The New York prosecutor's office uncovers a major corruption scheme in the city's social housing agency

A volunteer distributes help to residents of a NYCHA complex in Queens in April 2020.ANDREW KELLY (Reuters)

At least 70 current and former employees of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) have been accused of receiving bribes in a vast corruption scheme that federal prosecutors of the city consider “the largest in a single day in the history of the Department of Justice”, due to the number of cases it includes.

That is, the largest number of federal bribery charges the Justice Department files in a single day.

The federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, has explained that superintendents (a figure equivalent to the manager or person in charge), deputy superintendents and other officials of the agency accepted more than two million dollars in bribes from contractors in exchange for favor smaller contracts and projects worth more than $13 million in at least 100 NYCHA complexes or developments.

Colloquially called

projects

, these complexes are immersed and distributed throughout the neighborhoods, theoretically to avoid the creation of ghettos on the outskirts, although in practice they are urban protuberances inhabited by the poorest inhabitants.

As the clearly visible signs surrounding its perimeter remind us, the buildings that make up the complex are monitored by New York police cameras, unlike the rest of the residential buildings, which have conventional cameras.

Since the pandemic, the

projects

have also brought about endless difficulties: in addition to the deterioration of facilities and services, a high level of non-payment of rents by their tenants (collection fell in 2022 to 65%, a historical minimum for the agency).

Last year, agency officials estimated that about $78 billion is needed over the next two decades to renew the aging system.

Complaints about dilapidated buildings, rodents, leaky pipes and broken elevators, among others, dog NYCHA, although demand remains high, with hundreds of thousands of people on a waiting list in a city with a serious housing shortage affordable and that expels many inhabitants from the center.

In a press conference held this Tuesday, Prosecutor Williams explained that the workers took advantage of a non-bidding process for minor contracts, those with a budget of less than $10,000, such as repairs to windows, doors and other small-scale work. .

Williams called the plot a “classic payoff.”

“Superintendents taking bribes from and extorting contractors became commonplace,” Williams said.

“They used their positions at NYCHA to line their pockets,” systemic corruption that “eroded public trust.”

This “culture of corruption,” as the prosecutor has defined it, spread across dozens of developments, where superintendents and associates allegedly siphoned relatively small amounts, from $500 to $2,000, from minor contracts while demanding silence from contractors. .

The prosecutor's office has published a map that locates the approximately one hundred NYCHA housing complexes - a third of the total - where bribes were allegedly collected.

Superintendents last year had a minimum annual salary of about $60,000, while deputy superintendents earned about $50,000, according to city data.

The average income in the United States was $65,000 in 2020, before the pandemic and the unleashed inflation that subsequently unleashed prices, but the salary of NYCHA officials, comfortable elsewhere, is only fair in New York, the most expensive city in the country.

NYCHA is the largest public housing agency in the country, with nearly 400,000 tenants in 335 developments or

projects

spread throughout the city, easily recognizable by their dull design and dirty brown brick color.

It has more than 12,000 employees and a budget of more than $3.3 billion, including $1 billion in federal funds.

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