Mayor Bill de Blasio can’t work alone to sell-out NYCHA before his term is up without the help of other Democrats. Here are some of them.

A mayor left unindicted following a wide-ranging, Federal corruption investigation finds it easy to attract collaborators in the disposition of strategic public assets, like NYCHA public housing using the Blueprint scheme, for example.

As revealed by Fight For NYCHA, Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) has been pressuring fellow Democrats to vote to approve the Blueprint scheme that will convert all non-RAD/PACT public housing apartments into a new entity that will effectively bring about the end of all Section 9 public housing in New York City.

A group of New York State legislators, which appears to include State Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Bushwick), State Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-Bed-Stuy), Assemblymember Marcela Mitaynes (D-Red Hook), and notable DSA member Cea Weaver, negotiated over the minutiae of the legislation, giving the impression that they would vote to approve or support the Blueprint with minor conditions.

Under the Blueprint scheme, Mayor de Blasio would transfer all public housing apartments not meant for RAD/PACT to a new creature of Albany that would have no political accountability for bureaucratic failure.

U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley III has ruled that public housing residents, who get converted to Section 8 vouchers, as contemplated by the Blueprint scheme, could legally receive separate but unequal rights. Under the Blueprint, for example, Section 8 residents would not receive any protections offered by the Revised Consent Decree in the Baez class action lawsuit.

The Parties to the Baez litigation owe Judge Pauley a status report by June 14. Before NYCHA must return to Court, Mayor de Blasio has been strong-arming his Albany co-conspirators to vote to approve the Blueprint on or by June 10, so that, once the Parties report-back to Judge Pauley, they can inform His Honour that Albany has approved the eventual end to Section 9 housing.

An end to Section 9 housing would be the death knell to the New Deal promise to public housing.

An estimated 600,000 individuals live in apartments owned and operated by NYCHA. Ending Section 9 housing would be the next step in the Government’s wholesale abandonment of its obligations to public housing residents, something that Conservatives have long sought.

Mayor de Blasio couldn’t be able to bring about an end to NYCHA’s New Deal promise without the help of the DSA wing of Albany Legislators and other collaborators. Corruption of this scale takes a lot of work and coördination. Not even Mayor de Blasio’s reported issues over how he appears to use Government approvals for real estate contracts in order to fundraise for his various political committees have proved to be a concern for his allies. Mayor de Blasio was left unindicted following the completion of a wide-ranging, Federal corruption investigation into his campaign finance activities.

The sell-out of NYCHA public housing by Mayor de Blasio and his allies in the DSA wing of the Democratic Party comes as Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) has proposed to improve H.R. 235 to fully-fund the backlog of capital repairs to the entire Nation’s public housing stock.

Certain participants in the real estate development industry are allegedly demanding that Mayor de Blasio and other Electeds advance the approval of major real estate development projects, including the disposition of strategic public assets, before the election of the next class of Municipal Legislators poses problems for the large-scale real estate developers.

Source Document

Do let’s be clear : Bill de Blasio is determined to wreck NYCHA before he leaves office. We can’t let him !

Mayor Bill de Blasio is pushing a June 10 vote by the New York State Legislature to approve the Blueprint, so he can go into Court on the Baez case on June 14 and declare that most of Section 9 is doomed to end. We can’t let him !

We have received information that Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) is pressuring Albany Legislators to vote to approve the dangerous Blueprint for NYCHA. Under the Blueprint, all public housing apartments (that wouldn’t already perish under RAD/PACT) would be converted to Section 8 housing and placed into a new State Authority that will have no political accountability. It will become another MTA — a rudderless Agency that both the Governor and the Mayor disown, even though both of them secretly angle in smoke-filled backrooms to control the MTA’s valuable procurement and construction contracts. That’s what the new Blueprint entity is going to be like.

The information we have received is that the Albany vote for the Blueprint is schedule on or about June 10. The Mayor is pushing for such an early date, because he’s deliberately trying to convert all public housing tenants from from Section 9 housing to Section 8, because U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley III has ruled in the Baez case that the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, can treat Section 8 residents with substandard care. That’s what the mayor wants — he wants to create a “separate and unequal treatment” for Section 8 residents, so that public housing becomes more “attractive” to private sector landlords-investors. NYCHA owes Judge Pauley a status report on June 14, and the mayor wants nothing more than to go into Court and tell Judge Pauley that most of Section 9 is doomed to end.

