It’s been nearly five years since the Public Housing Emergency Response Act was first introduced, without progress. But some see renewed hope in Tuesday’s election, should it bring new leadership in the White House and Congress. 

In October 2019, the estimated backlog of capital repair needs for public housing authorities nationwide was $70 billion.

Developments across the country—especially those within the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), which has the largest share of public housing properties—were, and still are, grappling with a number of issues, from aging infrastructure to health hazards in units such as mold, leaks and lead.

New York Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez saw an urgent need for public housing tenants to have “more livable” conditions, she said. So she introduced the Public Housing Emergency Response Act, also known as H.R. 307, in November 2019, confident that it could help bring the country’s public housing developments to a state of good repair.

“We have to address the conditions once and for all,” Velázquez told City Limits. “It cannot be Band Aids, it has to be a big investment.”

Velázquez is not alone in her sentiment. She and 16 co-sponsors, including Rep. Jerrold Nadler and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have championed the bill that would bring a one-time payment of $70 billion into the federally-funded Section 9 program.

NYCHA, according to Velázquez, would receive approximately $40 billion of that money. In the Senate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has introduced a companion bill that’s garnered backing from Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Despite the support, H.R. 307 has not progressed since it was first proposed nearly five years ago.

In the meantime, in lieu of greater investment in Section 9, NYCHA has pursued alternative models for funding, forming the Preservation Trust and partnering with private developers to unlock additional repair money through Section 8, another federal housing program. 

Opponents to those efforts, who want to keep NYCHA apartments in Section 9, point to H.R. 307 as an avenue for helping that happen. 

And with an election Tuesday that could bring new leadership in Washington, some have renewed hopes for its passage. Velázquez herself told City Limits that she is hopeful for a “democratic trifecta” to get H.R. 307 passed: Vice President Kamala Harris becoming commander in chief, and democrats taking control of both the House and the Senate.

“Vice President Harris has put an emphasis in her campaign about addressing America’s housing crisis,” Velázquez said. “You cannot address housing affordability without the state of public housing in America… I will not rest making the case before her or her senior advisors.”

‘A foundational determinant of health’ 

In the time since the bill was introduced, NYCHA announced a need of $78.3 billion to repair all of the developments in its portfolio over the next 20 years, based on its most recent assessment in 2023. The amount is $33 billion higher than the estimated cost projected in 2017.

NYCHA has stated that the housing authority gets roughly $700 million annually from Congress, which is only a slice of what is needed. In Velázquez’s district, for example, Farragut Houses in Downtown Brooklyn needs more than $506 million alone to repair the entire 10-building campus, according to the most recent assessment.

The Public Housing Emergency Response Act references the U.S. House Act of 1937, which calls on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to provide for the needs of low-income tenants through public housing. Among those needs is well-being, as the bill points to housing being a “foundational determinant” of health.

Conditions across NYCHA include mold, leaks and lead, some of which can be contributors to respiratory diseases such as asthma. Between 2013 and 2016, for example, NYCHA tenants placed between 18,000 and 28,000 complaints for mold growth, and between 117,000 and 146,000 complaints regarding flooding or ceiling leaks, according to Jenner and Block, a law firm that currently serves as the NYCHA federal monitor. 

For heat related issues, a recent federal monitor report stated that tenants made “hundreds of thousands” of calls about inadequate heat between 2011 and 2016.

“Public housing residents are working people and they deserve to have a functional housing unit,” said Velázquez. “I constantly go to my developments to meet with residents but also the residents call my office to complain that they don’t have hot water, they don’t have heat, and this is not right.”

While H.R. 307 points out the correlation between federal disinvestment and poor health, the bill states that the issue is a “fixable public health crisis.”

“It is necessary to reinvest in public housing, provide the money needed to fulfill outstanding capital needs, and to again ensure that all Americans have a decent home and a suitable living environment,” the bill states.

‘You have to first talk to us’

Instead of waiting for more federal money to meet its needs that may not come, in 2016 NYCHA introduced another avenue to seek more immediate repairs funding.

The Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program is a local version of a nationwide initiative called Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD), introduced under the Obama administration in 2011 to bring private funds into public housing.

When a development converts to PACT, it shifts from a traditional Section 9 public housing site to another federally funded program called Project-Based Section 8, which is worth twice as many federal dollars.

Once converted, a new management company takes over the daily operations of a campus while NYCHA continues to own the land. The goal is for NYCHA to convert 62,000 apartments by 2028 to PACT. So far, there are more than 37,000 units in the program, which is expected to bring in $13.2 billion for repairs.

However, PACT has received criticism from NYCHA tenants, who cite concerns about the role of private developers and frustrations around inconsistent management.

When a campus converts to new management under PACT, it typically helps fund investments such as upgrades to kitchens, bathrooms and windows, as well as development-wide renovations such as new playgrounds and benches.

In one case, though, the changes are much bigger: at the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses in Manhattan, NYCHA plans to demolish and entirely rebuild the properties. 

For tenants opposed to the demolition plan, like Alixa Cruz, who has lived in Chelsea since 1969, H.R. 307 would not only help fund repairs, but help preserve public housing as part of the Section 9 program. “We need H.R. 307,” said Cruz. 

