The Problem that Will Cost $31.8 Billion to Repair

NEW YORK — The New York City Housing Authority is responsible for maintaining tens of thousands of apartments, which house 1 in 14 New Yorkers. But its 2,413 buildings are on average more than 60 years old, and they are plagued with leaky roofs, mold, broken elevators and faulty heating systems.

On Monday, housing officials unveiled the staggering price tag to remedy the conditions and restore NYCHA’s infrastructure to good working order: $31.8 billion over the next five years, almost double the last estimate seven years ago, according to a report released by NYCHA, as the housing authority is known.

Housing officials said they had lined up funding for only about one-third of the unmet capital needs. That includes billions of dollars from federal, state and city initiatives, along with $1.2 billion from the city as part of a settlement struck in June with federal prosecutors after they accused NYCHA of mismanagement, wrongdoing and years of deceiving the federal government.

That leaves NYCHA, which relies primarily on federal subsidies and the rent it collects from residents, with a hole of more than $22 billion and deepens concerns over the city’s ability to preserve the vast and vital stock of affordable housing, home to at least 400,000 people.

“You can’t escape the enormity of the number,” Stanley Brezenoff, the agency’s interim chairman, said Monday.

The increase in cost, housing officials said, is partly a result of the deterioration of its aging buildings since NYCHA last assessed its capital needs in 2011. Inflation also played a role, as did higher building costs driven by the “building boom in New York City” after the recession, the report said.

The cost of unmet capital needs, first reported by Politico, dwarfs the $3.7 billion Mayor Bill de Blasio invested since taking office and the $550 million Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo pledged. The report also painted a grim picture of the challenges that await the soon-to-be-appointed federal monitor who will oversee repairs to the city’s 325 housing developments.

“Without dramatic change, by 2027, 90 percent of NYCHA’s housing units will have declined to the point at which they are at risk of no longer being cost-effective to repair,” Carol Kellermann, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a city budget watchdog, said in a statement.

The bulk of the unmet capital needs, about 40 percent, are concentrated in apartment improvements, including repair and replacement of bathtubs, toilets and sinks. Addressing those needs is a crucial part of curbing mold and lead paint, which have been chronic problems in NYCHA developments, said Deborah Goddard, the executive vice president for capital projects.

The agency has come under fire for failing to inspect thousands of apartments for lead and for revelations that more than 800 children younger than 6 in public housing tested positive for elevated levels of lead in their blood from 2012-16.

The report also said that more than 700 boilers, many of which failed this past winter, had a functional life of five years or less. Goddard said the agency expects to have all of its boilers up-to-date by 2024, which means some NYCHA developments will still have to rely on dated boilers for several more winters.

Roofs were the only category for which unmet capital needs actually improved since 2011. Housing officials credited that to the mayor’s investment of $1.3 billion to replace leaking roofs, which can cause mold buildup inside apartments.

Elevators saw an increase in capital needs from $28 million in 2011 to $1.5 billion in 2017 because the new engineers had a higher “degree of expertise” and spotted significantly more problems, Goddard said.

Unmet capital needs are projected to grow to $45.2 billion over 20 years, the report said.

Brezenoff, who replaced the previous chairwoman, Shola Olatoye, when she resigned in April, acknowledged NYCHA faces a battle for its survival. Amid a two-decade decline in federal funding, Brezenoff pointed at public-private partnerships as the way of the future to ensure capital dollars and to improve building maintenance. NYCHA is experimenting with a federal program to renovate 15,000 public housing apartments with investment from private developers while ensuring rents remain affordable for residents.

“This is not a flag of surrender,” said Brezenoff, adding that the new numbers are, “a call to prioritizing and a call to identifying new approaches, new models that can attract more funding.”