We hear a lot of comments about the pathetic state of NYCHA. They usually come from politicians – State and local – who could actually do something about it besides talk. But talk is all we get: Horrific. Unimaginable. Inhuman. A cesspool of mismanagement. And on and on. All great quotes which more or less describe the way 500,000 New Yorkers live in the biggest slum in the nation. Just talk. Nothing changes.
And then one day all of these truths are made real when the Federal Government steps in to deal with what has been the responsibility of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). A US Attorney indicts the city for its failure to fix the roofs, the mold, the lead poisoning, the broken pipes and walls, the hallways without lights and all of the disgusting mess that so many people live with day after day for years and years.
A Federal judge orders the city to spend One Billion dollars within ten years to begin to fix these problems and demands that a Federal Monitor be appointed to oversee the fix.
So all the newspaper stories and TV interviews and political statements are finally adding up to something. Or so it seems. Because there is one glaring reality that no one mentions…no one: where did the billions of dollars that were supposed to be spent maintaining these 2,750 buildings go?
Construction and maintenance contracts were written. Bids were made. Contracts awarded. Money spent. And yet the buildings continued to fall apart from within. Nothing was fixed. Work orders were ignored…but money had been spent. Why has no one followed the money to see what happened? The answer to so much can be found if someone would follow the money. But no one has. No one.
Not Governors or Mayors or State and City Comptrollers. No one.
Why not? It simply cannot be the standard answer: It’s not my job. No, it’s more than that.
THE MOB
The mob leaders involved represented the four largest crime families in the New York Metro area and were among 15 men indicted on Federal charges that they skimmed “tens of millions” of dollars through a conspiracy to control awarding window contracts at the New York Housing Authority.
Since 1978, the indictment claimed, four of the crime families monopolized the selection of contractors for the manufacture and installation of more than one million windows.
“By dominating a crucial labor union and about a dozen companies, the Mafia leaders determined who would bid for most contracts to replace or install windows for the entire Housing Authority.”
14 individuals from these families were indicted. The 15th defendant was a business agent of local 580 of the Architectural and Ornamental Iron Workers Union…the union with the jurisdiction to install windows in all of the Housing Authority projects.
All the defendants were accused of violating the Federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO. They also were charged with separate counts of mail fraud and violating the Taft-Hartley law.”
Eleven of the fifteen men indicted were arrested in the early morning at their homes. Two underbosses and an associate of the Lucchese family were missing and were being sought by police.
One year later, NYTimes writer Arnold Lubasch wrote a story headlined: Informer Tells of Corruption in Window-Installation Trade in which an informer who admitted to participating in six murders began testifying in a major racketeering trial of nine of the Mafia leaders involved in the NYCHA window installation case, telling of corruption, rigged bids and labor payoffs.
TODAY
Where is the proof that the men who control waste management, cement, commercial laundries and carting among other everyday businesses are not still involved in the business of making money on NYCHA?
We don’t have it yet but have been trying to find it. There is no comprehensive list of contractors to look at. $3.5 billion a year and no list that tells anyone who has been receiving contracts and for what purpose. To say that there is no transparency is putting it mildly.
It is impossible to follow the trail of even a few contractors who have been awarded bids by NYCHA in the recent past. There are names but no addresses, just other businesses with no addresses. There are no names of officers or officials at any of these contractors. Now you see them…then you don’t.
But we looked and know for certain that unless a complete list is provided no one can ever know where all that money is going.
How could the current US Attorney stop with the naming of NYCHA staff who have refused to do work assigned to them…who have ignored all kinds of published reports about their failure but never did the work anyway. Why did he stop there? Why hasn’t he gone further? Why hasn’t he questioned the members of the Teamsters Union who have 7,600 union members on the payroll at NYCHA? These are the very people not doing the work they are supposed to be doing. There has not been a single mention of them anywhere.
Thomas DiNapoli
Why does City Comptroller Scott Stringer boast about doing more critical audits on NYCHA than any other comptroller but never followed the money to see where it was spent?
Why are the New York members of Congress who have held those seats for decades so silent about all of this? Not a word from them. You may hear their concern about immigrant children being taken away from their parents at the border, but not one word to help the thousands of children living in squalor right in their own districts.
There is now no way to know where all of that money goes…now and over the years. Where does it say that the Mafia gave up such a lucrative enterprise just because a few of their leaders went to jail years ago?
In that business model being caught, indicted and jailed is part of the cost of doing business.
When will someone with authority insist on an accounting of the billions that HUD gives NYCHA and where it has all gone?
When will all the talking stop and change take place?
Someday…or never?