PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Metin Sarci, Public Housing Specialist
2:39:32
ยท
3 min
Metin Sarci, a public housing specialist with over 10 years of experience, testified about the importance of NYCHA's community centers and the challenges they face due to lack of funding and maintenance. He highlighted the potential for generating revenue through facility leasing and offered recommendations for improving the situation.
- Sarci emphasized that 78% of NYCHA's community facilities lack upkeep responsibility and rental costs, leading to spaces in disrepair and interruption of essential services.
- He proposed leveraging partnerships with workforce development partners to replace private vendor repairs, potentially reducing capital needs and freeing up funds for larger projects.
- Sarci recommended increasing contracts with nonprofits operating in NYCHA spaces and addressing the current $8,430,000 deficit in facility maintenance funding.
Metin Sarci
2:39:32
Hello.
2:39:32
Good good afternoon.
2:39:35
My name is Matin Sarci.
2:39:36
I'm a public housing specialist with over 10 years of experience serving NYCHA residents.
2:39:42
From January 2023 to January 2024, I, designed and implemented the community relations program within NYCHA's Office of Public Private Partnerships, created to facilitate, manage, and track over 11,000 repairs at over 400 community centers citywide.
2:39:57
The opinions shared in this testimony are based upon my own experience and do not necessarily represent the views of the housing authority.
2:40:04
In my opinion, NYCHA's community centers are the city's most valuable resource.
2:40:09
They provide locations for communities to vote, to organize, obtain childcare, attend after school programs, and provide recreation for our older adults.
2:40:18
However, about 78% of NYCHA's community facilities define lacked upkeep responsibility and no rental costs to support preventative measures.
2:40:29
The disinvestment has created spaces in disrepair, which has been spoken about today.
2:40:35
This has also interrupted essential services, as was just brought up, and it causes instances of partners using their own funding to ensure compliance with city contracts.
2:40:45
If facilities with a combined 2,500,000 square foot, square feet were leased at the standard NYCHA standard of $5.50 per square foot, NYCHA would be producing about $13,750,000 annually to meet that demand.
2:41:00
However, NYCHA currently operates with an $8,430,000 deficit to address any of these, issues, and that's after the annual 2,300,000 allocated through the city's budget.
2:41:12
I have 3 recommendations.
2:41:14
The first part of it is to leverage partnerships with workforce development partners to replace private vendor repairs.
2:41:21
Currently, facilities, a majority of them are repaired through vendors, which we've seen through multiple reports what that has led to.
2:41:31
If we look to our nonprofit partners, especially those that, perform workforce developments, we could reduce the not only capital needs because we're looking at, reducing, essentially any sort of capital repair in which there could be a tie in, and I'll use, council member banks, Brook Allen Center as an example in which we were able to use 10 about 10 to $15,000 to do tile replacements.
2:41:56
And in doing that, we were able to free up a $150,000 of capital funding, to, for example, replace the HVAC or perform another, capital project.
2:42:08
So it brings about the importance of that.
2:42:11
We'd also we should be looking at grander scale things in terms of looking towards our non profit partners
Crystal Hudson
2:42:18
Sorry, if you could just wrap up
Metin Sarci
2:42:19
Absolutely.
2:42:20
Thank you.
2:42:21
To lead the capital projects.
2:42:24
It just expands the the the the net in which we're casting.
2:42:29
We've seen examples where Grant Street Settlement over at 80 Pitt Street has raised $20,000,000 to do a complete rehab of a NYCHA building, and we should be looking towards those type of solutions abroad.
2:42:40
And the very last thing that I'll say is, we really need to look at increasing the the contracts with the, with the nonprofits that are being contracted.
2:42:51
They barely get enough money as it is to run their programs.
2:42:54
And if the original thought process was we weren't going to charge them rents to be in these spaces, again, they're still using their operating funds that handle repairs anyways.
2:43:05
And we're not getting any revenue to perform those repairs.
2:43:09
So at the end of the day, you're only increasing the amount of capital needs by not addressing the operating needs.
2:43:15
And because we have an $8,000,000 deficit, we you're now seeing the result of it as you're going through all these tours.
2:43:23
Thank you.
Crystal Hudson
2:43:23
Thank you so much.