYCHA audit by physical inspection in 2025, and what share were found to be inaccurately reported?

Thank you, Chair, for that question. I don't have that number for 2025, but I do have the number for the first quarter of 2026. If you can get us those numbers and Sure. You can give us another 2026. So 2026, if I recall correctly, it's in my notes but I won't— about 3,500 inspections were done, QA inspections were done, and about 3% were found to be unsatisfactory.

And that would then require a follow-up by the property to address the condition. Okay. And in December of 2020, the DOI report reported 163 letter-based lead abatement work orders with false signatures of an EPA-certified supervisor and said it had believed that the true number was much higher. Can a work order in Maximo be signed or closed under a supervisor's credential or by someone other than that supervisor?

So thank you, Chair, for your question. I am familiar with that, and I— most— much of my time at NYCHA has been building the lead paint abatement program. So that the inspections that you're referring to, I believe, in DOI were things that were submitted to HPD for apartment exemptions, the HPD apartment exemption process. They weren't really associated with Maximo.

What we have done in Maximo, though, is for lead abatement, we now have strict closure requirements. So all of the required reports must be uploaded by the NYCHA staff and the vendor and verified before they can be closed out. Okay. We also are audited year Uh, every 6 months on lead abatement by Environmental Health and Safety, and we're under the federal HUD agreement, uh, which allows the monitor full access to our lead abatement files.

Since 2020, uh, how many employees have— has NYCHA disciplined or terminated for falsifying work order entry by year? Uh, Chair, I apologize, I don't have that data broken down by year, but that'd be something we'd have to follow up on. Yes. How many referrals has NYCHA made to DOI's Inspector General for NYCHA for suspected work order falsification since 2020, and how many were substantiated?

Uh, thank you, Chair, for that question. I don't have the answer, and some of that would have to come from DOI, but I will say that we work with— How many complaints of falsified or improperly How many of those work orders did NYCHA receive from residents in fiscal year 2025, and how many of those were investigated? Thank you, Chair.

I don't have that number today. That would be— but our compliance department and DOI can provide those numbers. Do PAC partners have any obligations to report suspected work order falsification to NYCHA or DOI? I'm going to ask Ms. Beck to answer this question. So PACT partners are reporting to us on that monthly basis in those different pillar areas.

Again, we are tracking work order resolution through that reporting process. How many such reports have you received? We receive a report from every team every month of the year. How many reports have you received? So we started collecting reports for the projects that had been Have you received any reports on falsification? No, we don't receive or collect reports on falsification.

From the RADPAC?

Correct. Gotcha. In 2022, NYCHA launched what we call the Operation Mold Cleanup to close out mold and leak tickets left from COVID the COVID period. period, by contacting residents by email and phone. How many tickets were closed that way? So not just by— that's not Operation Mold Cleanup. Thank you, Chair, for that question. That's not the full definition of Operation Mold Cleanup.

So we do have a program verification program that we do with our independent data analyst, which is a court-appointed analyst under the federal— by a federal court. So in that program, which is a different program, we've reached out to 11,000 residents and they verified approximately a third of the work is no longer needed. And so those, I think it's roughly around 3,000, those tickets were closed with the oversight of that independent data analyst, which again reports to the federal court.

Another approximately 7,000 to 8,000 were still required, work was still needed, and so Those would be scheduled. Operation Mold Cleanup was an effort that we looked at backlog cleaning tickets and tub enclosure tickets that we needed to address that were aging and were contributing to significantly poor conditions in units. So, through that effort, which continues today, we addressed over 30— about 35,829 tickets through Operation Mold Cleanup, which is a program to expedite and prioritize certain mold work.

Overall, since 2022, we've closed out 678,752 mold and leak work orders. So the Monitor's first report in 2019 found tickets closed with the repair being made, and closure rules changed after that. Is today's open work order count a true picture of the conditions that then No, I don't think— that's an excellent question, Chair. I think things have dramatically changed since 2019.

The closure rules, especially around leak and mold, are some of the strictest closure rules, if not the strictest, at NYCHA. They cannot be closed unless we physically get into the apartment and verify the work. That was why that 11,000 pilot program that we did with our independent data analyst was so important because it was overseen carefully and was trying to look at some of these older tickets.

Because sometimes folks get frustrated when we show up to verify and have to get into the apartments to verify like a paint ticket. A significant portion of the open mold and lead tickets are for painting. And we want to, you know, we have to get in there and verify them. So the rules have dramatically changed, which makes it harder to bring the backlog down.

Right. Because to actually get in, we have to get, you know, to actually close the work order, we have to get in there and verify it, which is a good thing too. Definitely not complaining. Definitely something that, you know, that keeps us, you know, aggressively trying to work into, get into folks' apartments to see if the work is needed.

Does NYCHA publish work order closures without repair separately from repairs made? Thank you, Chair, for that question. I don't know if we do. We could. We could. I have that data and happy to share it. We could. In 2026, this is not the full picture, but— Why is it not published? That I don't know. And I don't know if it is or isn't.

Honestly, I don't know if it's published, but it certainly is data that we have. And we have provided, I do want to note, to the Oversight and Investigation Division of the council, We provided about 7.5 million work order transactions and all of the underlying data to the OID at the City Council to begin to understand some of the closure requirements.

And besides the monitor, who outside of NYCHA checks whether a closed ticket was repaired in Section 9 or on the PACT sites? Thank you, Chair, for that question. So on the Section 9 side, it would be the federal monitor, DOI, and then the 3 compliance departments developed and created by the HUD agreement. And on the PACT side, who inspects whether a ticket is— So under the PACT program, we are under the same requirements for the— most of the same requirements for BIAS.

So for mold and leak work orders that are reported to NYCHA, those are then shared with an independent mold analyst and the independent data analyst. And the independent mold analyst will go out to inspect closed leak and mold work orders on a monthly basis, and they're required to— Independent analyst comes from— It's a court-appointed independent analyst. Yep.

And those are, those are done on completed work orders, and they have to complete a statistically significant number of apartments each month.

When it comes to getting an expense— an inspection, Pursuant to Local Law 127 of 2021, 311 must take NYCHA repair complaints. How many 311 complaints— sorry, how many 311 calls or complaints were sent to NYCHA in fiscal year 2025, and how many became work orders? Thank you, Chair, for that question. So NYCHA does not track the number of calls to the CCC that were routed through 311, um, they would treat them like another call and they would create a work order based on the— okay.

I do want to— IMA, the independent mold analyst, also is another inspector at Section 9 developments, and they've been inspecting us for, you know, numerous years. When it comes to PAC sites, if a tenant finds a property manager to be unresponsive, uh, and calls 311 about a water leak, what happens next? Yeah, so So residents, all of our residents at PACT properties have the ability to call 311 to request an inspection.