This is a scam, and we have to call it all out — including the various politicians, who are enabling Mayor de Blasio — a corrupt, lame duck mayor left unindicted by the Manhattan Federal prosecutors’ office — to wreck all of public housing before he leaves office.

The same State Legislators, who whisper in each others’ ears that, “RAD has to happen,” want to negotiate to accept the Blueprint. We can’t let them !

Several self-styled “progressive” New York State Legislators from Brooklyn plan to vote as a bloc, and they have expressed interest in negotiating with NYCHA to accept the Blueprint. This is a trap, and the fact that these Legislators are using the pretexte of “negotiating” for an acceptable deal is indication that they plan to sell you out. Are you going to let them ?

From the beginning of the formation of Fight For NYCHA, several Legislators have privately expressed hesitancy about confronting Mayor de Blasio in a public rebuke of his RAD/PACT and Blueprint sell-out of NYCHA. Most prominently, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Justice Democrats-NY 14) infamously said though her staff that they were not interested in using Mayor de Blasio as a “punching bag” in order to push back on the RAD/PACT sell-out of NYCHA. Later, it was revealed that trade unions helped her negotiate her astroturf bill for NYCHA. Whenever large real estate development projects are proposed by the corrupt real estate industry that are opposed by community residents, unscrupulous politicians rely on the support of trades unions as political cover to override the will of community residents. Under this analysis, U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is “union-washing” the RAD/PACT sell-out of NYCHA. It’s no different than when real estate developers overtake Community Board hearings with men in yellow jackets and hardhats and run roughshod over long-term residents during ULURP hearings.

Some of AOC’s State Legislature counterparts are doing something similar, but no less dangerous and undemocratic.

The mayor is pushing a rezoning of Gowanus, the sell-out of Governor’s Island, and the NoHo/SoHo rezoning to cash-out with the real estate industry before he mounts a clown-car campaign for New York Governor’s mansion. The outsized egos of many opportunist community group leaders, who are fighting their respective battles, prevent a coming together for the good of the City. Under this scenario of self-will run riot, the City — and public housing — doesn’t stand a chance to stand-up to Mayor de Blasio’s corrupt enablers in the New York State or the Municipal legislatures.

Since the other community groups selfishly won’t do it, we will be planning a protest that will welcome everybody.

Stay tuned.

Bill de Blasio’s Five Biggest Lies about RAD/PACT and Blueprint at NYCHA

Bill de Blasio is a Liar, Liar, Privatizer !

LIE # 1 : NYCHA has no money for repairs.

FACT : We don’t need RAD/PACT or the Blueprint. Sen. Charles Schumer supports H.R.235, a House bill that when updated would provide $80 billion this year to public housing nation-wide, of which $40 billion would pay for all the repairs at NYCHA. We don’t have to sell-out public housing !

LIE # 2 : Your rights are protected.

FACT : NYCHA isn’t telling you that they are deliberately moving everybody from Section 9 to Section 8 so that everybody gets weaker tenant rights. For example, you lose rights to mold repairs and protections under the Baez case after the judge approved lower-tier rights. The RAD/PACT Landlords profit this way.

LIE # 3 : You won’t get evicted, you’re safe.

FACT : At the very first RAD/PACT conversion, over 80 households were evicted. You have no access to the Federal Monitor, so nobody will investigate civil rights violations. The new Leases are rigged, you could end up paying for utilities and costs, and you are shown no mercy at Housing Court.

LIE # 4 : You still have tenant participation.

FACT : Tenant participation doesn’t mean anything, because you don’t have any say in the wording of the Leases, the House Rules, or the fines. The RAD/PACT Landlords are private sector landlords, and the last thing they want is tenants, who think they have a say in building management.

LIE # 5 : The new kitchen cabinets are worth it.

