New York City Housing Authority

The New York City Housing Authority ( NYCHA ) is an agency of the city government of New York City. It operates the social housing in the city. Together with the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development ( HPD ) and the Housing Development Corporation (HDC ) of New York State, it is responsible for public support of housing in New York City. The NYCHA is the largest public housing authority in the United States and the largest landlord of the City of New York.

History

The NYCHA was launched by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in New York on January 20, 1934, and was the first public housing authority in the United States. As early as next year, on December 3, 1935, the first NYCHA public housing project, the First Houses was opened in the Lower East Side.

NYCHA today

Currently ( September 2009) operates the NYCHA 178 554 flats at 336 locations in all five New York City boroughs (Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Iceland ). The NYCHA has 11,957 employees, and 403 581 people (as of 29 June 2009) - almost five percent of all New York - live in the 2,607 buildings that are managed by the Authority.

The NYCHA also administers the Mietzuschussprogramm the Department of Housing and Urban Development of the U.S. government ( the so-called "Section 8" program) for New York City, so that a total of more than 600,000, or 7.8% of all New Yorkers support of NYCHA receive. Only residents whose income is below a certain income level, are entitled to a NYCHA apartment. NYCHA tenants pay no more than 30 % of their income as rent. The average monthly rent was 397 dollars ( 29 June 2009), compared with 2,700 U.S. dollars on average for the whole of New York ( 2008). However, the annual average income of NYCHA tenants with 22 905 U.S. dollars per household is less than half as high as that for the whole of New York ( 51 116 U.S. dollars, 2008).

Problems

NYCHA settlements such as the Queensbridge or Brownsville Houses are often socially deprived areas with high unemployment and crime, which so far could not be resolved despite numerous social programs and its own police. The ramshackle building fabric of the buildings that were mostly completed before 1965, is another problem with the NYCHA is struggling.

Despite the problems, the NYCHA apartments enjoy great popularity: 130 058 families were on the waiting list for NYCHA apartments and 127 764 families on the waiting list for the Section 8 program, with 32 163 candidates were registered on both lists (as of 31 July 2009). Only 3.3 % of residents moved from the calendar year 2008, and the vacancy rate of 0.65 %, compared with 3.6% in Manhattan, is very low.