Want to make banker money without stepping foot on Wall Street? Try plumbing for the New York City Housing Authority.<\/p>\n
From July 2024 through June 2025, NYCHA plumber supervisor Jakub Markowski earned\u00a0$465,000<\/a>, including $332,000 for nearly 2,600 hours in overtime \u2014 more than the mayor and City Council speaker make combined.<\/p>\n While he collected these checks, Markowski also operated two private plumbing companies.<\/p>\n The Buildings Department is now\u00a0investigating\u00a0him.<\/p>\n As the city\u2019s ascendant socialist left pushes for more housing in public or nonprofit hands, NYCHA\u2019s history presents a sordid tale of dysfunction and corruption, with Markowski the latest apparent example.<\/p>\n Lest we forget, Shola Olatoye, NYCHA\u2019s chairwoman under Mayor Bill de Blasio, lied for years under oath to the federal government<\/a> about nonexistent lead-paint inspections and other safety failures.<\/p>\n As part of the feds\u2019\u00a0settlement with the city<\/a>, since January 2019, an independent monitor has been in place to oversee NYCHA\u2019s compliance.<\/p>\n Yet federal oversight has not stopped the rot. In 2024, Damien Williams, the Biden-appointed US attorney for the Southern District of New York,\u00a0charged 70 NYCHA current and former employees with bribery and extortion.<\/a><\/p>\n The takedown represented the largest number of bribery charges brought in a single day in the Justice Department\u2019s history.<\/p>\n All 70\u00a0pleaded guilty or were convicted.<\/p>\n Nor has public ownership delivered livable conditions for tenants. In fact, they\u2019re bad enough to qualify as a moral stain on this city.<\/p>\n On July 6, the federal monitor released its\u00a0latest quarterly report<\/a>. Despite modest progress, it shows that NYCHA buildings are riddled with hazards.<\/p>\n Under the federal agreement, NYCHA is supposed to ensure that no more than 15% of mold complaints involve visible mold of 10 square feet or more. In the latest report, 86% did.<\/p>\n Without acknowledging why city government has long proved such a poor landlord, Democratic Socialists want to put even\u00a0more\u00a0housing under public or nonprofit control, in the name of affordability.<\/p>\n The far left has not shown why NYCHA is a success story in disguise, or why new public housing wouldn\u2019t devolve into similar dysfunction.<\/p>\n Instead, they fall back on the claim that NYCHA is underfunded.<\/p>\n About 80% of NYCHA buildings are 50 years old or more, well past most buildings\u2019 useful lives.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Rents cannot rise to support an estimated $80 billion in backlogged repairs and capital needs. The system has thus grown more\u00a0dependent\u00a0on taxpayer-funded city subsidies.<\/p>\n NYCHA\u2019s capital expenditures on capital improvements\u00a0increased\u00a048% between 2021 and 2025, to $1.2 billion per year, with most new money coming from city and state sources.<\/p>\n One big reason for NYCHA\u2019s recent financial distress is that more tenants aren\u2019t paying their rent.<\/p>\n NYCHA collected only 68.6% of its anticipated rent in\u00a0fiscal 2025, down sharply from 89.6%\u00a0six years\u00a0earlier.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not because their rents are too high. NYCHA households\u2019\u00a0rents average<\/a>\u00a0$621 per month, capped at 30% of household gross income.<\/p>\n Only\u00a038.4% of NYCHA families are employed<\/a>, and the average income of a NYCHA household was $26,129.<\/p>\n Sadly, they\u2019re trapped by the system\u2019s disincentives to work and earn more, a broken public-education system and the lack of new housing supply.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, it costs NYCHA\u00a0$1,419\u00a0per month on average to operate and barely maintain each unit.<\/p>\n