New York City public housing residents will be able to raise concerns directly with city officials as part of a new engagement campaign. Mayor Zohran Mamdani last week announced “NYCHA in Your Neighborhood,” a series of events in May and June that will allow residents to speak with agency officials about issues including repairs, community programming, pests and waste, faulty elevators, lead, and public safety. The forums will focus on neighborhood-wide clusters of NYCHA developments rather than individual properties. The first event will take place in the Bronx on May 20, followed by meetings in Brooklyn on June 3 and Manhattan on June 17.
At the meetings, residents can participate in small-group discussions with NYCHA and city administration officials, as well as visit resource tables for one-on-one conversations with NYCHA staff about repairs, tenancy issues, environmental conditions, and other concerns.
Representatives from the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and city agencies, including the Departments of Social Services, Health and Mental Hygiene, Youth and Community Development, and the Department for the Aging, will also be present to answer questions.
“As we work to deliver the investments and improvements residents deserve, NYCHA in Your Neighborhood will help put public housing residents at the center of policymaking. These forums will give residents a new opportunity to weigh in on the issues that matter most to them and access services from a range of City agencies,” Mamdani said.
The initiative builds on ongoing efforts by the Mamdani administration to strengthen tenant protections and expand engagement with public housing residents. NYCHA residents currently have access to property management offices and on-site staff at every development, as well as 24/7 specialty teams that respond to emergency heating, elevator, and skilled-trades repair requests.
The effort also follows the mayor’s “Rental Ripoff” hearing series, announced in January. At those meetings, tenants were asked to share challenges they faced in their homes, which the city used to compile a report identifying common issues and inform future housing policy.
The first meeting in February in Downtown Brooklyn drew protests, including from Rev. Kevin McCall of Kingdom Justice Church, who held up a sign reading “the mayor don’t CARE about NYCHA,” according to Gothamist.
A Mamdani spokesperson said the new NYCHA forums were not developed in response to backlash and had been planned separately as part of the administration’s broader NYCHA engagement strategy.
The administration has also announced clean energy investments at NYCHA’s Beach 41st Houses in Edgemere. In February, Zohran Mamdani unveiled a $38.4 million investment to install clean heat pumps in 712 apartments at the Queens development, under NYCHA’s “Clean Heat for All” initiative. The program aims to reach more than 10,000 apartments by 2030.
NYCHA residents can register to attend the forums here.
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