Maloney and NYCHA leaders call for coordinated COVID response as state and city pass the buck
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U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney said the city and state must coordinate to relieve the burden of PPE and hand sanitizer distribution from volunteer tenants in NYCHA campuses. AP Photo/Seth Wenig
By David Brand
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney urged New York City’s public housing authority to step in and end ad hoc efforts to distribute masks, gloves and hand sanitizer in its sprawling apartment complexes Wednesday.
Maloney called out the city-run NYCHA and the state in response to an exclusive Eagle report about tenant volunteers going door-to-door to dispense hand sanitizer from gallon jugs provided by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Office. She and other local leaders said the city and state should coordinate a strategy for distributing the materials.
“NYCHA residents, who are disproportionately in the higher-risk pool for COVID-19, should not be responsible for distributing masks and hand sanitizer meant to protect them,” said Maloney, who represents the Ravenswood Houses, a sprawling 2,167-unit campus featured in the story.
Black and Latino New Yorkers — who account for most of the city’s public housing population — have died from COVID-19 at twice the rate of white and Asian residents, according to city data.
To address the deadly disparity, Cuomo pledged to provide masks, gloves and hand sanitizer to NYCHA tenants. Last week, the state began to drop off the supplies, including the jugs of sanitizer, at public housing sites across the city.
But the state did not provide guidance or support for the tenant associations abruptly tasked with distributing the personal protective equipment and pumping sanitizer liquid into smaller containers provided by tenants, according to resident leaders.
Members of the Ravenswood Houses Tenant Association decided to visit each apartment to drop off the materials themselves. “We’re just passing the mask, passing the hand sanitizer and we tell them to have a bottle ready so we can give them four pumps — bam, bam, bam — we’re out,” said Tenant Association President Carol Wilkins on Tuesday.
Maloney said the lack of coordination between the city and state was putting residents, particularly older adult tenants, in danger.
“NYCHA should long ago have had safe distribution mechanisms in place so that seniors and tenant leaders could focus on keeping themselves and their families safe and healthy,” she said.
A spokesperson for State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents the Ravenswood and nearby Queensbridge Houses, said the senator is also pushing the governor’s office to address the supply dump.
Gianaris is “aware of this very strange situation and is reaching out to the right people in the administration to get on their case and ensure it's rectified,” said spokesperson Alexander Marion.
Tenant leaders in the NYCHA complexes like the Queensbridge Houses have had to figure out how to distribute personal protective equipment and hand sanitizer. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Cuomo’s office did not respond to multiple emails seeking information about why the state dropped off jugs of sanitizer instead of individually packaged containers without guidance for distribution.
The state-supplied materials have not yet reached tenants in various complexes because tenant associations have not determined how to safely distribute the items across thousands of apartments.
“There was no logistical planning. They just dropped this on our lap,” said South Jamaica Houses Resident Association President Manny Martinez on Tuesday.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has also pledged to provide personal protective equipment to NYCHA residents, an initiative the city said would begin this week.
Nevertheless, City Hall spokesperson Olivia Lapeyrolerie said the city had nothing to do with the state’s disorganized drop-off.
“The City is delivering its supply of personal protective equipment directly to residents in care packages for each individual unit,” Lapeyrolerie said in an email. “I can’t speak for why the State made this decision with their vendor/distributor.”
NYCHA spokesperson Barbara Brancaccio also said the state initiative “was planned and coordinated independent of NYCHA participation.”
“We appreciate the efforts of our State and local partners and will collaborate wherever possible, in addition to the continual work we do to provide critical and essential services while responding to the pandemic in real-time,” she continued.
In a response to questions from the Eagle, Brancaccio deferred to Danny Barber, the head of the NYCHA tenants group known as the Citywide Council of Presidents.
But Barber, who worked on the state’s drop-off effort, was not happy with the lack of coordination between the city and state. He laid out his issues in an emailed response to NYCHA and the Eagle.
“I asked NYCHA for assistance and they stated that they don’t have staff to help with the distribution,” Barber said in the email.
The public housing agency freed up some discretionary funding — known as Tenant Participation Activity, or TPA — to support distribution, but some tenant associations have refused to spend it, Barber said.
Instead, the tenant leaders “insist that NYCHA arise as the Landlord and do what they are to do and change what [hasn’t] been done,” he said. “So yes I got the supplies for the Resident's but it isn't and wasn't my responsibility to distribute Citywide.”
“What is NYCHA role?,” he continued. “When will NYCHA stand up to help [their] Residents that pay them rent[?]”
