The federal monitor installed to overhaul the city’s embattled Housing Authority has spent at least $32 million so far — and still has not ordered overhauls of labor contracts and other key reforms that could stabilize the cash-strapped agency, a blistering new report reveals.
The federal government selected Bart Schwartz and his firm Guidepost Solutions to head the oversight effort three years ago as part of a settlement with City Hall that left the Big Apple responsible for the watchdog’s tab.
“[T]he monitor has missed an opportunity to identify and advocate for regulatory changes or labor practices changes that would allow NYCHA to make its operations more efficient,” the Citizens Budget Commission wrote in an analysis released this week.
Cutting costs and improving efficiency are key items for the agency, the CBC said, because it has been starved of cash following decades of state and federal budget cuts.
For example, the federal government provides private landlords roughly $1,000 more per month to operate an apartment than public housing agencies like NYCHA. Officials estimate that New York’s public housing needs at least $40 billion to bring its nearly 170,000 apartments back to a state of good repair.
In recent days, City Hall has begun a last-minute bid to get state lawmakers in Albany to approve plans that would restructure NYCHA into two separate entities, a transition that would make the agency eligible for funds set aside for private landlords.
Insufficient funding levels combined with scandalous mismanagement in recent years — including the lead poisoning of children, infestations of toxic mold and vermin and cost overruns — created a stew of living conditions so bad that federal prosecutors sued City Hall.
That prompted the 2019 settlement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which installed the monitor.
Schwartz makes as much as $600 an hour under the terms of Guidepost’s contract with the city, a copy of his contract previously obtained by The Post shows.
That contract also requires Schwartz release a detailed copy of his budget publicly, which the CBC says he has not done.
The CBC report determined that monitor’s efforts at NYCHA so far have made the agency somewhat more responsive, but that public housing tenants are 3 times more likely to have serious issues with their apartments than New Yorkers living in privately-owned buildings.
It warns that those conditions are likely to remain unless NYCHA receives new funding along with improving its management and efficiency.
Guidepost and Schwartz did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
