President Trump blasts Mayor de Blasio's handling of NYCHA buildings
UPPER WEST SIDE, Manhattan (WABC) -- There is a ton of anger in public housing - anger directed at Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Federal government, and at the bureaucrats who run NYCHA.
With all that anger comes the strangest of bedfellows.
"There's a lot of things this president has done that I don't agree with - but this is a human crisis. This has to do with the people that are suffering every day," said Tenant Association President Carmen Quinones.
It is what led Quinones, a grandmother of 19, and the Tenant Association President at the Frederick Douglass Houses on the Upper West Side to meet at the White House with President Trump, who on Friday appointed a federal monitor to oversee NYCHA as part of a settlement between the mayor and the Trump Administration.
"We're trying to help them, but the mayor of the City of New York has done a terrible job with respect to public housing," said Trump.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development sends the city just under a billion dollars a year.
"You have a governor who used to be the secretary of HUD. You have a mayor who used to have my job. There is no excuse that we cannot all work together to turn NYCHA around," said HUD Regional Administrator Lynne Patton.
On Friday night, the president's handpicked regional administrator, Patton, who has been living in NYCHA buildings this month, said job number one is to figure out how the city has spent that cash.
"Being part of these town hall meetings, I'm not clear exactly what's going on," said Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.
Brewer, a Democrat who has been fighting to reform the troubled agency, says all the urgency from the Trump Administration is puzzling.
The Federal government spends more than $900 million a year just to keep the lights on at NYCHA properties. But to give all residents the standard of living they deserve? The city says it needs $32 billion.
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