Manhattan Housing Authority is in a state of “substantial default,” according to a letter from the federal government obtained by The Mercury.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials say MHA, which oversees federally subsidized low-income housing, is in default “with respect to the covenants or conditions to which the public housing agency is subject.”
In 2018, MHA received a low score on its routine assessment and was required to show substantial improvement on subsequent annual assessments.
Executive director Aaron Estabrook said he’s been working with HUD to come through that recovery since he was hired in 2021. He said much of the problem has to do with the Carlson Plaza building on the southeast corner of Fifth and Pierre streets.
“We’re still working with HUD to achieve some of those goals,” Estabrook said. “We’ve accomplished many of them. There are a couple of things left, and that’s in part related to Carlson Plaza, because we had to take Carlson Plaza offline and vacate it a couple years ago.”
He said after that there a “deferred resignation” program for federal employees affected the application process.
“There was a federal buyout where they had federal employees didn’t need to go to work, but they were still getting paid last year, and during that period of time, it impacted the people that were looking at our application.”
He said MHA’s application was at the application center for eight months or more because of that.
“Then they processed our Carlson Plaza application so that we could take that offline and start rebuilding new housing there,” Estabrook said. “But that’s been the biggest delay, was waiting on that application that they had in their possession.”
Estabrook said HUD will re-evaluate MHA next year.
“We’re meeting with HUD weekly with consultants, and so we’ve been meeting with them monthly, but now we’re going to move to weekly, and that’s really the only change that we have that I’m aware of,” he said. “And they’ll issue, they’ll do more inspections, and they’ll issue new scores throughout the year.”
He said they don’t yet have a specific date.
“We’ve been doing a tremendous amount of work since I’ve been there since 2021 trying to get the organization in a stable, healthy position, and we’re close to achieving that,” Estabrook said. “Unfortunately, the tone, the tone from the press release that HUD issued was not reflective of all the hard work we’ve done.
He said the default won’t affect plans for Carlson Plaza, or for the planned Sunflower Flats senior apartment building set to be built across the street and run by Manhattan Housing Authority.