Mayor De Blasio Meets With HUD Secretary Over Future Of NYCHA
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Mayor Bill de Blasio will be in a closed-door meeting with Housing Secretary Ben Carson on Tuesday to talk about both the current state and future of NYCHA.
Carson has said NYCHA must come up with a plan to improve living conditions for public housing residents by the end of January 2019 or risk the federal government taking over the program.
The mayor just announced a $24 billion, 10-year overhaul of properties run by the troubled agency.
More Of CBS2's Coverage On NYC's Public Housing Nightmare
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development extended NYCHA's deadline until Jan. 31 to come up with a repair plan.
In a statement sent to CBS2 last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, "We released a detailed plan to renovate tens of thousands of apartments, and we are putting new management fixes in place to hold NYCHA more accountable to its residents."
On Wednesday, the city made two announcements: one on how work hours could be extended to make repairs at better hours for residents, and the other on where more of the money for those repairs will come from.
Last month it was announced the city would convert 62,000 public housing apartments to Section 8. That would allow developers to lease the buildings, addressing billions of dollars in needed capitol.
The mayor said in addition to that NYCHA will launch three new programs, calling it NYCHA 2.0.
Build to preserve: This will allow new development on NYCHA land, and then the use of that money for repairs.
Transfer to preserve: Acquiring money by selling air rights.
Fix to preserve: Rapidly addressing heating, mold, lead and pests. For example, installing door sweeps and adding 20 new exterminators.