The federal government is cutting at least $35 million in aid this year to the New York City Housing Authority. The decrease is the largest the public housing agency has seen in five years.
The city has feared cuts to NYCHA since Donald Trump was elected president in November, though the decrease came before Ben Carson was confirmed as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In February, HUD sent a letter to the city saying that NYCHA’s aid would be cut by 5 percent. Some senior officials at the agency are expecting the cuts this year to swell to $150 million.
“The direction we’re moving in is one where public housing is drastically different or doesn’t exist,” Shola Olatoye, NYCHA’s CEO, told the Journal. “The progress we have made over the course of the last three years — it’s not that it’s at risk. It evaporates.”
Roughly $2 billion of NYCHA’s $3.2 operating budget comes from HUD. NYCHA provides housing to low- and moderate-income people and is home to more than 400,000. [WSJ] — Kathryn Brenzel