NYC apartment building partially collapses, ripping massive hole in high rise
nbcnews.com15 points by voxadam 18 hours ago
15 points by voxadam 18 hours ago
Question: All the black windows without AC - are those empty? Hearing about housing crisis I wonder why that is. Investment, valuable asset (not sure what the term here is)?
This is public housing. Some people simply can't afford AC as the city isn't paying for utilities in all buildings (it does in some). Some people you can see have an AC unit in the bedroom instead of the living room and so on.
But there is also many years long backlog on repair work required for public housing units by the NYC Housing Authority that does result in apartments sitting empty. The current estimate is its $80 billion in repairs backlogged https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/nyc-comptroller-audit-f...
With 6000 units sitting on that backlog https://gothamist.com/news/nycha-has-nearly-6k-vacant-apartm...
The insidious thing about repair backlogs is once they're big enough to be a dollar amount "that matters" they have every incentive to just keep the backlog "about that size or larger" forever.
Amazing that there were no injuries. I was relieved to read that.