Since Hurricane Sandy, the New York City Housing Authority has been eliminating repair and service requests at a rate of tens of thousands per month. If those repairs were actually being dealt with, it would be an impressive feat, but many of the requests are cancelled without being fulfilled.
According to a Daily News report, after the storm, and especially after Mayor Bloomberg announced a “comprehensive action plan” to deal with NYCHA’s backlog of repairs, cancelled service requests have skyrocketed, with 40,802 cancellations in November, the month after Sandy, and 58,000 in January, just before Bloomberg announced the new plan.
And while NYCHA officials say the cancellations are legitimate, projects residents and anonymous sources within the agency claim otherwise. “I know that this is what they’ve been told to do. I think most managers are doing their best to close them, but sometimes they just can’t do it,” said one NYCHA employee. “The managers will say they’ve been told ‘Just get the job done.’ That leaves it open to many ways to do that.”