To my knowledge, an inspector would come out and review the conditions. If a violation is issued, the PACT partner is required to open a work order for that, and we will collect that information in our monthly reporting. That information is then independently verified by the independent mold analyst. And I'd just say, in addition to 311, residents at PAC sites can also call NYCHA and request a separate HQS inspection if they're having issues with work order resolution.

And if a NYCHA tenant calls 311 about a water leak, does HPD come out? Thank you, Chair, for that question. No, HPD would refer to NYCHA to investigate. So how would a NYCHA tenant get an HPD Uh, HPD— I'm sorry, I didn't mean to speak over you. Uh, thank you, Chair, for that question. Uh, so, uh, HPD inspects cases that come through the court system.

So the HPD, uh, uh, the— a judge assigned to an, uh, an housing park case— Can an HPD action bring forth a, uh, a, a response? Yes, yes. And so actually, under a new state law HPD is, is giving NYCHA a data download of its inspections of NYCHA every, every day now. Before, we used to only get paper records and have to manually enter it, and that was just up until last summer.

We now get a daily download, and that creates the work orders or creates basically a work order off of the HPD inspection. Okay, and once HPD, once HPD inspects and writes a violation, Does NYCHA make the repair, or does the tenant have to go back to housing court? Well, we have— we should be making the repair in accordance with the stipulation in housing court.

So we have a court-ordered repairs procedure of how to handle those HPD-generated repairs that we basically have to work with the resident on access dates, or if the resident so stipulates, have the access dates put forth in the stipulation. Can you provide data for FY 2022, FY '23, '24, and '25 on housing court cases initiated by NYCHA tenants to address unresolved maintenance conditions, including the number of HPD violations associated with those cases?

2, the number of violations that were corrected by NYCHA after the court filing? And 3, the number of violations that remained unresolved until a court order, stipulation, or the housing court intervention was issued? So thank you, Chair, for that question. I have part of that data today for the past year. We'll have to follow up on the earlier years, but I can give you the data from September 2025 to present.

Okay, if you can— Sure. Yes. Appreciate it. We have— do you want to give you for— Yeah, well, You have 25, right? Yeah, I have 25. Okay. Yeah, so, uh, so we have, uh, there were 551 orders to show causes, uh, commencing an HP case received by our law department. Um, of that, um, out of those cases, there were 5,312 total violations received.

Um, that also, that could actually include a little broader because some, some violations might come through non-payment cases. where a court might also order an HPD inspection in a non-payment case if there's a cross-claim for open repair tickets. Um, so, uh, and, and then roughly about 31% of the violations have been closed based on our work order system records.

Now, we're still working— this is a new process, right? It just came about, so we're still working with HPD. So that number is subject to change, but that's where we're at today. Well, we now know that violations from those inspections basically only started showing up in HPD online, I believe since October of 2025. But after the settlement with the New York LAG, why did it take the lawsuit to become transparent?

Thank you, Chair, for that question. I can't— I wasn't involved in that lawsuit, so I can't speak to the to its outcome. But I will say that we strive, we strive to be transparent on, on these matters and more transparent. So a lot of the issue might be data, um, you know, and make— now we have much better data.

As I said, just last year we were getting paper copies of these reports, which are obviously not sufficient to properly track. Would NYCHA object to HPD inspecting a sample of closed tickets each quarter and publishing them? Publishing what it finds? Thank you, Chair, for that question. We're willing to work and talk about anybody to come and check out our buildings.

We want our residents to be safe, and we want to make sure that we're transparent. Right. Well, thank you for that. Given NYCHA's history, why should it be the only landlord in the city that inspects itself? Thank you, Chair. I would just say I can't answer that from a policy perspective, but what I will say is we're not— we don't only just inspect ourselves.

We do have HUD inspections that are, that are from outside entities. We also do have the federal monitor and the independent mold analysts and other outside entities inspecting. Would NYCHA be open to inspecting apartments in response to 311 complaints and reporting what it finds? Thank you, Chair, for that question. Definitely something I'll take back and speak to the NYCHA leadership about.

Has NYCHA had any conversations with HPD about creating a process that gets a tenant an inspection and a repair without having to make 2 trips to housing court? Thank you, Chair, for that question. I am not familiar with any communications, but I know that we've been talking with HPD a lot about this new, this new daily data upfeed and this new process that we're engaged in.

Okay.

When it comes to targets for work orders, open work orders, what does NYCHA consider What do you consider a manageable number of open work orders? And yeah, you can answer that question first. What do I consider— what does NYCHA consider as a manageable number for open work orders? Thank you, Chair, for that question. It's an interesting question.

I think right now we are meeting our annual demand of the work orders that are coming Obviously, we also have some new initiatives that I'm very happy about, particularly the MLRR program that allowed me to hire 47 new trades to target mold and leak work orders over 100 days. I'm also very happy with having programs such as CRI and Maintenance CARES to prioritize critical repairs.

I can't give you a number. Obviously, we want the work orders to be as low as possible. Right. you're receiving 200,000 work orders per month, 2.5 million work orders per year, that's the number that we have to manage. That's the number that I'm asked to manage. And so that's what we're going to continue to do to the best of our ability.

Thank you for that. You know, work order reform was launched in 2022 to allow residents to schedule multi-trade repairs through neighborhood planners. More efficiently. Under the old system, residents were prevented from scheduling the next step in the repair process until the previous step was completed. How many developments are operating under these reforms today, and how were the days to complete repairs in those developments affected compared to other developments not operating under these reforms?

Thank you, Councilmember. Thank you, Chair, for that question. All of our properties are operating under the neighborhood planner model. So we have 28 neighborhood planners assigned to the 28 neighborhoods with the same protocols and same resources. So repair times for our trades have improved. missed appointments have significantly dropped. So again, we're about 17,000, 18,000 appointments per month for the trades.

Okay. And right now, missed appointments is down to our lowest level, I caution to say ever, at 2.7%.

So we're only missing less than 500 appointments per month out of the 17,000 scheduled appointments. A lot of the work is also being completed early. We do give long repair times because we only have a certain number of trades and a certain number of hours in a day. And then we do have an overtime budget as well, but we have to sequence things in accordance with how long a job takes.

Each job has a job plan and we have to schedule things in accordance. So plaster, for example, could be a multi-day job. We have 37,000 open plaster tickets. We can't schedule them all next week because we just don't have enough plasters. We have 245 plaster teams, I believe, around that. So it's— So what's the normal wait time?

