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Seventy current and former NYCHA workers were busted Tuesday in a 10-year, $2 million pay-to-play corruption scheme involving the largest number of federal bribery charges brought in a single day in Department of Justice history. The avalanche of bribery and extortion crimes occurred in about a third of the 335 developments in the New York Housing Authority — the country’s biggest public housing agency — when the suspects demanded cash in exchange for lucrative construction, maintenance and no-bid contracts, officials said. The defendants, all of whom were working for NYCHA at the time, sought between 10% and 20% of the...

A teenager was shot to death at a New York City Housing Authority complex in Brooklyn Tuesday evening, cops said. The violence unfolded at 9 p.m. outside building eight of the Bay View Houses in Canarsie. Officers found the 15-year-old with a single gunshot wound to the torso, according to the NYPD

We knew Big Apple public housing is in dangerously bad shape — but it turns out it’s twice as bad as we thought. New York City Housing Authority officials just revealed the $40 billion estimated in 2017 for the new roofs, pipes and boilers the aging projects need has ballooned to $78 billion.

NYCHA will announce on Wednesday a $1.5 billion plan to demolish and redevelop two massive and crumbling public housing complexes in Manhattan, City Hall confirmed. The sweeping redevelopment deal calls for the construction of more than 2,000 new public housing apartments at the Fulton Houses and Chelsea-Elliot Houses, enough for every resident currently residing at the existing buildings, officials said late Tuesday. “This is how you create new public housing for the next generation, this is what we need,” said Miguel Avecedo, president of the Fulton Houses Tenant Association. The new units would include amenities rarely seen in public housing,...

It was supposed to be just another routine weekly video conference for city Housing Authority bureaucrats to update managers on how things were going in public housing developments across the five boroughs. And then it went off the rails. One of the participants, a Bronx neighborhood administrator named Alex Tolozano, appeared in his Microsoft Teams window - naked and next to a woman. Another NYCHA employee on the call began videotaping the meeting. The video, obtained by THE CITY, reveals a blurry image of Tolozano with the woman and captures discussion among other NYCHA staff trying to figure out what...

Nowhere is the wait for repairs in city public housing more desperate than at the Castle Hill Houses in The Bronx — the number of open work orders for residents there has ballooned to more than 11,000 in recent months. The repair request backlog at the sprawling four-block NYCHA development has grown by more than 26 percent over the last year as NYCHA failed to keep up with deteriorating conditions in the complex’s 2,000 apartments. It’s the biggest backlog for any single development across the entire system of public housing in the Big Apple, which has more than 280 complexes,...

Fed-up tenants of the Queensbridge Houses sued the New York City Housing Authority on Tuesday, citing hazardous conditions in the nation’s largest public housing complex and what they describe as illegal harassment. Pamela Wheeler, 72, and Marilyn Keller, 58, are among 11 plaintiffs named in two lawsuits — one representing residents of the complex’s northern section, the other representing its southern section — filed in Queens Housing Court.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) called on President Biden on Thursday to double the funding he’s proposed to fix public housing during a tour of a Brooklyn NYCHA complex which highlighted the long-standing problems they’re seeking to remedy. Biden has proposed pouring $40 billion into public housing throughout the U.S. over the next several years, but Schumer and Velazquez are saying it’s not enough and ultimately want the federal government to pony up more than $80 billion to address the mold, old roofs, leaky pipes and other squalid conditions that have plagued New York...

The scandal-plagued New York City Housing Authority faces a new obstacle amid an overhaul to finance $40 billion in repairs — it’s running out of cash for its current operations. The agency faces a multi-year budget deficit of more than $1.2 billion between 2022 and 2025 — with annual shortfalls of at least $249 million, according to new budget projections from the City Council and the Independent Budget Office.

A Brooklyn woman who followed Borough President Eric Adams’ advice for New Yorkers to settle disputes neighbor-to-neighbor rather than calling 911 wound up shot dead after she confronted some punks setting off illegal fireworks, the victim’s grieving mom said. Shatavia Walls, 33, was blasted eight times in an East New York public-housing complex on July 7, simply for asking the fiends to take their dangerous display away from a group of playing kids exactly how Adams had urged constituents to act in the face of the pyrotechnic plague. “She watched the news. Yes, she heard it,” Helen Testagros, Walls’ heartbroken...

A new ethical firestorm is engulfing Mayor de Blasio as questions are being raised about where he’s getting all the money to fund his cross-country presidential campaign trips. It’s deja vu all over again for “On The Road Bill,” the mail-it-in mayor of New York City who has been galloping all over the country to test the presidential waters with a suspicious campaign cash box that’s raising lots of eyebrows. “To me, that’s a real no-no,” Betsy Gotbaum of the Citizens Union said. Gotbaum is questioning how de Blasio is raising money for his “Fairness PAC” – the political action...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Furious tenants of a public housing project in the Bronx were pleading for help Monday, saying their buildings are overrun with rats — and they’re not kidding. They have the video to prove it. But we should warn you, the pictures are not for the squeamish. “I’m traumatized,” tenant Veronica Martinez told CBS2’s Marcia Kramer. You’d be traumatized, too, if you had the same kitchen as Martinez. Rats. An entire family of rats, some as big as cats, have taken over, hopping in the sink, into pots and pans. It’s absolutely gut wrenching. “I should never...

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is a Republican. Mayor Bill de Blasio is a Democrat. Both men find themselves at the center of crises, which collectively involve thousands of children likely brain-damaged from exposure to lead. **SNIP** On Nov. 7, 2017, de Blasio was re-elected to a second term. Two weeks later, he admitted he knew one year earlier that NYCHA was falsifying documents regarding lead-based paint inspections. Sanders could have called for de Blasio’s resignation, as he did with Snyder. Instead, he personally swore in de Blasio for his second term on Jan. 1, 2018.

Public housing tenant Concetta Passione turned 100 Saturday. She got a beautiful birthday cake, and a big party with her two sons. Plus, an eviction notice from NYCHA. The city Housing Authority claims she is not the true tenant of a one-bedroom in Rutgers Houses on the Lower East Side, though she insists she has lived there since 1964. Convinced that she has secretly resided for years in Italy and that her 73-year-old son, Sebastian, unlawfully moved into her apartment, NYCHA sent her a “breach of rules” notice on Nov. 1 to terminate her lease. She admits she takes trips...