FACT : You will live with unsafe construction, like dust from lead paint and holes in walls. Of course, repairs are long-overdue, but these cosmetic changes aren’t enough. You lose elevator access during construction, and you lose all supportive services, like job training, that NYCHA used to provide.

A recovery in New York City most certainly not for us

The call by Mayor Bill de Blasio to reopen the economy, now being rushed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, promises a return to the discriminatory power dynamic and social hierarchy of the past.

Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) went on State media on Thursday morning to announce by authoritarian dictate that the economy will be fully reopened in New York City by July 1, 2021. “We are ready for stores to open, for businesses to open, offices, theaters, full strength,” the mayor said, according to the City-provided transcript of his on-air remarks.

A fully-reopened economy will mean that the Government can stop providing assistance to compensate people for the racial disparities that were revealed in glaring detail by the Coronavirus pandemic, namely, how the profit-driven healthcare system tolerates racial disparities in healthcare outcomes for people. It means that the free healthcare (the free Coronavirus testing and the free Coronavirus vaccines) will come to an end. It means that the emergency food banks that have been providing people with nutrition due to the rise in joblessness will come to an end. It means that the extensions of unemployment assistance will come to an end. It means that the emergency shelter being provided to people without homes will come to an end. There’s only one goal Mayor de Blasio has : “We’re going to keep driving down COVID through vaccinations.”

On the way to delivering these free vaccinations, Mayor de Blasio has conveniently forgotten about the lip service he paid to racial disparities that were exposed during his two terms in office. In March, the mayor announced the formation of a racial justice commission that was supposed to replace the racial justice commission he had announced last year and which was never formed. Damn the racial justice commission reports, at this point, the mayor just wants to reopen the economy. And Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) was made jealous enough to call for a reopening sooner than July 1.

There’s no thought to end the systemic racism in our society. Even with the healthcare disparities made clear during the Coronavirus pandemic, that didn’t stop Gov. Cuomo from cutting Medicaid, and it hasn’t stopped him from trying to close still yet more hospitals in Brooklyn or Queens. In terms of business, corporate retail giants, like Amazon, Walmart, and Target, saw online sales skyrocket as local, small businesses were forced to close due to the pandemic. The politicians are focused on returning us to an economy with even more disturbing economic inequalities, including higher rates of poverty.

This is one test that reveals how wedded Mayor de Blasio is to systemic racism : His non-stop scheme for RAD/PACT and Blueprint conversions of NYCHA public housing.

Even though Mayor de Blasio was left unindicted following a wide-ranging, Federal corruption investigation into his campaign finance activities and even though Gov. Cuomo faces another round of corruption investigations coupled with an independent counsel investigation into sexual harassment allegations that are, collectively, the subject of an impeachment inquiry, they are the ones making decisions affecting our lives.

Already, a group of New York City parents and teachers filed a lawsuit last December to stop compulsory Coronavirus testing over Fourth Amendment privacy rights, including concerns that DNA samples may wind up in a database without patients’ consent, according to a report published by Gothamist. And Saturday, dozens of municipal employees protested Mayor de Blasio’s demand that 80,000 City workers return to office work this week, according to a report published by the New York Daily News. The mayor’s obsession with reopening the economy flies in the face of the relentless Coronavirus pandemic, which, world-wide, has reached a new peak of deaths and cases, according to a CBS News report broadcast on Sunday.

Of particular concern to New York City Housing Authority residents is Mayor de Blasio’s non-stop push to continue the privatisation of strategic public housing assets. Despite no basis in law, the Government has countenanced Mayor de Blasio’s failure to hold public meetings about his scheme for the the RAD/PACT conversion of public housing. For example, on April 23, the de Blasio administration announced the issuance of a Request For Proposal for the RAD/PACT conversion of the Fulton Houses, Elliott Houses, and Chelsea Houses — the last hold-outs of affordable housing in the gentrified Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea.

Despite resident and community opposition, Mayor de Blasio acts like he cannot be stopped from disposing public assets — even when confronted with a very public effort by U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY 07) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) to fully-fund the backlog of capital repairs across the Nation’s entire public housing stock. U.S. Rep. Velázquez and Sen. Schumer are basically teaming up to promise to end the decades of racist divestment of public housing, but Mayor de Blasio is more concerned with making sure that the economic gears resume their grinding of people of colour and people living with low incomes.

