“We have town hall meetings. We attend City Hall meetings. We pass out petitions. We speak about our fight and our plight in terms of getting the funding that we need,” said Brenda Temple, a lifelong NYCHA resident and member of the Committee for Independent Community Action (CICA).

“Meet Your Tenant Leader” profiles the work of tenant leaders and housing organizers across New York City.

As the saying goes, “home is where the heart is,” and that statement rings true for Brenda Temple, a resident at NYCHA’s Oceanside* Apartments in Queens.

The 67-year-old was born and raised in public housing, from her childhood living at the Ravenswood Houses in Long Island City to her present day home in Far Rockaway. She remembers when community centers were bustling with activities such as art, cooking and dance classes. There were softball games, barbecues and in general “just a normal way of living back then.” 

Temple said hardships she’s experienced in her personal life emphasized just how important a home can be. It’s more than just an address, but a safe haven where you can leave trials and tribulations at the door.

But over the past couple of decades, the decline in federal funding has caused a domino effect of issues in NYCHA housing, ranging from slow-moving repairs to health hazards like lead. “I find that every day is a struggle for residents of public housing,” said Temple.

In an effort to solve these issues, her development in 2016 was the first NYCHA complex to convert to private management under the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program—New York City’s version of a national program called the Rental Assistance Demonstration, or RAD.

Under PACT, public housing properties convert from their existing Section 9 funding model to another federal program called Project-Based Section 8, which allows third party companies to manage the buildings and carry out major repairs instead of NYCHA (though the housing authority still owns the properties.)

The shift motivated Temple to start advocating for the investment and preservation of traditional public housing under Section 9. Despite NYCHA’s reassurances that PACT tenants retain the same basic rights they possess in the public housing program, the Queens tenant leader told City Limits she worries conversion to private management threatens those protections. 

“People need to be knowledgeable of the ramifications of privatization as well as getting the houses in order and being prepared for whatever comes down the pipe,” she said of her organizing work. 

She is currently a member of tenant-led organizations including the Committee for Independent Community Action (CICA) and Comptroller Brad Lander’s NYCHA Resident Audit Committee.

City Limits spoke with Temple for her perspective on the past, present and future of public housing and how it’s shaped her community organizing efforts. 

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What do you remember about growing up in NYCHA?

When I was growing up, it was like a different world—I’m 67 now, so we’re talking about the 1960’s. The makeup of the family was mother, father and children that lived in these apartments. We all got along. Hard working, low-income families. It was an easier life back then. People were able to afford where they lived back then without stressors. 

The maintenance was kept up, from where I lived, anyway. In my travels to other public housing developments, it was a much better atmosphere—programs, kids were in the parks playing on the money bars, basketball courts and the handball courts, there were family days and barbecues and softball games, the community centers were thriving and I remember being in after school at the community center. They had such great programs and Girl Scouts, dance classes, cooking classes and art classes. That’s coming back now but it was more of a normal way of living back then. There were no threats of centers closing down or not having the funding, so it was less stressful than I find it today.

What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen over the years in public housing?

The difference between then and now is that I find that every day is a struggle for residents of public housing, not just because of the new programs and the privatization, but even before that, with the neglect of NYCHA management not maintaining the property, neglecting a lot of the maintenance issues, dragging their heels on different repairs that are so necessary, the mismanagement of funds for years and years has shown itself today. 

We are suffering today as a result of that. Our concerns are being glossed over and have been glossed over for years. For some reason, there’s so many organizations that are coming together as a result of the mismanagement and the neglect and the buildings falling apart and people getting sick. There are organizations coming together and fighting back—fighting back against privatization and demanding that the funds be paid for the repairs. We know that the city has the money and we demand to see where it’s going and hold people accountable. 

What I would say is that we come from all over. We are proud representatives of our ancestors. We stand on their shoulders and today it’s a different struggle, but we remember where we came from and we continue to fight the powers that be. We form resident associations, we are part of a whole bunch of other organizations within the communities. 

You are part of an organization called Community Independent Community Action (CICA). Can you tell me about it and how you became involved?

