They are the pestilence of public housing — repeat offenders who live in NYCHA apartments, selling drugs, shooting at each other, and just plain terrorizing the working people, seniors and families trying to live their lives in peace. As crime spiked across the authority’s 328 developments and wreaked havoc in surrounding neighborhoods, the city dropped the ball on doing something about the perps next door — and the mayor is now vowing to fix the problem.
Mayor de Blasio’s spokeswoman Karen Hinton told The News Saturday the mayor has ordered a total overhaul of the entire referral process to make it faster and easier for NYCHA to evict or exclude residents who are committing crimes on authority properties.
“Mayor de Blasio is requiring NYCHA and NYPD to take new steps to ensure criminals are not allowed to trespass or live in public housing,” Hinton said.
Meanwhile, crime — including shootings, murders, assaults and robbery — jumped 31% at NYCHA projects from 2009 through 2013, far outpacing a 3% rise citywide. It dropped off slightly in 2014, but climbed 11% in the last month.
NYCHA can also permanently exclude non-tenants of record who live in NYCHA apartments. Exclusions rose this year to 415 from 344 last year, but are still way down from 619 in 2010.
“The number of individuals with criminal records who have been excluded from public housing has increased in the past year, but the mayor recognizes more needs to be done,” Hinton said.
City officials acknowledge it now takes two days to several months for police to refer a case to the housing authority, and two weeks to several months for NYCHA to start legal action against a tenant. The goal now is make it only two weeks from arrest to NYCHA moving to evict or exclude a tenant.
Now when NYCHA discovers an unauthorized tenant at a development, they don’t do a background check. From now on, all unauthorized tenants will be subject to a check for criminal history.
Finally, NYCHA has traditionally targeted tenants committing crimes on development property, but now they’ll also factor in crimes committed elsewhere when deciding whether to pursue eviction or exclusion.
The dropoff in evictions occurred in part due to former Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s decision in 2012 to change NYPD policy and refer to NYCHA only tenants whose charges were connected to a search warrant at a NYCHA address. Before the NYPD would refer anybody arrested who gave a NYCHA address as their place of residence.
The task of evicting a "non-desirable" tenant, of course, requires due process. The authority must prove a defendant actually lives at a NYCHA residence. In 2014, for instance, NYPD referred 1,507 cases, of which NYCHA commenced 942 evictions.
If the criminal is a tenant of record, NYCHA can cut the lease. But often the criminal is a relative of the tenant of record, such as a son living with his mother.
A mother can agree to exclude the son from her apartment to avoid losing her lease. Or a tenant can contest the exclusion or eviction before a hearing officer — and if they lose, they still can appeal the case to Housing Court.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/...icle-1.2427019
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