Rep. Ritchie Torres to NYCHA: GOP 'Unlikely' to Fund Toxic Mold Cleanup - THE CITY

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D – The Bronx) warned NYCHA that the current Republican-controlled House is "unlikely" to sign off on the billions of dollars the authority says it needs to address one of its most persistent problems: toxic mold.

In a letter sent Wednesday to NYCHA Chief Operating Officer Eva Trimble, Torres cited a recent report the authority commissioned that quantified the cost of fully tackling the causes of mold at $40 billion — a price tag he says the GOP will likely reject.

"While your report states that preventing the underlying causes of mold would cost around $40 billion, the current House majority has shown a reluctance to increase the budget for housing and is unlikely to appropriate this much needed increase in funding," he wrote.

Torres' concerns about the current hostility of the GOP leadership in the House to funding housing programs extends to one of the key tactics NYCHA is relying on to pay for much-needed upgrades to its ailing portfolio of 177,000 public housing units — switching from the traditional public housing model to relying on housing vouchers known as Section 8.

NYCHA has begun turning over what will ultimately be 62,000 apartments to private management under a program called Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD). To date 38,000 have transitioned to RAD, which is funded by Section 8 vouchers.

And a newly formed Preservation Trust that could affect another 25,000 units kicked off last week when tenants at the Nostrand Houses in Sheepshead Bay voted to participate in the program, which will continue NYCHA management but rely on Section 8 funding. That allows NYCHA via the trust to use its property as collateral to float bonds that will pay for building upgrades.

The issue is that Section 8 funding requires congressional approval each year, a potential vulnerability if the Republican opposition decides to curtail NYCHA's grand plans for RAD and the Trust.

On Thursday Rep. Torres agreed that the increasing reliance on vouchers could run into the buzzsaw of a "uniquely radicalized Republican Party" driven by an ideological hostility to funding housing programs.

"Section 8 is subject to annual appropriations," he said. "We're facing a uniquely radicalized Republican Party intent on waging war on the social safety net. So the assumptions of the past may no longer apply. No social service request is safe in the hands of the radicalized Republican Party."

He noted the Republican lawmakers' recent trend of approving a continuing resolution on housing, keeping funding at the same level year to year while the cost of housing continues to rise.

"What we've seen from House Republicans is an endless stream of continuing resolutions which is akin to a budget cut," he said.

An Independent Budget Office (IBO) report released in February noted this issue, stating, "a long-term obstacle is the need for increases in federal funding for the Tenant Protection Voucher program" that NYCHA would need to accomplish its RAD and Trust goals.

IBO estimated NYCHA would need $500 million in vouchers to support placing the 25,000 apartments into the Trust alone, noting that the spending bill Congress passed last go-round included only $347 for these vouchers nationwide.

In his letter to Trimble, Torres asked NYCHA to come up with a more modest, more focused request to address the mold problems, writing, "Are there any other specific projects that could be completed by NYCHA to address some of the many mold and leak related issues pointed out in your report?"

On Thursday NYCHA spokesperson Barbara Brancaccio responded, "NYCHA has made significant progress addressing the challenges related to mold and leaks and we appreciate the support of Rep. Torres and our advocate partners as we continue to improve upon this important work."

Torres happened to send his letter on the 10th anniversary of Baez v. NYCHA, a landmark case in which the authority agreed to make aggressive efforts to combat mold infestation in its aging properties under the watchful eye of a federal judge.

Last summer NYCHA filed a report with the court in the Baez case describing both successes and failures in that still ongoing effort.

The report found that since 2019 the rate of tenant requests for mold and leak repairs had dropped by 50%. But it also noted a growing backlog of the existing requests, with some 35,000 unresolved requests in October 2019 rising to 90,000 by spring of 2023.