NYCHA Tenants Lose Monitor, Mold Protection in Private Shift
CITY) February 16, 2020
Tawana Myers lives in a 10th-floor public housing apartment with her Yorkie, Casey, a row of silver oxygen tanks, a “No Smoking” sign on her door and a nebulizer with a mask in case her asthma acts up.
Occasionally, nasty black mold builds up in her bathroom because the air vent is busted. She wipes it down and asks the New York City Housing Authority to come in and fix the underlying problem so it won’t happen again.
“Over there it gets black and I have to wipe it down and I can’t live like that,” said Myers, 58, pointing to the corner of her tub. “They do a quick patch-up. They have a porter come in, they put a Band-Aid on it.”
Right now, her NYCHA development in Spring Creek, Brooklyn, is under the watchful eye of an independent federal monitor as part of a city agreement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — and is also being monitored by a federal judge under a legal settlement to eliminate toxic mold from apartments.
Soon, all that protection will disappear.
That’s because the Linden Houses, where Myers lives, is on a growing list of public housing complexes slated to be turned over to private management as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature effort to fix crumbing public housing with a controversial program known as Rental Assistance Demonstration, aka RAD.