The de Blasio administration suspects that human remains and cultural items belonging to Native American tribes may be buried underneath Williamsburg Houses, but that still didn’t stop him from moving forward with RAD/PACT, in violation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Whether you are dead or alive, Mayor de Blasio believes that the privatisation of our heritage must go on.

Andrew Yang is keeping quiet, as Bill de Blasio wrecks NYCHA in his last year with RAD/PACT and the Blueprint

Andrew Yang is letting Bill de Blasio privatise NYCHA public housing with RAD/PACT and Blueprint. This is dangerous !

When tech industry titan Andrew Yang finally announced he was running for mayor, he had within his reach powerful political and public relations consultants. These people exert a great deal of influence over the media, who regularly reprint press releases sent to them by expensive consultants. These presstitutes, as they are called, have provided Yang with a bonanza of free media hits.

Yang can’t tell a bodega from a Whole Foods supermarket, and he often gives wrong subway directions. His handlers hope that if he creates the impression of a bumbling idiot, that voters will think that he’s harmless. But Yang is anything but harmless.

Yang has proposed cutting off housing vouchers and “consolidating some welfare programs,” and replace them with a Mickey Mouse universal basic income (“UBI”) plan that the New York Times called “a Trojan Horse” to shred the social safety net.

What most dangerous about Yang is that he’s intentionally staying silent as Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) wrecks NYCHA public housing with the privatisation schemes known as RAD/PACT and the Blueprint. NYCHA has gone into Court and admitted before U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley III that NYCHA intends to end all obligations to providing public housing residents with safe and sanitary housing after RAD/PACT and Blueprint conversions. The threat that public housing residents face is imminent.

That Yang keeps quiet means he’s hoping Mayor de Blasio will finish off NYCHA in his last year in office, so there’s nothing left but RAD/PACT eviction notices for Yang to hand out, should he become the next mayor. We can’t allow this to happen !

March to stop RAD/PACT/Blueprint conversions

NYCHA has admitted in Federal Court that they want to abandon their obligations to public housing residents after RAD/PACT/Blueprint conversions. This is unacceptable ! Please join our march to stop anymore privatisation of public housing.

We are planning a protest march to stop Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NYC) and NYCHA from abandoning their obligations to public housing residents after RAD/PACT/Blueprint conversion. It has been revealed in the Federal class-action Baez case that the de Blasio administration is using privatisation as an excuse to walk away from environmental protections and basic responsibilities they owe public housing residents. This is unacceptable ! Please join the social movement to save public housing and to fight for your civil rights ! We need your participation.

At our protest march, we will call-out politicians, who betrayed their campaign promises or continue the neglect.

Date : Sun., March 21, 2021

Time : 12 Noon (start-time)

Place : 344 E. 28th St., Manhattan

Accessibility : We meet outside of the front doors at 344 East 28th Street, Manhattan. Get ready to make noise and plan to march about 30 blocks. If you need transportation, we will try to arrange limited car pools by taxi. We can only pay for taxi service from what we can raise through our Go Fund Me for supplies expense. Please make a donation to support this march.

Rain Day : If it rains, we hold our march the following day — on Monday, Mar. 22 at 12 noon.

NYCHA Mayoral Forum

NYCHA Mayoral Forum hosted by Fight For NYCHA (25 Jan 2021)

Despite our invitation reaching dozens of the 2021 mayoral candidates, only Aaron Foldenauer ; Isaac Wright, Jr. ; and Joycelyn Taylor appeared.

The mayoral forum was hosted by Melanie Aucello, president of the resident association of 344 East 28th Street, which has undergone RAD/PACT conversion. The forum was co-hosted by Louis Flores and Diane de Jesus. Aucello, Flores, and de Jesus are core members of the activist group, Fight For NYCHA.

NYCHA Mayoral Forum hosted by Fight For NYCHA (25 Jan 2021)

Reference Document

Fight For NYCHA are maintaining a public spreadsheet of the 2021 mayoral candidates’ positions in relation to NYCHA, RAD/PACT, the Blueprint, and other issues.