So right now, I looked at this, about 7 months on average right now. That's how far we're scheduled out. But what we do every day is sometimes folks don't— sometimes folks are not available for their appointments. So if, for example, a carpenter shows up and a resident is not ready, if they say, I am ill or whatever, that carpenter doesn't just go sit on his hands for the rest of the day.

He goes and tries to find So the average is 7 months wait time. So in an ideal situation, how long would it take to get to a tenant? Obviously, I'd like to get those repairs done as soon as possible. You know, 3, 4 months, you know, would be— obviously, everybody wants their repairs done tomorrow. And I'm sure that when I say 3, 4 months, folks are going to say that might not be reasonable.

But what we also try to do is is look at prioritization factors. So is it something— is this an urgent repair that we have to get done, push to the top of the priority schedule, or use overtime to address? We also do— Like in a situation like Miss Dickey or Miss Estrada, where they were— they put in a ticket and they waited, they got a date of maybe 7 months out.

To actually have a completion of their kitchen. Would you say that is acceptable? Thank you, Chair, for that question. It doesn't sound acceptable, but it's the reality of where we are with the repairs that we have today and the number of trades and staff that we have. So we have 81,000 carpenter tickets, so we have to come up with a fair way to prioritize those resources in a systemic way.

Every day we're scheduling out our carpenters. Every day our carpenter backlog has actually come down by about 4,000 tickets. We've also changed the way that we're ordering cabinets, so folks are not waiting for cabinets. We have a bevy of cabinets.

It's easy to throw numbers out, but on the ground, this is not happening. Folks are not seeing, they're not actualizing these numbers that you're throwing out and quote unquote the results. responsiveness of NYCHA. You saw this in these 2 early on in the, um, in the, uh, pre-panel, uh, that had we not interceded, these residents would have been waiting, one 7 months and the other one close to 2 months.

So is this— I mean, listen, you did say this is the reality, so the reality that the system is broken and it doesn't work? No, that's— You don't have to agree on the record. No, no, I'm gonna respectfully disagree. You know, we are, we are getting again a lot of work done and there are unfortunate cases, but we also are completing work early in a lot of the instances.

We get— we have to give folks a scheduled date. We cannot bump appointments because that's bumping somebody else's appointment. So we want to make sure that we are being fair and equitable in distributing points. And one thing I will note, one thing I do want to note on the record is that through the CRI program that we're trying to create, missing cabinets and holes in the walls and temp sinks is one of the items that we're going to be looking forward to pushing faster.

So when you say pushing faster, walk me through how that looks. So the way that it works is we do have a Number one, we were allocated certain money for overtime under CRI. The work has to be funded. The trades don't work for free. The cabinets cost money. We spend $22 million a year in carpentry material at NYCHA.

So faster means how long would it take once a ticket is put in, a work order is put in, to get the work completed? So every work order— You used the word faster, so I want to know what faster Is faster 2 months, 3 months, 7 months? Are we talking about carpentry? Are we talking about— It can be carpentry.

So carpentry, to get that faster, you know, number one, what we're— So if you want to break it down, you can do carpentry, you can break it down by whatever the work order is. What does faster look like? We're not going to be able to cut it to 30 days. You know, we're not going to be— right now, We have— let me just pull up my numbers.

You can cut it below 7 months. Can you cut it below 7 months? Well, so one thing we have to go back to is our P&A, which is the overall physical needs for the property. Then we have to look at the staffing and the number of work orders. Let me ask you another question. On January 2013, NYCHA had approximately 420 333,000 open work orders.

To address the backlog, NYCHA hired 565 additional employees and assigned them to repair work. By January of 2014, the number of open work orders had reportedly fallen to approximately 106,000. Although there were some reports that raised concerns that some of this reduction may have resulted from work orders being closed without repairs being completed, the reported decline was still unsubstantial.

If NYCHA was provided with sufficient resources to hire 565 workers today, could it reduce the current work order backlog to 200,000 open work orders within a year? Thank you, Councilmember, for that question. I think that's all theoretical, which is fine sitting in this room here today. Right. But number one, one point that you made that was very important from your own report was there was a lot of concerns about the quality of that work.

One of the things that we've tried to change is not allowing staff to just close out tickets just to get the backlog down, just to look good in a press release to say that we got the backlog down. We want to make sure that we're actually doing the work. We're closing out more than 70% with labor for our repairs right now for the trades.

So we want to make sure the work is done and verified. Just closing out tickets based on loose work order rules is not the way to get NYCHA better. It just simply is not. We have added trades where that is reasonable and where we have actually have funding to tie to it in a program. The key one that we added is the MLLR, 47 trades directed and managed by the Office of Mold Assessment and Remediation. to address aging mold and leak work orders over 100 days.

We've knocked down work orders at Whitman, we've knocked down work orders at Ingersoll, Red Hook East. Now we're working at Baruch, Wagner, Jefferson. So we're using data to target those sites with our monitor, with the IMA. So we have done those initiatives, but we have to— everything has to be scaled and reasonable. And the city's been very generous in providing resources, not only for that program, But also now overtime for CRI as well.

We know there was a drastic reduction between 2013 and 2014— sorry, from the 2013 and 2014 result, at least in part from the underreporting or the premature closure of repairs requests. Was that drastic Is that reduction because of underreporting or the premature closure of repair requests? Thank you, Chair, for that question. I cannot speak to that because I didn't work at NYCHA back then.

I came in 2019 as the Chief Compliance Officer, and the reason why I was hired at NYCHA was because of efforts to close out work orders without doing proper work. And we've tried to change that, and part of the way we've changed that is by strengthening the work order closure rules. And by increasing how work orders get created, most notably through the apartment inspections, most notably through how we work on lead and mold tickets so they have to be created.

So again, I would not want to get into a program where I'm only trying to reduce the work order numbers so the numbers look better. I'm here to address NYCHA as it stands with this $78 billion PNA. Okay, and when it comes to headcount by trade, would it take— what would it take to maintain a work order backlog in NYCHA Section 9 portfolio?

So right now we are maintaining the backlog because it has not increased, uh, so, and that's with our 1,700 skilled trades right now, and I can give you a breakdown by craft if you're interested or follow up. If you can get us that, and also too, what would it cost to get the work under, uh, work order backlog from where it is now down to $200,000 and maintained over a 5-year period.

So, Chair, we'll definitely follow up with that. But I do want to note one thing that's very important is that work orders are not just numbers on a page. Work orders are actually physically doing the work. And so the most important thing, for example, that we've started in the past couple of years is the relocation programs, because a lot of work that we have to do, most notably, as a gentleman on the panel said earlier, asbestos.

