At least 70 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) employees have been charged in the largest single-day bribery takedown in the history of the Department of Justice.
NYCHA superintendents and assistant superintendents received up to $2 million in kickbacks over ten years beginning in 2013. The supers were responsible for authorizing minor repairs in their buildings (less than $10,000), and before the superintendent would sign off on the work completed, they’d solicit a kickback on the work. If the contractor refused, any future bids from them would be declined. Since the contracts were no-bid contracts, that left the contractor out of the lucrative repair work.
“Contractors who paid NYCHA superintendents should not be afraid to come forward and speak out,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said. “As the complaint today makes clear, many contractors have been brave enough to tell law enforcement about bribes NYCHA employees demanded of them. Going forward contractors should understand that NYCHA employees should not be asking for a single penny.”
“Instead of acting in the interests of NYCHA residents, the City of New York, or taxpayers, the 70 defendants charged today allegedly used their jobs at NYCHA to line their own pockets,” Williams said in a joint statement with other officials.
The dozens of current and former employees of NYCHA demanded $2 million in bribe money from contractors in exchange for giving out more than $13 million in work at NYCHA buildings, officials say. Contractors who failed to pay a kickback were cut out of work, officials say.
Officials announced that superintendents accepting and extorting bribes for contractors had become business as usual, occurring in almost 100 NYCHA buildings across all five boroughs — nearly 1/3 of all NYCHA buildings.
NYCHA is the largest public housing authority in the country, receiving more than $1.5 billion in federal funding every year. It is home to 1 in 17 New Yorkers.
This was a scandal waiting to happen. No-bid contracts under $10,000? That’s peanuts in an agency with a $1.5 billion budget. Who’s going to notice if a couple of grand is missing from petty cash?
Lisa Bova-Hiatt, NYCHA’s chief executive, said in a statement that the employees had “put their greed first and violated the trust of our residents, their fellow NYCHA colleagues and all New Yorkers.”
She said the agency was working hard to improve conditions in public housing.
“We will not allow bad actors to disrupt or undermine our achievements,” she said.
What achievements? “Last year, officials at the agency estimated that it would need some $78 billion over the next two decades to renovate the aging system,” reports the Times. The renovations aren’t going to be enough to revive the crumbling buildings that human beings shouldn’t be forced to live in.
Public housing in major cities is a sinkhole for cash and breeds hopelessness. The cynicism of the employees only reflects that reality.