Execs at NYC public housing agency make over $200,000 a year—but it takes them 449 days to fix a fridge

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has been widely derided in the Big Apple as one of the worst landlords to have in the city. However, even as it is apparently operating poorly, the executives at the top of the chain are getting paid handsomely. Meanwhile, the average wait time on a non-emergency repair with the NYCHA is around 449 days.

The city-owned agency saw 74 executives get paid $200,000 or more last year, and all 104 of its upper-management class got at least $140,000 annually, totaling around $22 million combined, according to a report from the New York Post. The amount is over double what was spent on top management in the agency in 2015, where executives only got $11 million combined. The team was smaller then too, with just 79 executives.

CEO Lisa Bova-Hiatt leads the way at the organization and pulls in $399,999 a year. She has a $1.4 million mansion on Staten Island’s tony Todt Hill, which is about a mile from the NYCHA’s Todt Hill Houses. The VP for legal affairs at the NYCHA, David Rohde, makes just over $300,000 annually and is in a $2.8 million waterfront estate.

Despite being paid so well, the NYCHA has a backlog of 610,000 open work orders. The NYCHA also estimates it needs $78 billion to repair infrastructure, which has over 511,000 residents in 335 public housing projects.

“NYCHA executives are cashing out off of the suffering of residents, and living large on the taxpayers’ dime,” Rev. Kevin McCall said, ripping the NYCHA. McCall is a longtime NYCHA critic as well as a civil rights activist.

“They turned public housing into a new hustle, with residents an afterthought, rather than saying ‘let me not take a raise’ so the money can go back into fixing the infrastructure, so that the living conditions have basic dignity.”

The organization’s internal data points reveal that the NYCHA takes 449 days on average to repair tenants’ non-emergency repair requests. This includes broken refrigerators and clogged bathtubs. Routine repair requests like fixing a pipe sometimes go unresolved for over five years, residents said. Pests such as rodents are the norm, and mold is rampant.

Leila Green, 63, who lives in one of the NYCHA projects in the Bronx, said the executives in the agency shouldn’t be getting paid lavishly when rodents and roaches routinely infest her home.

“We should be able to live in a decent, clean place without roaches and rats and be able to live like normal people,” she said. “They do a poor job because they don’t repair anything — and don’t even answer the phone when you call.”

Socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been slammed by residents over the agency, as well as for his “rental ripoff” hearings, which will not allow complaints from tenants of the NYCHA.

McCall said, “The mayor is responsible for NYCHA and will have to deal the city being the worst landlord." He has started hosting hearings independent of Mamdani's government-sanctioned “rental ripoff” hearings.