The Honorable Zohran Mamdani,
Mayor of the City of New York
We write to you as a coalition of tenants committed to protecting public housing. Save Section 9 and the Residents to Preserve Public Housing are organizations led by public housing tenants that fight against privatization and advocate for the rehabilitation and expansion of public housing by educating and mobilizing our neighbors. Save Section 9 endorsed you after comparing housing proposals of the leading mayoral candidates.
We are excited by your commitment to public housing, the only truly affordable, non-commodified housing in America with rent locked at 30% of household income. Section 9 also provides the most robust tenant benefits, rights and privileges of any subsidized housing program. In your platform you promised to double the City’s capital investment in major renovations of NYCHA housing, activate underutilized storage areas like parking lots for affordable housing development (infill), and use tools like City subsidies to invest money directly in upgrading public housing. Additionally, you committed to fully funding and staffing the operating budgets of the City’s housing agencies including NYCHA.
We would love to collaborate with you on solutions for Section 9. The following recommendations will make privatization via Project Based Section 8 (RAD/ PACT and the Public Housing Preservation Trust) unnecessary! Since 2017 tenants have been voicing their opposition to these programs, and providing proof that they fail us. In 2022 we partnered with Human Rights Watch to expose the negative impact Project Based Section 8 has had on tenants, who have experienced rent increases of up to 33% and eviction rates 3 times higher than the NYCHA average. Several times a year our members testify before the City Council’s Committee on Public Housing sharing that upon privatization, repairs are shoddy, tenants personal effects are frequently damaged and go missing during and after the repairs, private management is unresponsive, and tenants’ rights are violated by private management and not enforced by NYCHA.
Furthermore, as of December 22, 2025 HUD’s office of Public and Indian Housing issued the following guidance to all housing authorities: “to avoid terminations of assistance, we are recommending all Public Housing Authorities implement cost savings measures and pause entering into new project-based voucher agreements and commitments” (Expansion of HUD Notice PIH 2025-28; letter included in attachments). Project Based Section 8 is now a volatile and unsustainable funding stream for public housing repairs.
We recommend the following adjustments to your proposal:
Allocate, at minimum, double the funding to NYCHA but ensure that it is earmarked for “expenses” toward the rehabilitation of units under Section 9 not capital expenses.
Add someone with current lived experience in Section 9 to your transition housing committee, something NYC Comptroller Levine has supported.
Support the Repeal Of Stock Transfer Tax Rebate which would invest an estimated $2 to $3.75 billion annually in Section 9 units managed by NYCHA.
Request a new organizational plan from NYCHA in collaboration with the federal monitor. The last plan was fiercely denounced by tenants and adopted in spite of our objections. We recommend this plan be inspired by the operational plans of 1965-1970.
Collaborate with Comptroller Levine to conduct a forensic audit of NYCHA. We need to confirm that Section 9 funding, and the income generated by infills, are being reinvested in Section 9 units. Because NYCHA has made itself the fiscal conduit for Project Based Section 8 we also need to ensure that Section 9 funding is being managed separately from funding for PACT/ RAD and the Preservation Trust.
Ensure that hiring focuses on securing union personnel for roles that improve tenants’ quality of life. Each development should have a plumber, a carpenter, and enough building porters to assign two porters to each building. We would make plasterers and painters the second wave of hiring. These roles should provide apprenticeships to tenants and lean on Section 3.
Take advantage of our Faircloth allowance. As of 2024 NYC can create 24,147 additional Section 9 units. Make Section 9 an option for buildings in bankruptcy proceedings. Expand Section 9 while truly empowering and protecting tenants!
Educate tenants and elected officials on the consequences of privatization via Project-Based Section 8.
Work with Speaker Menin and CM Banks to institute a moratorium on privatization via Project Based Section 8 (RAD/ PACT and the Public Housing Preservation Trust). The moratorium should be reliant on an impact study being conducted by the Government Accountability Office as requested by Congresswoman Maxine Waters in 2023.
The recent fire at Boston Secor Houses (BSH) is a heartbreaking demonstration of the necessity of this moratorium and the harm caused under Project-Based Section 8. We have met with elected officials, submitted complaints to HUD and NYCHA’s PACT team, and gathered signatures in opposition to privatization at BSH, in part due to Wavecrest’s history of poor management at Wise Towers, OceanBay Houses and Betances Houses. Since Wavecrest took over daily operations, our members began reporting afterhours construction, exposure to asbestos, harrassment, and shoddy work by construction workers unwilling to provide company information or display identification. It is not the first time that NYCHA’s determination to privatize, even when tenants oppose it, has caused a death. But it must be the last.
Together we can rehabilitate and expand public housing in NYC. It is time for NYC to place a moratorium on privatization via PACT/ RAD and the Preservation Trust and instead invest in Section 9.
We look forward to your response, and request the opportunity to hold our History of Public Housing Teach In for staffers working on your housing platform. We also seek a meeting with you, Speaker Menin and Councilmember Banks to discuss our suggestions.
In Solidarity,
Save Section 9
Residents to Preserve Public Housing
1NYCHA Advocates
Holmes Isaacs Coalition
El Barrio New Yorker Warriors
EHCFGG Democratic Club
Tamika Mapp, District Leader 68th AD, Part D and NY State Assembly candidate 68th
Midtown South Community Council
The Committee for Independent Community Action (CICA)
People Organized for Westside Renewal (POWER Los Angeles)
More Art
Western Queens Community Land Trust
Sandy Reiburn- Our Communities Count
Chelsea Public Housing Coalition AKA
Save Chelsea Public Housing Coalition