The real story here is the failure of government run bureaucracies.

In the long run, fixing NYCHA means replacing it

By Post Editorial Board

February 27, 2018 | 6:40pm | Updated 

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Albin Lohr-Jones/Sipa USA

Tenants are suing to have a monitor imposed over New York’s largest slumlord, the city Housing Authority. But ­NYCHA’s problems go far beyond mismanagement: In the long run, it looks doomed.

Decades of deferred maintenance have left the authority with $17 billion in capital-investment needs. And that doesn’t include the costs to someday replace edifices that were often built on the cheap and/or will soon enter their second century.

So city Comptroller Scott Stringer’s push to divert $40 million a year to NYCHA from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s other affordable-housing programs offers only modest help.

Same for the $300 million over three years that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has kicked in, and the $40 million a year that the mayor recently announced for heating repairs.

Not that NYCHA’s 400,000 tenants won’t appreciate whatever help they can get — especially when de Blasio warns that many projects need not just new boilers but replacement of the “riser” pipes that actually conduct heat through the building.

Thing is, NYCHA’s $200 million-a-month rent roll barely covers basic maintenance, and federal funds don’t go much further.

Meanwhile, “advocates” fight every effort to sell off the authority’s excess properties to bring in much-needed cash.

And political vendettas seem to cause even more problems: A new City Council report says residents of the Astoria Houses are stuck waiting ’til at least 2021 for their new boilers because Team de Blasio canceled a deal with developer Douglas Durst — apparently over a political feud.

In fact, issues of politicization, massive mismanagement and inadequate capital finance are pretty much endemic to anything like NYCHA. That’s why the rest of the nation has been gradually reducing its stock of publicly owned housing, in favor of other ways to meet the need.

Even de Blasio, Mr. Progressive, has tacitly endorsed that approach by embracing tax and zoning incentives for private builders for his affordable-housing goals.

The city has a 10-year plan to replace Rikers, but it needs a 50-year plan to replace NYCHA.