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.”

The New York City Council’s Committees on Education and Oversight and Investigations dissected the new guidelines from the Department of Education called “Guidance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Screen Time” on a joint meeting Tuesday, September 15 at City Hall to discuss whether the efforts to curb the use of technology as a learning device in NYC public schools way far amount. 

The joint meeting was spearheaded by Shekar Krishnan, City Council Member for District 25 in Queens serving as the chair of the Committee on Oversight and Investigations, and Eric Dinowitz, City Council Member representing District 11 in Northwest Bronx while serving as the Chair of the Committee on Education. 

Krishman criticized the use of ed-tech in schools calling them “excessive and distracting students from actual learning and undermining teachers in the classrooms.”  The Department of Education created a new set of guidelines, released on September second posted on the NYCPS website, to combat how much time and what tools students used for the 2026-2027 school year. 2K-8 would have a complete ban on student-facing AI, which encompasses AI tools and applications that require direct student interaction, while 9-12 will be allowed limited use to approved programs. Screen time differences between the grades with 2K-2 allowed no 1:1 screen time, 3-5 will have a recommend no more than 30 minutes of daily 1:1 screen time, 6-8 will have a recommendation of no more than 45 minutes of daily 1:1 screen time, and 9-12 will be dependent on their school. But this does not include any test prep or standardized tests within the time frame and it remains a recommendation to teachers and schools not a mandate. 

Danielle Diunta, first Deputy Chancellor, agreed with Krishman noting that “If we’re going to be using digital devices technology in our classrooms, it needs to be intentional, active not passive.” 

For this school year the DOE has banned Youtube from all educational devices used by students regardless if the device was on school grounds or not. Teachers will still be able to use it and will be able to share specific videos for lessons through Google Classroom. But Dinowitz wonders if the same will be done for gamified apps, apps that use game design elements but tend to fail to foster cognitive growth in students. 

“These are really damaging to our kids much in the same way that social media could be — you’re always looking for the next dopamine hit, and it takes so much of the learning from these gamified apps,” said Dinowitz

Despite gamified apps having been around long since before AI there still remains no policies or guidelines considering it or any current plans by the DOE to restrict or ban them if they do not have AI reliant components. 

Krishman calls the overuse of tech in school a ” pervasiveness that has survived the pandemic and it’s a problem.” 

Referring to a time where Covid-19 forced public schools to shift their students to remote learning, leading the city to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on computers, iPads, and their upkeep. These devices were essential during the pandemic but now it has been over six years and schools are still showing a heavy reliance on technology raising the concerns about whether schools using these devices are doing more harm than good to the students’ learning. Leading to Governor Kathy Hochul’s recent bell-to-bell smartphone ban policy that issued a state wide that prohibits students from using internet devices, like smartphones, on K-12 school grounds for the entire school day. 

The current plan is that a DOE sanctioned group will meet up after the school year is up to review and evaluate the guidelines and plans. 

“What we are really eager to do is make sure we have the best policy in the country rooted in research, rooted in transparence, rooted in evidence and that we are all holding each other in accountable to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible” said Dinowitz