I wonder how much of that funding gets siphoned off as graft?
I have never heard a good story from anyone who ever lived in the Projects. All depressing, and a lot of crime. A feeling of hopelessness.
And it looks as if they are going to keep it going.
It is concerned with appearances and money.
As noted in this video I posted here a few minutes ago (Michael Shellenberger - Why Progressives Ruin Cities (video)), Lefties have a kind of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome wherein they need victims to make them look like caregivers. They don't care about actually fixing the problems that their victims have. If anything, they want those problems to get worse because that makes their "caregiver" job increase in size and complexity.
And like Munchausen by Proxy, they need the public attention...and the money doesn't hurt either in that it feeds the institutions that are built around this mass illness.
“their best option would be to sell the buildings to the highest bidder, “
The state shoehorns new buildings in to every empty lot in suburbia and the denizens of the city hellholes are moved out to them, creating diversity, and then the empty city projects are sold to the mayors and councils pals for real dough. I’ll be a little surprised if this isn’t in the process already.
Reminds me of the “homeless” housing in Los Angeles - millions collected, few built, cost = $600,000/unit.
Heard a minister on John & Ken’s radio show that was in charge of 19 converted apartment buildings for homeless - he said homeless were allowed to bring in their booze and drugs b/c they wouldn’t come “inside safe” otherwise.
Long story short: Each of the buildings was systematically destroyed by the drug addicts and mentally ill homeless - I mean completely destroyed, broken apart, trashed - beyond repair.
The buildings sit empty now, uninhabitable, b/c there is no money to repair them - and why repair them when same thing will happen.
Socialist soutions are often no more economic or economically effective than many direct forms of price subsidies - they are unsustainable with their true costs continuing to increase. Without the advantages of supply and demand markets to set prices, the “maintenance” costs of subsidized things does not escape markets; so maintenance costs rise while the subsidized price of a unit (unit of whatever) does not, which starts a hole that just gets deeper over time.
Subidized prices also stimulate social and civil instability.
The population beenfiting from the subsidized price increasingly sees the subidized price as an entitlement,and may gravitate to civil unrest when the entitlment is deduced or threatened. Mass civil unrest has occurred from time to time in nations that subsidized commodities, like fuel for vehicles; when national budgets finally had to reduce or eliminate the price subsidy.
Fortunately for New York City the fully subsidized housing of NYCHA is less than 10% of the city population. However nearly one third of NYC apartments are leased under “rent stablized” rules in which a board governs/controls the rate that lease renewals can go up each year. The worts performers under those rules are the builders in need of maintenance more than average, and the allowed rent increases may not cover all the capital expenses needed. About 4% of apartmnts covered under rent stabilization are said to be empty. Such vacancies usually mean the owner cannot afford repairs. Eventually such a building may fall into property tax default. Then more legal mess insues with the city seeking back taxes, the owner wanting to just walk away and sometimes, worst of all, city takeover of the property, puting more of the housing burdern on the taxpayers.