Audit Report on the New York City Housing Authority Efforts to Address Tenant Requests for Repairs

AUDIT REPORT IN BRIEF

This audit addressed the adequacy of the New York City Housing Authority’s (NYCHA) efforts to address and resolve tenant requests for repairs. NYCHA is one of the largest public housing authorities in the United States and is responsible for providing decent and affordable housing for low to moderate-income City residents. NYCHA manages and maintains 343 housing developments consisting of 2,644 residential buildings with nearly 179,000 apartment units that house more than 408,000 residents.

In 2005, to standardize the handling of tenant maintenance and repair requests and to reduce backlogs and duplication of repair assignments, NYCHA rolled out the first phase of its Centralized Call Center (CCC). The CCC enabled residents of NYCHA developments in Staten Island and Queens to call a central telephone number 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and speak with a CCC Representative to request and schedule repairs or to report emergencies. The CCC service was expanded to include all Manhattan developments in early 2006, followed by all Brooklyn and Bronx developments by the end of 2007.

This audit was undertaken based on constituent complaints alleging that NYCHA was not responsive to tenant requests for repairs and that the CCC was not working as intended.

Audit Findings and Conclusions

NYCHA maintains adequate efforts to address and resolve tenant repair requests, especially those dealing with emergency conditions and general maintenance. Our inspection of conditions at 95 apartments at the 10 sampled management offices and developments showed that NYCHA personnel completed repairs for 109 (95%) of the 115 work tickets associated with those apartments. Further, the implementation of the CCC that reorganized how tenants’ complaints and repair requests are handled appears to have allowed NYCHA to better meet its goals of standardizing the handling of tenant repair requests and more effectively reducing backlogs and duplication of repair assignments.

The audit found that while all emergency, urgent, and routine maintenance tasks were completed promptly, improvements are needed to address delays in completing tasks requiring skilled-trades personnel. Of the completed routine, sequenced, skilled-trade tasks, only 66 percent of the tasks were completed within 30 days. The remainder took more than 30 days to complete, exceeding NYCHA’s 30-day goal for the completion of tasks requiring skilled trades; a little more than one-tenth of these took NYCHA skilled-trade personnel more than 90 days and up to 457 days to complete. Based on these results and similar conditions reported in a previous audit, difficulties remain if the NYCHA borough offices are to manage and assign skilled-trades personnel to respond promptly to repairs requiring their services and to complete them efficiently.

Recommendations

To address these issues, the audit makes six recommendations, including that NYCHA should:

• Review and addresses the level of staffing and scheduling of skilled-trades personnel at the borough offices, identify areas requiring improvements, and design measures to decrease wait time.

• Require that all maintenance, skilled-trade, and supervisory personnel sign the worker’s copy of the work ticket.

• Ensure that the management offices retain all original work tickets after the completion of repairs, as required.

NYCHA Response

Of the six recommendations made in this audit NYCHA agreed with four and partially agreed with two, noting that these recommendations would be addressed in early 2009 with the implementation of a new property management and maintenance system.