I went for a walk in my CD yesterday, strolling from East 110^th St. all the way up to E. 142^nd St in Harlem. One thing I noticed was the large number of government-owned public housing buildings. I chose to look into how these buildings were faring in the face of budget cuts, fewer resources and the state of the economy in general.

Mayor Bloomberg and the Department of Housing and Preservation actually proposed a plan to build or maintain 165,000 affordable housing units back in 2009. Now, it looks like federal budget cuts may throw that plan off track, according to CityHallNews.com. The cuts are being blamed for the poor maintenance in many of these buildings, with residents reporting leaks and broken elevators on a regular basis. In fact, ABCNews reports that the first ever “Resident Report Card” gave New York City’s Housing Authority a “D.”

The Housing Authority responds that it is working on a five-year plan to deal with the long lists of complaints. Since 2005, the authority has laid off 11% of its maintenance staff to deal with budget deficits, and that means fewer employees to address the mounting issues, as highlighted by this Daily News piece.

As the city deals with this, one of the initiatives has been to mix public and private housing. WNYC.org reports that mixing apartment buildings and tenants means mixing funds, and that could help alleviate the pressure on public housing funds. These projects won’t be finalized until 2014 though, so it’s hard to judge if it will be a good solution.