New housing fees draw ire

Housing development residents gathered in anger in Ravenswood last week to protest new fees, proposed by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), for repairs and utilities.
“These buildings were built 50 years ago … In the interim, residents have been taking care of business,” said Karen Dennis, chairperson of the Neighborhood Advisory Board. “You can’t slap us with this.”
A yearly parking charge will rise from $5 to $75 on April 1. Proposed fees include monthly charges of $10, up from $7, to run every air conditioner unit, $5.75 a washing machine, up from no charge, $5 a dishwasher, up from $3, and $10 for a separate freezer, up from $8. The utility and repair fees would go into effect May 1.
Residents said that they were notified by flyers posted March 1 in the housing developments, giving them two weeks to respond to NYCHA.
While some repair fees remained the same price, or near to it, others almost doubled. For residents of the 22 housing developments in Queens, a freezer door replacement will now cost them $119.26, up from $44.90, and a refrigerator compressor will cost $307.56, up from $148.05.
Many tenants are worried about how the hikes will affect the buildings’ seniors and extremely poor. The average income of the 400,000 housing development residents citywide is $19,000.
Councilman Eric Gioia and Rev. Mitchell Taylor, who organized the meeting, said that their offices have received numerous calls from concerned tenants, afraid that they might have to forgo costly medications to pay for repairs.
Nevertheless, NYCHA has said that the fee hikes are long overdue, that charges would only be applied to appliances that use an excessive amount of electricity and water, and that the money would help pay for its $168 million deficit - the proposed fees are expected to bring in $1.5 million. Charges would only be applied for repairs that went.