Seniors feel brunt of public housing reform

As the New York City Housing Administration pushes on with its recent edict to downsize tenants who have unoccupied rooms, it’s senior citizens who have been in their homes for decades who are feeling the pinch most acutely, the New York Times reported.

Nearly 55,000 apartments administered by NYCHA qualify as “underoccupied,” representing almost a third of the total units the city agency deals with. Meanwhile, a list of almost 160,000 New Yorkers qualifying for public housing grows each day. 

Shirley Jones, a 30-year resident of the Amsterdam Houses, at Amsterdam Avenue and 63rd Street, on the Upper West Side, recently received an eviction notice for her underoccupied two-bedroom apartment. Now she faces being relocated to another building, away from her lifelong friends, an issue documented previously by West Side Rag. And Jones’ lifetime of belongings have nowhere to go either.

Jones said many of her neighbors have simply ignored the notices telling them they have to move.

“We’ve been here for so long that we’re just about buried here,” Jones said. [NYT]