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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Christina Chaise, Advocacy Coordinator at TakeRoot Justice and NYCHA Resident
4:10:17
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Christina Chaise, a long-term NYCHA resident and Advocacy Coordinator at TakeRoot Justice, testifies about the lack of transparency in the RAD/PACT program and its negative impacts on public housing residents. She criticizes the selection process for conversions, the loss of resident rights, and the intimidation tactics used to push the program.
- Calls for a moratorium on RAD/PACT conversions and infill projects pending proper investigation
- Highlights specific concerns about the Fulton/Elliott-Chelsea Houses demolition plan
- Emphasizes the need for City Council to oppose privatization and protect public housing
Christina Chaise
4:10:17
Hey good morning my name is Christina Chase.
4:10:19
I am an advocacy coordinator at Take Root Justice but above all I'm a long term NYCHA resident and have been for almost thirty years.
4:10:29
I have a lot to say but I will start with the fact that there's no transparency on how a NYCHA property is selected to convert to the RAD PAC program despite what we've heard.
4:10:38
Conversions that have taken place are neighborhoods experiencing rapid gentrification and pose a real estate investment rather than a commitment to meaningfully serve the long standing residents who built that community.
4:10:48
We are seen as joint ventures not families living in homes.
4:10:51
There's no transparency for residents who do not want RadPact.
4:10:55
Those are the residents who are often intimidated in silence, but we the tenants who are here today will no longer live in fear and refuse to be quiet.
4:11:02
We do not want RAD packed for our homes and for the city Of New York at large.
4:11:06
We understand the consequences of this conversion as leaseholders and as citizens and the erosion of section nine public housing that results from these conversions.
4:11:14
The erosion of the right to housing as a public good.
4:11:17
Residents have lost the right to transfer despite their right to reasonable accommodations even if they've been waiting for several years, their accommodation requests are canceled.
4:11:27
We do not even know the implications for domestic violence survivors and their rights to transfer are being honored or if their emergency situations necessitating relocation are being ignored.
4:11:37
I have residents calling me scared that the Radpac team is at their development and being harassed and intimidated to sign leases for a conversion that HUD has not even approved as in the case of Boston C Corp who actually testified here not too long ago.
4:11:50
This is unlawful.
4:11:52
There are residents who have converted to RAD PAC who are pleading to go back to section nine but there's no reversal to such a permanent decision that reduces our public housing stock and endangers our rights as public housing residents.
4:12:02
To NYCHA this is a real estate transaction.
4:12:05
To us this is our lives, this is our homes, stop playing with our lives.
4:12:10
I would be remiss not to mention our brothers, sisters, and siblings over at Fulton Elliot And Chelsea Houses.
4:12:15
The FEC plan is an example of the most egregious and extractive plan for a public housing conversion that is blatantly about greed and profit than it is about providing a dignified home for NYCHA residents.
4:12:26
We need our council members to step up and say no to demolition, no to privatization, and no to giving our city owned land away to private developers.
4:12:34
We need an investigation both into RadPact as well as infill.
4:12:38
We also want to know where all the money from infill transfer of development of rights is going especially the monies that are supposed to go back into the development.
4:12:46
Until there is proper investigation and resolution, we need the city council to put a moratorium on all rad pack conversions as well as infill.
4:12:54
Thank you.