Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Zulai Velasquez, Resident of Jacob Riis Houses, on NYCHA RAD/PACT Conversion and Tenant Association Issues
3:56:59
ยท
3 min
Zulai Velasquez, a resident of Jacob Riis Houses, testified about concerns regarding the RAD/PACT conversion process and issues with the tenant association. She presented a petition signed by over 600 residents opposing privatization and highlighted problems with resident engagement and voting procedures.
- Velasquez criticized the tenant association structure as compromised and operating under outdated bylaws
- She reported that a recent tenant association election was stopped due to tampering and procedural issues
- Concerns were raised about the clarity and fairness of the RAD/PACT voting process, including potential ADA violations and unclear balloting procedures
Zulai Velasquez
3:56:59
Hi.
3:57:00
My name is Zulai Velasquez from RACE.
3:57:02
And, I just want to talk about a few things.
3:57:03
So, one thing I want to say is that around May, me and a few other people started petitioning against the privatization and we gathered here, we have over 600 petitions that state that we the residents basically have not given the tenant association any verbal or written permission to make decisions on our behalf regarding RAD.
3:57:25
Especially one so sensitive that could displace us, right?
3:57:29
The tenant association process even a c cop or the d cop, that whole structure is compromised, right?
3:57:36
But not only is it compromised, right, from the top, like they have NYCHA's controlling that.
3:57:43
If not how is NYCHA controlling this, right?
3:57:45
So they're controlling this and at this point even though the they say that they are the elected people, right, the process in which they do it is not it's not good.
3:57:55
But here it says has the tenant association asked you your opinion about RAD PAC?
3:58:01
Now the residents know we are all the members, they're all operating with bylaws that are over 30 years old.
3:58:09
Not good.
3:58:09
So in there it says collect fees.
3:58:11
In there it says the membership is their their committees, but you know what we are all members.
3:58:16
So they didn't come to us and say hey do you want this before they came in?
3:58:21
They just said we're gonna do it but we are members all of us and all these 600 plus people which I'm gonna submit as evidence is basically saying no, notarad already.
3:58:31
We've already said no to that, okay.
3:58:33
Now in regards to the voting process, we had a tenant association election and they stopped it.
3:58:40
They stopped it because they tampered with our process.
3:58:44
They they changed order around, put people in different places and then wanted us to go through with election.
3:58:50
It was a recording that stopped it but they could have also done the right thing but instead of doing the right thing they just cancelled it so they can pause just in enough time to do the rap pack election.
Chris Banks
3:59:05
Thirty seconds to wrap it Okay.
Zulai Velasquez
3:59:10
Rap pack election and so now they're knocking on people's doors and they even violated the ADA rules for the people who are disabled.
3:59:17
Blind lady doesn't know what's going on at Reese, okay.
3:59:20
You have people who are being told at the door basically they called me yesterday to sign.
3:59:27
So they're getting signatures from people.
3:59:29
The ballot is really unclear.
3:59:31
They don't say in the package I think that you're going get a physical ballot.
3:59:34
So this is going to be a mail or like a virtual kind of ballot.
3:59:38
They can falsify that.
3:59:39
They say we only got five apartments.
3:59:41
We got over a hundred empty apartments.
3:59:44
So how yeah exactly.
3:59:46
So I mean we need to make sure that those empty apartments don't get votes.
3:59:50
That's number one.
3:59:50
Number two, HUD told them to start an election over again, not the nomination process for the TA, but what they're doing at Reese is that since I ran on a platform that against the privatization, they stopped that because if it goes through the other other current TA and they say yes then I can't stop it when I get in.
4:00:12
Right.
4:00:12
Right.
4:00:13
And that's what's going on here because they could have paused and not done anything, we just continue election election and they didn't do that.