“Mayor, oh mayor, pay up your dues, don’t give us the NYCHA blues!” chanted a crowd gathered Thursday at City Hall Park to rally for a budget increase to the New York City Housing Authority. Speakers at the rally included public housing residents, elected officials, and community leaders who spoke about the poor conditions of housing and the need for increased funding.

The organizers of the rally called for a modification to allow for $30 million to be added to the city’s budget, explicitly for public housing. They are also demanding that the same amount be inserted into the budget as a baseline for future years.

NYCHA is currently operating at a $225 million deficit and may have to sell 21,000 units of public housing to cut costs, said Austin Shafran, director of communications for Sheinkopf Communications, a public consultancy firm. “Without a renewed financial commitment to NYCHA, union jobs will be lost, rent hikes for low-income tenants will skyrocket, and the dismal state of public housing will be dealt a critical blow,” stated a press release circulated by Shafran.

Attendees at the rally emphasized the current poor conditions of housing developments, which include vermin infestations, safety concerns, and lack of sanitation. Ann Valdez, a spokesperson for Community Voices Heard, an organization that works to help low-income citizens, cited problems with elevators in her housing development, calling them “death traps” and describing urine in them. She said repairs and sanitation are rarely addressed. “In the winter, we start having a problem with mold on the walls,” Valdez added. “There’s a woman in one of the buildings whose daughter is a severe asthmatic, and that can kill her.”

“I was privileged to grow up in public housing, to have an affordable place to live, and I will fight for everyone to have that right,” said City Councilmember Rosie Mendez.

Mendez chairs the Subcommittee on Public Housing for the Council and says she has “been holding hearings all year long to lend transparency to NYCHA’s budget issues.”

“The problem is that NYCHA is not funded, so we can’t expect them to do everything that they should do, that they could do, and that we want them to do,” she said after speaking. Mendez called upon the city, state, and federal governments to “keep public housing public.”

City Councilmember Charles Barron, D-Brooklyn, condemned the “privatization” of public housing on the grounds that it increases rent costs and evictions. “They’re trying to profitize public housing. We’re not running anywhere, we have a right to be here in public housing,” he said in his speech.

“We need to remind the governor that your taxpaying dollars gave him a mansion. If he can have a mansion, we can have some decent housing,” Barron said.

“NYCHA is encouraged by the broad range of ongoing support that we have received from local elected officials, NYCHA residents, union and action groups, this coalition proved to be an important face in getting the Shelter Allowance Bill passed,” a NYCHA spokesman said in a statement in reference to a state bill signed this summer that increased its funding, though not by enough to close the deficit. “We hope it will continue to press for much needed funding to help preserve public housing.”

Daniel Amzallag can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.