The scope of the issue is not completely clear, but the nonprofit New York Legal Assistance Group says it has fielded hundreds of calls from tenants in PACT developments in the last several months who were hit with eviction notices related to recertification issues.

A public records request by the Legal Aid Society revealed the number of Section 8 terminations due to failure to recertify jumped from 42 in 2024 to 836 last year.

On Sunday, the housing advocacy group Metro Industrial Areas Foundation held a rally in East New York on the issue, singling out three developments there — the Linden, Boulevard and Penn-Wortman Houses — where they say hundreds of families who thought they were following the rules are now fighting to keep their apartments.

Crisis’ For Families

Yolanda Moore, a tenant in the Boulevard Houses and a leader of East Brooklyn Congregations/Metro IAF, said both NYCHA and the private building managers share blame for the quagmire, charging that NYCHA loses recertification paperwork while building managers “have been unable to navigate the Section 8 recertification system sufficiently.”

“We are seeing a recertification crisis in PACT,” Moore said. “We were promised PACT would make our homes stable and decent. Yet Linden, Boulevard and Penn-Wortman alone have hundreds of people in housing court for non-payment — and we know many of them paid their rent. We also know this is happening in many developments citywide.”

Housing court records show that Stanley Avenue Preservation LLC, the entity managing Penn-Wortman and Linden, has filed more than 900 eviction proceedings against tenants there since 2023, almost exclusively for non-payment. The New York Legal Assistance Group said it’s not clear how many are related to the Section 8 cutoffs but they believe it’s in the hundreds.

NYLAG associate director Anna Luft said no one — neither the housing authority nor the PACT building managers — seemed to know precisely what was causing the problem: “There’s confusion with tenants. There’s confusion with building managers in the management office. They don’t seem to ever have a clear answer on what to do and when to do it. Because the way it’s been implemented, there’s been no clear structure.”

Seeking Mamdani’s ‘Heavy Hand’ 

She said tenants are now looking for help from Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who has promised increased attention to NYCHA’s struggles — to create a system that actually functions.

“It will take a very heavy hand from the mayor’s office to structure this,” Luft said, “because up until now, NYCHA has not demonstrated any willingness to foster the structure for this program to run smoothly.”

Under PACT, the housing authority retains ownership of properties but turns over management to private sector firms. Tenants in PACT developers are still required to pay rent, but their share is capped at no more than 30% of their income. The rest is subsidized by Section 8 housing vouchers.