TheVoiceOfJoyce

Back to my roots,  back to America , and the cycle of Poverty. Front page NY TIMES, 8/12/14,” Public Housing in City Reaches Fiscal Crisis”. I’m not surprised if  there were a 100,000 people waiting for apartments  in  the Affordable Housing Program. The existing housing stock is diminishing since very few repairs  have been made  during the last 10 years.  Hundreds , if not thousands of rooms, that’s right rooms, are leased from developers for families at the going rate of $3750.00 / per room. These rooms do not have bathrooms or kitchen facilities, no wonder Affordable housing has a deficit of $77,000,000 and capital projects are  underfunded by $18 Billion .

The city has had winner take all contracts for too long. They want repairs in occupied apartments to be done according to a prevailing wage scale, yet when you bid appropriately, it’s impossible to get the bid. For years, NYCHA has proposed repairs to affordable housing and cancelled them. I know, I used to bid those projects. It was a double standard of certified payroll and no leeway to hire members of the Community for training and work in their own projects,

Since Union Shops have reaped the benefits of Government Contracts, why not give back to Society and start training members of the affordable housing community to make the needed repairs on their apartments? Why not pay these tenants extra for becoming skilled labor and give them a chance to rotate out of the projects when their skill sets deserve greater pay? Or why not create crews of maintenance staff, with labor from the Affordable Housing projects,  paying the people fairly but under market wages as they learn new skills?

We have many people unemployed. If they were Middle Class residents of a rental Community, they would be required to return their apartments to “as is ” condition. A super might be on call for repairs. Why not duplicate these skills in the projects? Reward those who want to learn construction skills and develop emergency skills. Don’t throw them out of these structures once skills are acquired; the objective is to improve life in General and life in the projects in particular.

This is my passion, I advocate for teaching people skills to help themselves and their communities. Clearly, the status quo is in crisis, but we can move beyond the crisis to solutions. We can’t help those in need unless and until we reform our tax base and think creatively.   Don’t look to the Middle Class , they have nothing more to give.

http://nyti.ms/1q5K1KE  Public Housing in city reaches Fiscal Crisis

LOL:   Also.  read in the Times, Capsys, a manufacturer of modular housing,  is losing their space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Why?  They pay $4.00 /ft  rent which is below market . For comparison ,  Jacques Torres , the chocolatier, is paying around $7.75/ft .

I would pose these questions to the deBlasio Administration.  Does it pay to keep Capsys in the City?  Is Modular Housing more cost effective then conventional construction?  If Modular Housing can be built faster and cheaper then conventional housing, how can this factory be incorporated into the NYCHA program?  More questions can be posed along with solutions to our City’s housing crisis.  We have to be creative when Politics effects US!  We the People have a voice and a choice!

http://nyti.ms/1q5Rvxh Capsys has manufactured 1000's of units/
Now they have no lease?