I was in the library one day looking for work. I met this woman who was holding an event at the library on Mott Avenue, her name was Lenora Fulani, PhD. She’s a community activist, a civil rights activist for years, she ran for president in 1988 and 1992. She has this program called Operation Conversation: Cops and Kids that she was presenting at the library. It’s a program where the police officers and I guess young people in the community sat across from one another and had conversations where they found out they had more in common than not, and so it really opened up the doors for people to have different perspectives.  

I thought that was fantastic. After that event, Dr. Fulani said, ‘You know NYCHA housing is going private and we need to stand up and fight back.’ I wanted more information about it. I approached her. She gave me a flyer for her organization called Committee for Independence Community Action. They met on 42nd Street at the theater that she runs. She has free classes, it’s called [the] All Stars Project and you know, different free programs for adults. We would meet there once a week, a bunch of us leaders that were interested in learning more about how to organize and fight back, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 10 years. 

We do a grassroots outreach. We ask to be invited to different community centers in the developments to go to resident association meetings and let people know [what] the difference is between Section 8, Section 9. 

We have town hall meetings. We attend City Hall meetings. We pass out petitions. We speak about our fight and our plight in terms of getting the funding that we need. And, not only us. There’s another organization called Save Section 9, run by Ramona Ferreyra, and there’s another organization called Residents to Preserve Public Housing, run by Marquis Jenkins. And there’s Justice for All, run by, I think Stan Morse. There are so many of us out there, and once in a while we collaborate and come together so that we can have rallies and marches and demonstrations. 

You also spearhead your own group, can you tell me about it?

I have an organization called Rockaway Cultural Group, it’s a 501C. What we do is we have the yearly Kwanzaa celebrations which talks about the seven principles of how to live your life every day. During Black History Month, we come together and we have skit performances, events with the children during Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s birthday, Juneteenth, and in between we focus on all cultures.

There are also people who have experienced domestic violence, mental health [challenges] and arrest records. We are trying to address what’s going on in our community and I’m just proud that a lot of people are alongside me and all the developments that I noticed are really trying the best to help each other out.

What is something you want people to know about public housing?

 People don’t know what people in public housing are going through. The stigma is horrible. They see a few people drinking on the corner, drinking beer or smoking cigarettes or selling loosies or smoking weed. They put it together like everyone in public housing is like that, and it’s not true. Things happen in people’s lives, you know. 

[Public housing is] a place to come home to, to lick your wounds after a day of work, to love on your family and to be loved. It’s a human right. I believe that we are the hard-working, low-income essential workers and the backbone of this society. We are your home care attendants who clean after people’s grandparents’ bedsores, we are the aids that take care of homebound people, we are the childcare workers that watch the babies in nursery school and the assistant teachers of schools, bus drivers, maintenance workers, cooks, cleaners. If it weren’t for us, how could you go out to work and do what you do? That needs to be recognized.

You live at the Oceanside Apartments, the first NYCHA complex to convert to PACT. What are your thoughts on the transition, almost a decade later?

Well, it’s bittersweet because there are some good sides to it and there are more not good sides. At the beginning, I would go to the meetings when RAD would come to the community center to talk about Ocean Bay and what they wanted to do. They would have these PowerPoint presentations showing beautiful pictures of what the apartment would look like, what changes they were going to make. But a lot of us were curious. A lot of us questioned them.

I said, “What if the residents don’t want this?” And they said “it’s already in the workings, we’re just showing you what’s going to go on.”I tried to get some residents to organize and fight back. I got a few people, but most people weren’t even at the PowerPoint presentation, there were maybe about 30 people and you’re talking about a huge development. 

When they saw how beautiful the apartment was going to look, a lot of people were like, “Yeah we want this, we’re tired of the way the apartments are looking, the grounds are looking.”

The landscape looks beautiful. The inside looks okay in terms of the lobbies. A lot of people are complaining about the work being done in their apartments. Maintenance is constantly going into apartments to do Band-Aid repairs. A lot of people say they wish they had stayed in Section 9, even though they appreciate that they got some new, fancy shiny things but that the benefit of Section 9 outweighs all of that at the end of the day.

*A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Temple as a tenant at Ocean Bay Apartments; she lives at nearby Oceanside Apartments.

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