You know, asbestos is something that we have advocated for in the past couple of years to get hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to do asbestos not only in vacant apartments to make them asbestos safe and remove the old tiles, but also in occupied apartments. But what that requires is a resident really making a significant change.

They have to make a decision to move either to a hotel— Right. Or to another unit while we do those significant repairs. So we want to get repairs done. We're looking for funding to do that, but logistically, A lot of this is also working hand in hand with residents. I'm on the ground every day, as you know, every day as well.

I'm out at properties every single day to make sure that we are pushing these cases as quickly as possible. But there is logistical challenges.

All right, so we're going to move on to transparency. How has the conversions of the 30,000 Section 9 units to PAC impacted overall work order performance? You want me to— I thought I could answer. Thank you for the question. It's a little difficult for us to answer just because we, again, on the PAC side, are monitoring work orders as they're resolved. in those key pillar areas.

And the work order data and information that we collect on the Section 9 side is vastly different and much more detailed. And a lot of that is because we are in an oversight role as the Section 8 administrator for the PACT program. Sure. And I think fundamentally, we are able to address address the full capital needs that are needed at the developments when they convert through the program.

So that's $10 billion in investment that we've been able to make across the city, over 32,000 apartments. And we can see from the data in that portfolio, from the work order data that we collect, that there are significantly fewer work orders opened. Again, that's for a different subset of key pillar areas. But this year so far, there have been 16,000 work orders opened across the 32,000 apartments.

So that's about, you know, 51 work orders per 100 units or 1 work order for every 2 apartments. It's a very different data set than the NYCHA data set, and I don't, I don't think it's fair to compare those 2 as it's You're just fundamentally on different footing. I guess I'm going to ask this question anyway. Are PACT developments outperforming work order response times at Section 9 developments?

I can speak just to the work order and the response times for the PACT property managers, and they are responding within the vastly— or majority of them are responding within the required response times. Are they outperforming? I don't think that is a fair comparison to make. Okay. The NYCHA metric shows only 1 year of work order data for Section 9.

Why does NYCHA not publish that data from 2019 to today? Thank you, Chair, for that question. I'll have to go back and check to see what the policy decision was, but we do have other data available. Um, we have no issue with being transparent, uh, and sharing work order data. Uh, for example, we've just shared again about 7.5 million work orders with the council that they are free to go through.

We also have a lot of other data portals, for example, on lead, on mold, that share information about the different programs that we have on a program basis. And when it comes to PAC, uh, data being published, published. When will the PAC data be published at the same level or detail as Section 9? Thank you for that question.

So in 2023, we started to publish the monthly reporting data on our website on a quarterly basis, and that's because we could— we collect it on a monthly basis from each of the properties. It will not compare, and we will never have the same level of data or detail as the Section 9 side because we are not in that property management role.

We're collecting information across a number of different private property managers across a number of different properties, and so what we do publish is the most standardized dataset for that entire portfolio.

Well, then can you describe NYCHA's oversight process? process for assuring compliance and performance of work orders for the PACT developments? And are PACT partners required to follow the HUD and the BIA's consent decree standards for work order response times as NYCHA is? Yeah, thank you for that question. I certainly can. And I— just to back up a little bit, you know, the requirements and oversight that we have for reporting from our PACT partners go above and beyond any federal requirement and above and beyond the requirements from HUD for the RAD program.

And, you know, we monitor their performance as private property managers in a way that no other private property manager is required to report to a city agency. So it is a very unique circumstance where we're collecting this information on their performance, but we do it because Because we know it's important for the program to perform and live up to its expectations, and we have these very important HUD pillar areas, and that's why we've decided to monitor performance and resolution in those key areas to make sure that our teams are responsive.

So we have a couple of different ways we do that. One is the reporting information that we collect from teams on a monthly basis. Our leased housing department also helps oversee the administration of the program. They conduct those HQS inspections to make sure that the apartments are in good repair, and our compliance department also monitors workout— sorry, work order closeout and does onsite monitoring of our partners.

And all of this is to ensure that they are meeting the expectations that are outlined in the control agreement and our ground lease. We also review all of their capital plans and their mold capital plans to make sure that the upfront capital investment that's done at the property is getting to the root as it's needed. So our partners report to us on a monthly basis.

We have never missed a report from a team from that monthly reporting process. And then we go through a data integrity exercise where we review and ensure that all the information shared in that report is complete. So information is given back to our partners kind of in real time to share any errors or data fixes that need to happen.

We also, as we've been talking about, have the BIAZ agreement for the PACT properties, and this is where our monthly reporting goes to an independent mold analyst and that independent data analyst. Those are court-appointed analysts, so that's why they maintain their independence. Those work orders are then inspected at each property. There's a significantly— or statistically significant number of inspections that are required to happen each month, and they're ensuring, just as you were describing earlier, that the work that's completed for each of those work orders is actually completed.

Okay. And they provide reports on All right, let me just— we were joined by Councilmember Julie Wan. Let's get that on the record. Does NYCHA require any specifications as to the kind of software the PAC partners use to manage work orders? Yeah, that's a very fair question, and I think I think each of our PACT partners makes their own business decision on the software that they want to use.

And as long as they are able to communicate work order closure data to us and conduct their monthly reporting, we do not determine or require a specific software. Well, do you require PACT partners to follow specific work order closure procedures? Yes. Yes, each of our work order areas has a timeline associated for resolution, and those are set by the HUD pillar areas and aren't aligned with NYCHA's.

When it comes to the percentage of work orders resolved on time at the PACT developments, the average, I believe, is 60%. 74.5% of the time, and this was in the time of 2025, compared to 87.5% of the time in 2024 and 90.75% of the time in 2023. Are PEC property managers struggling to address work orders as more and more developments are converted?

Thank you for that question. I think there's a couple layers to that, if I can just give some context. I think what happens or has happened over the past couple of years is the portfolio of the number of units that have converted has grown, right? So now we're up to over 32,000 apartments. All of those apartments, when they convert into the Section 8 portfolio, have a significant amount of capital needs that are needed in them.

And there is an immediate influx of work and work orders that is handed to the property manager while they're in the middle of completing the capital repairs. So those 2 things are happening essentially at the same time. They must resolve the work orders even while they're trying to work through an entire replacement of the boiler system. So sometimes the repair And resolution time is not met, certainly.

And you can see online there are percentages where the on-time resolution is not 100%, and that's because they are working through those larger capital investments at the same time. When a development is converted to RAD/PAC, once the conversion takes place, And this is not after all the leases are signed or you meet your threshold to the amount of leases that are needed to be signed.

