Comparing NYCHA To Bad Landlords Like 'Apples And Oranges': Mayor

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio used one of his favorite idioms on Friday to dismiss comparisons between negligent building owners and his own public housing authority — which was recently named the city’s worst landlord.

“These are apples and oranges,” he said during his weekly appearance on WNYC.

“I know what my intentions are for NYCHA, to fix it,” the mayor added. “Bad landlords have no such intention, and they need to understand there’s going to be consequences.”

In his State of the City address on Thursday, de Blasio announced plans for the city to seize troubled buildings from landlords who fail to make repairs and hand them over to nonprofits.

The mayor said the seizures, which could affect about 40 buildings a year, would be a last resort if fines and penalties don’t induce landlords to fix problems in their buildings. The city is pursuing legislation that would make the seizures possible, the mayor's office has said.

“How many strikes do these bad landlords get before they’re out? That’s the basic question,” de Blasio, a Democrat, said. "I think it’s time for a much more muscular approach.”

But the city has ironically been dinged for being a bad landlord itself. Last month the New York City Housing Authority topped then-Public Advocate Letitia James’ annual list of the city’s worst landlords because of its mountain of needed repairs and unfulfilled work requests from tenants. James is now the state attorney general.

De Blasio said the city's everyday people “deserve heat, they deserve hot water, they deserve to be treated decently by their landlords.” But more than 3,700 NYCHA tenants were without heat or hot water as of about 3:45 p.m. on Friday, according the agency’s online dashboard.

NYCHA is also facing a takeover by the federal government because of its handling of lead paint inspections, heating breakdowns and other problems.

The mayor, though, argued there’s a clear difference between a public housing agency that requires tenants to pay just 30 percent of their income in rent and private landlords trying to “make a buck.” NYCHA has also struggled with decades of disinvestment from the state and federal governments, he said.

“The private landlords have the resources to keep their building up,” he said. “They’re choosing not to keep their building up so they can force out — and I’m talking about the bad landlords here — so they can force out tenants and make even more money. NYCHA’s not here to make money.”

The mayor also suggested a federal takeover of NYCHA is not imminent. The city is “working productively” with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to address the housing authority’s problems following a complaint federal prosecutors filed last June, he said.

A judge in November rejected a proposed settlement between NYCHA and federal prosecutors in which the city committed to giving the authority more than $1 billion in new capital funding over five years. HUD Secretary Ben Carson has said he will declare a default for NYCHA if a new deal isn't reached by Jan. 31.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio gave his annual State of the City address on Thursday. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)