NYCHA residents voice their concerns at forum in Queens
Tenants got the chance to voice their concerns face-to-face with NYCHA leadership at a forum in Queens on Wednesday evening.
The NYCHA in Your Neighborhood meeting was held at the Academy of American Studies in Astoria.
Hot topics from public safety to pests were all on the table. NYCHA's CEO and other executives met with tenants to hear their concerns and gauge how they can help.
"I mean, they took the garbage cans away about three years ago, and people are just leaving the bags outside," Ravenswood Houses tenant Rosalind Jones said.
"It's creating an unsafe situation when we can't get a door fixed, so that's an urgent concern and I expressed that to public safety, and they're gonna work on that," Ravenswood Houses tenant Sharon Cadiz said.
Carmen Colon hopes the forum will finally lead to the fixes she needs at her home in the Pomonok Houses. She said she's been dealing with leaky ceilings for two years.
"They tried [to address it], but it still keeps happening," she said. "They don't find the source or the reason of the leak."
A CBS News New York Investigation in March 2025 found it takes NYCHA about 415 days on average to repair a problem. Since then, the number has climbed even higher.
"It keeps on going up [because] it's really driven by paint work orders. Because of our [Department of Housing and Urban Development] agreement, we create a lot of different types of paint work orders for inspections, probably too much than we can sometimes fund," said Daniel Greene, NYCHA executive vice president of property management.
But the agency says the repair time for some problems, including plumbing issues, have been improving. NYCHA says it's working diligently to find problems and fix them, and tenants say forums like the one on Wednesday are giving them hope.
"This is saying they're not ignoring us anymore," Cadiz said.
"I think they're really excited that we're meeting them in their own communities," NYCHA CEO Lisa Bova-Hiatt said. "They're sharing concerns. They're sharing ideas."
Staten Island will next host a meeting on Sept. 30, followed by the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan through December. The city recommends you register in advance.
The mayor's office tried these types of meetings out at the beginning of the summer, with the first three held in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan. City officials said nearly 450 residents took part in May and June.
NYCHA's CEO says more than 150 issues raised during those meetings received a follow-up. However, the housing authority has not released how many were resolved.