Who's responsible for the day-to-day operations or for the existing repair issues during that process leading up to when the rehab starts? So when we, when we select a partner team. We call that pre-development, and that's a process that we're doing with the resident leaders at each of our sites. So they are working with us to interview and select property managers.

So during pre-development, who's responsible for maintaining the property? NYCHA is responsible up until the day that we convert, and then immediately after, the next day, is when the PACT partner So up until the day you convert, meaning the first community engagement meeting? No, there's an actual signing of the leases. It's— there's a conversion date for each of the properties.

So as an example— So how far is the conversion date from the community engagement meetings? It can vary based on the development and the amount of engagement work that happens, but we We call that period the pre-development period, the engagement period that can last 12 to 18 months, or it could last up to 2 years. So during that 12 to 18 months or 2 years, NYCHA is responsible for maintaining the property?

Correct. Okay. Does NYCHA have a process to track work orders that have been open for longer than 100 days in the PAC sites? And how many such work orders are there in PAC sites and weren't in 2026? Thank you for that question. We can track. Again, we would know— thank you. Let me just Let's look at this really quick.

So through the end of August, which was our last reporting period, we have 65 work orders that have been open for more than 100 days across the PAC portfolio. So again, that's across 32,000 units, so it accounts for less than half a percent.

Okay. When it comes to the finance, how do response times from work orders submitted to the ombudsman or the OCC Center compare to those that are not? Can you ask that one more time? How do response times for work orders submitted to the OCC Center What's the OCC compared to those that are not? And I guess that's across— Yeah, I think both PACT and NYCHA Section 9 have access to the OCC.

What we've seen on the PACT portfolio side is that the OCC has pretty low intake from the PACT properties. So in the last quarter of reporting from the OCC, there were only 39 tickets. 39 tickets opened within the— Within OCC? For the PACT properties. For the PACT properties. Yeah. And of those— You said 39 tickets? 39 in total.

And that was in what year? This last quarter. This last quarter. So quarter 2, last complete quarter. And do you have any data going back? We would have that data and we can get that to you. It's reported to the special master at every quarterly report. But again, that 39 tickets is less than 1% of the entire PACT portfolio, and we have seen pretty low usage of the OCC across the PACT program.

And we have tried to ensure there's a lot of outreach and information sharing about the OCC, including having the OCC call tenants directly who have had mold and leak work orders. And OCC has obviously responded Who is responsible for promoting or advertising its information to the residents in RAD/PAC? The OCC, along with our partners and along with NYCHA.

I think it's a shared responsibility. So how do completion rates for work orders submitted to the OCC compare to those that are not? That's a great question. I don't have that analysis in front of me, but we can look into that. How have recent investments in the Critical Repair Initiative improved responses to work orders? I think I'll turn that over to Dan.

Thank you, Chair. We are still engaging with stakeholders for the rollout of the CRI program. We just received the funding approximately 2 months ago, and we are working with stakeholders now to build out that program and hope to launch it very shortly. So we have not seen an impact yet because it has not started. Is there any data that shows any— the amount of units that would qualify or that would fall under?

There's not. There's our work order data, so some subset— The existing data that you have for work orders. What's a percentage or what's a raw number that would qualify? I can't give you that math off the top of my head, I apologize, but we would— it would be born from the numbers that we've been talking about. A lot of the CRI program is going to be based on folks who've been waiting too long for cabinets, folks who've been waiting too long for floors, and things that need additional coordination and effort to get it done.

So The CRI program, again, was building off of programs that we were already doing, like maintenance cares, to prioritize these urgent repairs, missing cabinets. So there's been no orders, there's been no work orders that have been submitted to the CRI? It hasn't launched yet. It hasn't launched yet. Okay. No, it hasn't launched yet.

And for fiscal year 2027 budget, the added $2 million over the next 3 years to support the purchase of elevators. Parts and staffing. How many elevators have been repaired using this funding? I'm going to refer this one to EVP Keith Grossman, who oversees elevators and who's walking up to the table right now, and he'll give you— please raise your right hand.

Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in your testimony before the council members and to respond honestly to council member questions? I do. Sorry, I was actually helping a resident. I'll re-ask the question. I told you I was going to take it easy on you today, so it's not a tough question.

Thank you. You'll do good. Uh, fiscal year 2027 budget added $2 million over the next 3 years to support the purchase of elevator doors and parts. How many elevators have been repaired using this funding? Again, we just received the funding in the same line as the CRI. So how many elevators? Are there any— With this current— You can break down the developments that would qualify for?

Sure. So this is a— I'll preface this by saying The notion of the program is something that we've spoken about a number of times. Investing in preventative maintenance of our aging assets, right? The average elevator age in NYCHA is 25 years, which is about 5 years, 5 to 10 years past their useful life. Upgrading the operator head, which is what this is, MOVFR, it's a waterproof high-tension operator head.

Right. That older unit is a large point of failure for us. So we requested funding through the housing plan, and we've graciously accepted it. As far as how much have we— how many have we repaired through this round of funding? Zero. Zero. Because we haven't gotten the funding yet. It's not in our account yet. When do you anticipate Is there— I mean, would you step out and give us anticipation?

When would you anticipate getting the funding and then moving forward with making these critical repairs? Yeah, absolutely. Soon, it would be the best answer I could give you. And as soon as we have the funding, we can start, because the actual repair is— the actual— it's an upgrade of the existing equipment, and it doesn't— it takes about a half day to do.

Okay.

Per— The fiscal year 2027 executive budget also added $5 million to support a mold and leaks blitz over fiscal years 2027 and 2028. How many mold and leak complaints have been outstanding for more than 100 days? So, thank you, Chair, for that question. So, for— in terms of aging, for 100+ days on the mold side, it's about 12,500.

On the leak side, pending more than 100 days, it's about 30,000 that have been pending more than 100 days. So, what we're doing for that program, which has already started, we've already addressed 3,000 work orders through that program. So it's trades, it's plumbers, plasterers, painters, and planners to do those— carpenters as well— to do those comprehensive repairs.

So what we do is we use the data and we target developments, and we sit those trades at the developments until we bring down the backlog. So we started at Soto Mayor, we then moved to Whitman and Ingersoll and Red And now we've moved the team into Manhattan at Baruch, Jefferson, and Wagner. Our goal is to bring down the overall work orders by about 10,000 through that initiative.

Okay. Of the ones that are open as of that 100 days when they get to those developments. And the city funding will allow us to extend that funding. It's currently funded with HUD funding, which is time-limited, but this will supplement it. And if it's a successful initiative, we hope that it will continue. Okay.