Ramona Ferreryra, a member of a national tenant-led group called Save Section 9, which pushes for better maintenance and preservation of public housing properties, said they “received the bill excitedly.”

“This funding would be helpful,” Ferrerya of H.R. 307.

But true investment, Ferrerya said, means not only putting money toward fixing what is wrong, but giving more dollars to what is already working. 

“We recognize that we have conditions that no one should live under,” said Ferreyra. “But our members tell beautiful stories…we have people that [said] public housing is the first time they had their own room and their own bed.”

Ferreyra, who lives at the Mitchel Houses in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, says that when she spearheads meetings, she asks residents, “What do you love about public housing?”

“That’s a question no one is asking us,” said Ferreyra. “Oftentimes the perception of public housing is that it’s a failure and that all these things are wrong with it.”

The South Bronx tenant told City Limits that should H.R. 307 pass, NYCHA should put money towards both infrastructure and community programming.

“We know that if every building had new piping, new roofs and a new boiler, that we would be able to stop these symptoms that are affecting the housing stock,” said Ferreyra. “There should be enough funding to address some of the programming that has been cut from our communities.”

Ferrerya emphasized a need for more resources for seniors, citing a 2024 research study by Meals on Wheels that found one in two seniors who live alone nationwide cannot afford basic needs, such as food and medicine.

“They’re really dealing with food insecurity, crime and the deterioration of buildings,” said Ferrerya. “For me, intergenerational housing leads to safety and better services.”

Teresa Scott, a tenant at the Redfern Houses in Rockaway, Queens, has a similar take on what the legislation could offer public housing residents.

“I would have sensitivity training for the workers as well as for the tenants so that they could know, ‘hey, if you throw trash in your building, you’re going to start getting fined,’” said Scott. “Just [initiate] things that make people fall in love with their buildings again.”

Scott, who is also a member of Save Section 9, told City Limits that Velázquez’s bill is a great proposal. But she wants to ensure that, should it pass, funds are appropriately managed, with tenants at the forefront in deciding what to invest in.

“You have to first talk to us,” said Scott. “You cannot create this without talking to us.”

A history of underfunding

Next year, NYCHA will turn 90 years old.

When First Houses was built in 1935 in Lower Manhattan, it provided safe and affordable housing for low-income families—at the time, they could make no more than five times the rent, which was $6.05 monthly, according to the Landmark Preservation Commission.

By the time the city’s last public housing development was constructed in 1981, the Morrisania Air Rights Houses in the Bronx, NYCHA and public housing authorities nationwide were struggling to maintain properties—many of them high rise towers that were built in the 1960s and 1970s.

According to the text of H.R. 307, by 1990, “no significant investment in housing affordable to the lowest-income individuals had been made by the Federal Government in more than 30 years.”

That disinvestment has continued in more recent years, according to the legislation. 

“With the exception of an infusion of funding from the economic stimulus legislation in 2009—the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—federal capital funding has remained relatively level for more than a decade, despite an increasing backlog in unmet capital needs,” the bill reads.

Lauren Song, a senior policy analyst at the National Housing Law Project, said the funding that H.R. 307 would provide is, “quite critical at this point, after decades of Congress at the federal level not appropriating enough funds to support public housing.”

“Regardless of what the election results may be, the trend for federal public housing support has been nothing but going downhill over the last 20 years or so,” Song said.

However, Song said some states and localities are recognizing the importance of public housing and are beginning to rely on their own solutions to provide for residents. She points to the Public Housing Preservation Trust, which was signed into law in June 2022 by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Also known more simply as “the Trust,” the legislation allows an initial 25,000 NYCHA apartments to convert to Project-Based Section 8, similar to PACT, in order to tap into private methods of funding such as bonds and mortgages. Unlike PACT, however, the Trust will keep NYCHA as both the manager and owner of the property.

“It’s a shift, it’s reimagining the role of public housing from kind of being dependent on the federal government scheme to kind of becoming a local publicly-minded, mission driven developer, owner, manager,” said Song. “But there has to be more oversight in making sure the implementation of those legal infrastructures in fact are realized in the sense of the daily experiences and how residents are protected through the process.”

As for the bill itself, Song said she believes that H.R. 307 is “really, really” positive legislation.

“NYCHA is kind of in a special place of its own given the enormity of both the importance of public housing, critical in terms of NYCHA being one of the biggest landlords in the city and contributing to the economic and social diversity of the entire city,” said Song. “Whichever way the election goes, it’s going to be supporting the need for H.R. 307.”

Since the bill was introduced, the repair needs of public housing authorities across the country has increased from $70 billion to $90 billion, according to NHLP.

On May 20, when Sen. Warren of Massachusetts reintroduced the Public Housing Emergency Response Act in the Senate, she cited unhealthy conditions in homes and HUD’s estimate that roughly 10,000 public housing units are lost every year because they’re deemed inhabitable.

“Expanding our supply of quality housing is the only way to dig ourselves out of this housing crisis,” Warren said in a statement at the time. “I’m pushing for this bold investment in our public housing so that every family has a safe place to live—and to breathe new life into the public housing units we’ve lost due to decades of neglect and disrepair.”

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Tatyana@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.