Q&A
Support needed from city, state, and federal government for NYCHA
0:22:17
·
3 min
Neil Barofsky discusses the support NYCHA needs from various levels of government to meet the goals set by the agreement.
- Primary need: As much financial support as possible, given the capital shortfall in the tens of billions of dollars
- Acknowledgment of decades of disinvestment in public housing
- Effort to verify and clarify the exact amount of capital shortfall, addressing skepticism about the numbers
- Goal to improve NYCHA's efficiency in deploying capital and spending funds to better justify additional support
Chris Banks
0:22:17
What support do you think Nitro needs from the city, state, and federal government to accomplish the goals set forth by the agreement?
Neil Barofsky
0:22:31
I think it 1st and foremost will be it obviously is is as much financial support as they can receive.
0:22:39
Again, the the we we're we're gonna work with NICA and NICA just committed to work with us to squeeze as much juice out of the lemon as possible.
0:22:47
Mhmm.
0:22:48
But we know when you're talking about capital shortfalls in the tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars, it's just it's an underfunded in this decades of of disinvestment.
0:22:59
Or or felt.
Chris Banks
0:23:00
Do do do do you have the exact number of the capital shortfall?
Neil Barofsky
0:23:05
We do not.
0:23:05
Because we've heard
Chris Banks
0:23:07
I've heard different numbers.
Neil Barofsky
0:23:10
Yeah.
0:23:10
I think one of the things that we hope to bring to the table is that there has been and we've heard this as well some amount of skepticism about surrounding some of these numbers
Chris Banks
0:23:21
Right.
Neil Barofsky
0:23:22
Whether they're inflated or too small or too big, and whether they're necessary if you can have the type of efficiency gains can nudge in a position to deploy that capital in a timely and efficient and effective manner.
0:23:35
You know, we've heard all of those questions.
0:23:37
And one of the things that we're going to try to do and seek to do is to answer those questions.
0:23:41
And so if if you know, we're we're currently doing a review of, for example, of of of how Nitro receives and spends the city capital and to see if there's any areas that we can improve the efficiency and make it a better process, any a a process that moves more quickly, That'll be one of the things that we do so that we can answer those questions when people have them.
0:24:04
Same thing with efficiency.
0:24:05
If NICE can you know, a question of how much more resources NICE needs, is against where it is today, but what would it be versus a night shift that has operating at peak efficiency and is making the most out of every penny that it has?
0:24:20
Those types of things, those questions we think would be really important to answer.
0:24:24
So that we can better answer your question and the question so many of people who who, you know, who want to support NYCHA, but do have some of these concerns.
0:24:33
We wanna support those asking those questions to get those answers.
Chris Banks
0:24:37
Before we proceed, we've been joined by Council member Brewer and Council member watcher.
0:24:44
Could you share what are some of the potential roadblocks that you foresee for Nitro when it comes to the HUD agreement?
Matt Cipolla
0:24:55
Sure.
0:24:55
So Neil mentioned one of them, which is gonna be IT.
0:25:00
So, you know, Nitro uses a very complex older, highly customized IT system for its work orders.
0:25:09
And so it's it's gotten a lot of value out of it.
0:25:12
It works well with it.
0:25:13
They've given us access to it.
0:25:16
But at this point, further customization and further upgrades are gonna require resources, time, and attention.
0:25:24
And so some of the work that we aim to do that's tied to that can sometimes be delayed or require further work because of those IT limitations.