And you've previously indicated that as a development goes through the PAC conversion, staff are relocated to other developments. What impact has this had on work order completion times? Thank you, Chair, for that question. It hasn't really impacted work order completion times because we, number one, Um, we, we have seen some work orders improve in terms of their, you know, in terms of their completion times and generation.

But, uh, so with the increase of staff, it hasn't— Their staff has not. So the staff are used to fill existing vacancies. So when, when staff are transitioning, they're moving— So if it's filling existing vacancies, that means you have— you're adding more bodies to the workforce. So that means this should be— productivity should go up, am I correct?

Let me step back and let me step back. So at the development level, so for maintenance workers and for caretakers who are the ones predominantly affected by the PAC conversion, they are moved to open vacant lines and there's high, pretty high turnover at those positions. So they're moved into vacant lines, sometimes they're held as a floater while we move them into a permanent personnel line.

No, no, but I'm talking about Overall, is there an improvement once a conversion takes place and that staff then is transferred over or relocated to another NYCHA development? Well, they're moved to where there's a vacancy. So for example, if a development— So again, if you're filling a vacancy, right? The headcount is the same. The headcount's still the same?

Yeah. So the service level will be about the same because we're getting back to the base headcount. by filling the vacancy. Sometimes we will have additional staff for a short period of time while they move, while they await a vacancy to be open to move that to that permanent line. And during that time where we have— I mean, the responsibility of NYCHA when it comes, you know, with that particular development, it's given over to PAC.

That body now moves, or those bodies now move over to a NYCHA development. There's no impact at all to the services to the residents? So on the— Or response time or nothing? Let me, let me again, um, so on— so for the staff who are mainly impacted, which are the, which are the maintenance workers and the trades, they're moving into an existing vacancy.

For example, right now I have about 30 maintenance vacancies open. So when a development closes These maintenance workers will be moved to fill in those vacancies. That will bring— make those developments that they're moving to whole. So right now they're operating with less staff, now they're going to have back to their original staff. So that will improve.

Certainly, like, for example, Castle Hill right now— It will improve? That will improve, yes, that will improve. And it will also— What will it improve? Let's get clarity on that. It's going to improve response to the maintenance work orders. So it will bring down the response time on the maintenance work orders because we are making a hole, but that's what the headcount is budgeted for.

We're not increasing the headcount at that other development to bring, for example, we're not going up from like 5 to 10 maintenance workers. We're bringing them back to 5, what they're budgeted for. On the trade side, we will have more— the trades will have that advantage. So the trades will have less apartments to respond to. And I think we're going to see over the next couple So we would see— And we have, yeah.

Close to 30,000 NYCHA developments or units have been converted over to PACT. Have you seen an impact or improvement across NYCHA with the transferring over of labor? See, I have seen an improvement. So, Chair, yes, I have seen an improvement, but it's not a transfer. What it is, is again, we move the staff to a vacancy. So they're not getting any additional staff.

They're filling their vacancies with that staff that's been— But when that body's not there, that means those jobs are completed. So once that vacancy is filled, it's an addition to the— I just want clarity on that. Yes, that we agree. And then also, I think we'll start to see our trades have Now, on the other side of that, I do want to note we do have a new important obligation, which is now we are inspecting every apartment every year, which we should not lose sight of because that is generating more work orders than we've ever seen before— 2.5 million work orders because of those inspections.

So does NYCHA plan on— plan to hire any additional staff to address the outstanding work order backlog? So we have hired through the MLLR— thank you, Chair, for the question— through the MLLR, we have hired 47 additional staff staff. We've also positioned staff with our lead abatement program so that they can be more self-sufficient in that, so they can address, for example, now they've moved up 20,000 abatements.

They're moving back residents in under 14 days for their abatements, which is a big improvement. So we, we have added trades to specific programs to improve response times, particularly on mold and leak. That was a big program that we worked with the Monitor. So we have that program designed now to attack these aging work orders at developments that are overwhelmed Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony. Thank you.

Now we're going to move to public testimony. Now we'll now open up the hearing for public testimony. Before we begin testimony, I remind members of the public that this is a government proceeding and decorum shall be observed at all times. As such, members of the public shall remain silent at all times. The witness table is reserved for people who wish to testify.

No video recording or photography is allowed from the witness table. And also too, I'll add this, I would encourage NYCHA staff to please stay back to from the public as well. Members of the public may not present audio— may, sorry, may not present audio or video recordings as testimony, but may submit transcripts of such recordings to the Sergeant at Arms for inclusion into the hearing record.

If you wish to speak at today's hearing, please fill out the appearance card with the Sergeant at Arms and wait to be recognized. I want to recognize you You have 2 minutes to speak on today's hearing topic, work order practices here at NYCHA and PAC. And if you wish to submit a written statement or additional written testimony for the record, please give a copy to the sergeant-at-arms.

You may also email written testimony to testimony@council.nyc.gov within 72 hours of this hearing. Audio and video recordings will not be accepted. Thank you. Accepted. We will now call, uh, to the panel, um, Davis, Denise Davis. Oh, Miss Davis. Yes. Uh, Miss Eaves. Walter McNeil. And Amelia Walden. Walter McNeil, Amelia Walden, Ms. Eaves, and Denise Davis. Yeah, Walter's not here.

We'll call up George Jimenez. George Jimenez. George Jimenez. Uh, Kelvin Wallace. Uh, Marie Sams. She had to leave. She had to leave. Okay, sorry about that. Um, Sophia Finn. Oh, Finn. Sorry, I do apologize. Sophia Finn.

Uh, Miss Denise Davis, you may begin your testimony, and you can move the mic. All right, and turn it on. Excellent. Speak into the mic so we can— move the mic a little closer so we can hear you. I am Denise Davis. My name is Denise Davis. I'm a resident of Penn Workman Houses. I have been in my apartment more than 20 years, but ever since the PACT program began— Can you move the mic a little closer so I can— and you can start it.

Since I'm under the PACT program, there have been things that's been broken and leaking. leaks and a lot of leaks, a lot of leaks. I was not aware that I could address these leaks through— like, I could talk to NYCHA about it. Right. Everything is the CC&C deals with it. And they tell me, wait, wait, wait. They said that the whole J line had leaks.

That went on for almost a year after this. Everything was supposed to be new and nice. And then when it was time for an inspection, oh, you'll never get past this inspection with all these leases. What am I supposed to do about it? Mm-hmm. The next thing that I find, they are— they took away my subsidy after I've been trying for more than a year trying to find out why, what is going on, why I lost my subsidy.

