BY ALBINA CEKA
Long repair delays, poor communication, confusing directives: New York City Housing Authority residents aired their grievances and demanded more accountability from the public housing agency at a September 22 City Council hearing. Council members urged NYCHA executives to answer for what is going to be done to aid residents for lack of a proper system around work orders. “We are not and should not be the ones and neither should that be falling on residents’ backs to be constantly calling and following up and figuring out where their work orders are,” Councilmember Elsie Encarnacian told Daniel Green., executive vice president of property management operations at NYCHA, “I think that there has to be a more fluid method for you guys [NYSCHA] to be actively going out and following up on these work orders and not the other way around.”
NYCHA was created in 1934 in order to provide affordable apartments and nowadays, according to the NYCHA website, provides roughly 1 in 16 New Yorkers with housing. In order to combat the billions of dollars in severe building repair backlogs costs they implemented the PACT program in 2016. The goal of PACT was to bring in private and nonprofit companies to manage the properties and fund renovations in order to keep the housing affordable. Council Member and Chair of the Committee on Public Housing Chris Banks led the oversight hearing focused on the continued backlog of work orders.
Daniel Green, executive vice president of property management operations at NYCHA, explained that residents can submit repair requests through the Customer Contact Center, the NYCHA app, or the NYCHA website. Once a request is submitted a maintenance worker is sent to assess the repairs needed and if it is more than a basic repair, like plumbing or plastering, they will create tickets for NYCHA Staff and vendors to complete the repair. Residents can then call their neighborhood planner to schedule skill trade appointments.
“Of all trades, NYCHA maintenance workers have the heaviest daily workload, receiving approximately 98,000 work orders per month,” Green said. “Despite the immense workload NYCHA is completing basic maintenance repairs in occupied apartments in less than four days on average with its onsite maintenance teams.”
Green pointed out how NYCHA is making real progress in improving conditions in their apartments and buildings. Their average score on the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) physical inspection system was 79 as of September 16, 2026, compared to 32.5 in 2023. He also said 89 percent of NYCHA developments passed those same HUD inspections, compared with 15 percent in 2023.
These scores were later questioned by Council Member Elsie Encarnacion, representative of district 8, who said “I’ll be honest. I don’t know how you’re hitting those numbers.” Her assessment was based on what she had learned while visiting apartments and speaking with NYCHA residents in her district. She says that much of her and fellow council staff ‘s portion of constituent service is spent helping residents get existing work orders addressed. “If I look at my staff’s notebooks, it’s all work order numbers,” said Encarnacion. Green says that is the reason the NYCHA has created programs like Maintenance Cares and the Critical Repairs Initiative as a way to handle urgent and long standing repair issues.
But for residents living in NYCHA the work order backlog represents more than a statistic. For Patricia Dickey, it meant being unable to use her kitchen and relying on a temporary slop sink given to her by NYCHA. NYCHA staff told that the work on her kitchen would finished by March 2027. “It’s extremely hard. First off, I have dialysis, so I need the function of my kitchen to work because I have to eat in a certain way,” Dickey said. “And then I have grandchildren that’s here and it’s like I’m using half of my kitchen and then I can’t lift stuff and everything is all scattered.” Many residents are forced to go through this process of waiting and hoping that NYCHA will help.
Other tenants say they cannot get a straight answer on what construction is being done in their developments. Carla Hollingsworth, the Secretary of the Stuyvesant Gardens One Tenants Association, said,“We have been told that ETC [a construction company contracted by NYCHA] manages approximately 22 contracting companies working simultaneously at the development. We’ve repeatedly asked, who are these companies? What work is each company performing? Who’s responsible for supervising and inspecting their work? Who is accountable when that work fails? We have gotten no answers to date.”