I'm now in court, in court for the subsidy, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't understand this whole situation. And right now, the elevator, the elevator is like constantly, 4 and 5 times in one month, no elevator. Supposedly we have new elevators going on here. Up to today, there was no elevator. This morning, there was 3 days of no elevator, one elevator.

And this is a RAD PAC development? Yes, yes, this is PAC 4, yes. And then there— You have 30 seconds to wrap it up. Oh, now what? Take your time. About, I have to— I don't know how— what am I supposed to do with the lack of— I mean, you're talking about eviction for something I didn't do anything.

Mm-hmm. Why is that? How— and I never could get any answers. It's always, you have to deal with C&C. Everything is C&C. And now with the electric. This is the 3rd time they have to do the electric again. They failed electric for the conversion that they did, They keep failing, they're failing, and now they want again, open up the apartment and allow them to do more electric again. 30 seconds.

I can't do anything about that. Well, thank you for your testimony. Sorry for the experience you're having. What am I supposed to do about the situation? Eviction? Yeah, thank you for your testimony.

We will now move on to Mrs. Eaves, unless you want to— and move the mic a little closer so we can hear your testimony. It's loud, so that's why I don't want it— Well, no, no, we want to hear you. So far. Truth be told, this pack rad has been very, very exhausting. There's a lot of division between the tenants.

A lot of the tenants was for it because what they focused on was just the repairs and they received the funding. They put the cart before the horse, but we're still at the same place where we started. When tenants complain to Department of Buildings, HPD, the mayor's office, your office, the other politicians, what they do is they retaliate against you.

And for me, I think because I've been so vocal to the point— Thank you. They label me as being disturbed, as being a chronic complainer. As to the point where I'm unable to speak at my own tenant association meetings, where all they do is just keep switching out managers and lying to the tenants and saying to the tenants that it's underneath new management, and it's not.

I too, I'm in the process of being evicted for something that I stood firm on. And what I'm saying is— You have an additional minute. We keep coming to these meetings. I haven't been here in a while is because they keep me busy in court to try to explain What's happening? To me, this PAC RAD is designed to get rid of us.

When I say that is because the same way that they keep saying that PAC RAD is ironclad, they used this as a way to say that it's for repairs. No. So it was designed to remove people under Section 9 because Section 9 is ironclad on tenants' rights, and our rights are being taken away. And it's so unfair.

It's so unfair. I fell down the stairs 15 times. It's impeding myself. I need to go back to work too, just like they're here. I don't even know if I won't be able to walk by next year. I have no health insurance because I cannot go back to work. There's a division to the point that there After my aunt, my daughter.

They don't— they want me gone because everything that I said that was going to happen happened. Thank God that one of your staff members was there where this new manager had stated that CNC did not do what they were contractually to do with the plumbing, with the electrical. And they're blaming the tenants for things that they did not do.

There is a high rate of eviction under this PAC-RAT. Read the comptroller audit again. Now it's underneath the new comptroller, Mark Levine. There's a high, high turnout on holdovers. But you know what? Okay. Eve, thank you. Thank you for your testimony.

And we're going to move on to Ms. Sophia Fenn. Greetings, Chair Banks and members of the New York City Committee on Public Housing. Thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding my experiences with NYCHA's work order practices. For the past 2 years, I have worked as a legal fellow at New York Legal Assistance Group on the Public Housing Justice Project.

Project, where I work exclusively with NYCHA tenants who are dealing with repair issues in their apartment. I have litigated these cases in every housing court in New York City across all 5 boroughs, including Red Hook Community Justice Center. My experience in this work echoes what many tenants have told you today. The NYCHA work order and repair system is broken.

Tenants put in tickets only for those tickets to be mysteriously closed, or if a worker does Does respond, the visit is not productive. Workers show up 5, 6, 4, many times to inspect, wherein they just take a picture and leave, only for tenants to be told that no one can find those pictures and that another date has to be scheduled for more pictures to be taken.

All the while, they are living with leaks, pest infestations, destroyed floor tiles, and other conditions that are dangerous to health and safety. When NYCHA does begin repairs, Poor project management results in repairs not being completed or being unnecessarily dragged out, placing a significant emotional and physical burden on our clients and frankly on NYCHA. NYCHA schedules work out of order— painters coming before plaster, plaster coming before plumbing.

NYCHA workers come at random times with no warning, even if a scheduled appointment exists, and if the tenants do not happen to be home, NYCHA will permanently close the ticket as a no-show. though, restarting the entire process. Other times, clients with significant environmental concerns such as asbestos and lead find themselves having to relocate multiple times for remediation because NYCHA is unable to coordinate the 2 remediations to ensure they happen consecutively.

I have an elderly client who was relocated for asbestos, had her possessions lost and furniture broken, only to be moved back home and told she would— she also required a lead abatement and would have to be relocated again She lived out of boxes for months while waiting for the second relocation to be scheduled. Both relocations were incredibly taxing and negatively impacted her health.

Poor systems like these waste the already limited resources of NYCHA maintenance, costing both tenants and NYCHA unnecessarily. Increased transparency is also needed regarding NYCHA's inspections and repair records. During HP actions, NYCHA can rarely produce details or documentation regarding inspect— inspections they conducted or even repair work they claim to have made. An internal record of repair work should be consistently available to tenants so tenants can understand what is going on and avoid the constant runaround from management regarding the repairs in their home.

We urge the city and NYCHA to take this opportunity to create policies and practices that model how to maintain and provide housing that is humane and habitable for New Yorkers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you to the panel. Oh, uh, no, no, hold on, hold on, we got one more. I do apologize.

Thank you, Miss Walden from Penn Workman. Miss Walden, you want to move that mic a little closer? Thank you. Can you hear me now? We hear you loud and clear. Okay, I am Amelia Walden. I'm from Penn Workman Houses. First of First of all, my quality of life has really been affected mentally and physically. First, they took me to court because I refused to let them come in my apartment and break the floors in the closet for this riser that they wanted.

The judge specifically told them to get a certified company to do the work. Now I'm back in court again. And for the lead and the asbestos results, I asked management many times for the results. They refused. So I searched around, and I called Environmental Protection. That was the only time I was able to get the results of the lead and the asbestos testing.

Thank you. I'm trying to see what it is. Management also took me to court. They held my rent for over a year. I didn't even know the reason why, because at first when I went in a month after, they said they were processing the rent. So I'm thinking that maybe they're backlogged. They held my— I made my payments at the office, got my receipts.

They took them over a year, and they didn't start cashing in until after they took me to court in May, and the court saw where they was at fault. My bathroom vent has not been working for at least 2 years, and they keep sending someone in. They clean it, and that's it. So the last information I got from HPD— I'm sorry.

That my complaint of the vent in the bathroom being fixed was falsified, the information that it was corrected. To use my bathroom, to take a shower, or even to use the toilet, you have to keep the bathroom door ajar. My apartment has been having mold problems off and on. This is the third time. that they have had the mold in my apartment.

So with that question, I would like if you can find out, when they say mold removal, what's the procedure for that? Because they come in, they wipe it and they paint it, and that's it. That doesn't solve the problem. Another thing with the rent. Oh, my apartment peephole is— 30 seconds to wrap it up. As a senior, Or even a person with disability, some, you cannot really see clearly who's on the other side of that door.

And management do have the problem of sending someone to your apartment with no appointment. And I told them, do not send anyone to my apartment without an appointment. So now, slam lock is another problem. You get locked out, that's dangerous. If a person have a home attendant and get locked out, That person, that patient or that resident, is in jeopardy of maybe dying or something until they can get into the apartment. 30 seconds.

Okay. Renovation took away part of my apartment. I have a 4-room, but now I have a 3.5 because my kitchen space is compromised. And I also do not have a closet, so I have my other clothes and things in boxes. So I want to know, how can you address that for that whole C line where the apartment closet was downsized and management just refused to acknowledge?

Also, management, some management staff is very disrespectful. Okay. They need an in-service. So the elevators are frequently out of order, and that's another problem. Problem. Chronically, chronically out— outage in elevator. Brand new elevators, right? Okay. Refurbished. Or refurbished. Okay. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, we're gonna go back to, uh, I just want to make sure Marie Sams Calvin Wallace. George Jimenez. And Walter McNell. Okay. So now we will proceed to the Zoom testimony. We will now turn to Remote testimony. Once your name is called, a member of our staff will unmute you and the Sergeant at Arms will give you the go-ahead to begin.

Please wait for the Sergeant at Arms to announce that you may begin before delivering your testimony. We have Cynthia Tibbs.

Good afternoon. My name is Cynthia Tibbs. I'm the TA president of the Wissur Brownstones, 36 brownstones on the Upper West Side, which is currently being placed into the PAC program along with 10 other developments. We are currently the biggest bundle that NYCHA has ever done. Last night, real estate came up here and told us leaders that unless we sign the non-disclosure agreement we will not be a part of the decision-making for our developments.

This has never been done in the previous developments when it came to decision-making, but they've decided to do it now. My elected officials accompanied the meeting with me, and they were also told that moving forward, they would not be permitted at any more meetings until after NYCHA decided who the developer would be for our meetings. This is unacceptable.

Thank you. This is not transparency. This is not democracy. And I understand how Eastchester Gardens may be the golden child for how PACs should run, but the majority of us don't get that privilege. We are treated like underclass citizens. We are not recognized. And I am having a meeting with my residents tonight because in no way do I plan on signing a nondisclosure Where it says I can't talk to my residents without being in trouble.

The one thing this 3-page document has a lot of on it is the word terminate, terminate, terminancy. That's unacceptable. They said this is what NYCHA will be doing moving forward with all their PAC developments. This is not transparency. Shame on them. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.

Yeah, I just want to do a final— is there anybody else on Zoom or remote? Okay, if we had inadvertently missed anyone that has registered to testify today, And as yet to be, uh, have been called, please use the Zoom raise your hand function if you are testifying remotely, and you will be called in order that your hand has been raised.

If you are testifying in person, please come to the dais. She was on the pre-pen. She was on the pre-pen. Yeah, caller, you on the pre-pen? No, I signed it. Yeah, you gave testimony already. So the testimony you gave for the pre-panel counted as your testimony. So it was because you only— you gave testimony already. I gave testimony.

I signed the pre-panel paperwork. Hold on, let me just consult with my— the counsel and then Well, just give me one minute. Under the advice of the counsel, since you gave testimony in the pre-panel, that will stand as your testimony. Well, you can submit the written documentation. You can submit that so it can go into the record.

Thank you, caller. Do we Do we have a testimony sheet for her? Did you sign in? I did. Okay. Did you— I was in the building without— No, no, I said, did you have a testimony sheet? One of these, ma'am. Did you fill one of these out? What's her name? What's your name? Hines. Okay, Ms. Hines. You are my counselor.

Pleasure, pleasure to see you, ma'am. You may begin your testimony. You may begin your testimony. May I just pull the mic closer? Thank you. So we can hear you clearly.

I'm Hines, and I'm an elder, as most of us elders sitting here. You don't have your youth, but you— we know, we know the state We know the country and we know that our leaders have failed our education, our homes, and they don't allow us businesses. They even fail our temples. I sit in the temple where I live in Brooklyn, and while I'm sitting in the temple and enjoying Just my peace of mind.

I'm leaving my home. I have peace of mind in a home because I'm by myself. But since retiring, I thought I was happy while I was working and taking care of my children and so forth. But it— as I've been by myself, I find that this country is failing, failing the people who have built this country, who have served this country, and who have— it's USA, it's our country.

And we are belittled with our education, we're belittled with our homes, We're belittled with businesses. When I say belittled, you deny. This country denies our homes, our business, our education for centuries, centuries, centuries of abuse. And I'm about out. You know, when I say out, I'm the eldest of my peoples, one of the eldest. much older than you two that are sitting at the table and the one who left.

And it has not paced university. I've worked in this community. You have 30 seconds to wrap up. I have ran around this neighborhood or the city of New York. And I tell you, it's sad. We put you in office. And we just don't get— we are under the foot. We're told that we can't have our homes, we can't have our businesses, we can't have our temples.

We can't have our education. Do you have anything to say on topic about work orders and public housing? Public housing has definitely failed. They told you about public housing. There's nothing more to say about public housing. Public housing, they gave you everything that— we don't have any service. Okay. Public housing is full of mold, asbestos, and lead.

And they took away whatever— the best of what we had in New York City housing no longer exists. I'm talking about material. For doors, we used to have wood. We now have paper doors. We have— We still have mold. We have— we're full of lead, we're full of asbestos, and we're full of mold. And it's the only thing you could do at NYCHA is take it down.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. The brick is good. The brick is good because they repaired that in much of NYCHA. But the inside is not healthy. It makes— it made us sick. Thank you. It made the children sick. Thank you for your testimony, ma'am.

Is there anyone else that has— we have not called? Okay, so seeing none, I will now close this hearing. And is anyone on Zoom? All right, seeing none, I will now close this hearing. Thank you to the members of the administration and members of the public who have joined us today to discuss this very important topic. This hearing is now adjourned.

Thank you.