“Increase opportunities for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers by providing safe, affordable housing and facilitating access to social and community services.” That’s the mission driving the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, the largest public housing authority in North America.

When the agency was founded in 1935, it dedicated its first development, called First Houses, located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The Authority boomed in partnership with Robert Moses after World War II as a part of Moses' plan to clear old tenements and remake New York as a modern city.

Now with over 176,000 public housing apartments in 2,462 buildings in 326 developments throughout the five boroughs, it’s clear that tenants need safe and reliable affordable housing. Managing this extensive network of facilities is challenging to say the least. To keep up with transparent record keeping and physical asset assessments, NYCHA implemented our FOUNDATION Software Solution in order to streamline it Physical Needs Assessment (PNA) process.

Learn how FOUNDATION.Conditions can streamline your Physical Needs Assessment process.

Housing authorities rely on the Physical Needs Assessment (PNA) to prioritize capital investments and develop long-range capital plans. NYCHA's PNA is covered by the Conditions module of the FOUNDATION platform. A PNA rates the condition of buildings, systems and; forecasts when components will need to be repaired or replaced; and estimates the total cost of bringing the components into a state of good repair. Needs are then divided into short-term, to be addressed within 5 years, and long-term, to be addressed from 6 to 20 years in the future.

FOUNDATION.Conditions enables organizations like NYCHA to gather inspections data onsite with a mobile device, create real-time reports, and drive deficiency-based renewal and replacement planning. These features helped to improve accurate reporting and transparency in key areas.

Key Areas of Improvement when using FOUNDATION.Conditions for Physical Condition Assessments:

• Enabled NYCHA to develop a multi-year capital plan to ensure the health and safety of NYC public housing buildings and tenants.
• Innovated the condition assessment process by using our software solutions to enableautomation, thus allowing NYCHA to streamline inspections.
• Simplified the management of building inspection data from multiple spreadsheets into one centralized database.
• Improved the control of preventative maintenance with mobile enterprise solutions.
• Empowered the NYCHA to make better and faster decisions.
• Improved efficiency by eliminating paper.

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By using FOUNDATION.Conditions to conduct its PNA, NYCHA was empowered to release its most recent PNA in July 2018 with the total costs estimated to bring the public housing system into a state of good repair at $32 billion over 5 years, with an additional $13 billion in need projected in 6 to 20 years.

Advantages of using FOUNDATION.Conditions for Physical Condition Assessments:

• Assessment is performed while the asset is working, this lowers disruptions to normal operations
• Reduces the cost of asset failures
• Improves equipment reliability
• Minimizes time spent on maintenance
• Minimizes long-term costs by scheduling the maintenance activities
• Minimizes requirement for emergency spare parts
• Optimizes maintenance intervals (more optimal than manufacturer recommendations)
• Improves worker safety
• Reduces the chances of collateral damage to the system

With the help of FOUNDATION, NYCHA officials were able to identify crucial repairs, thus enabling the agency to compile diverse data sets (from facility inspections to sustainability and energy costs to health and safety compliance regulations), analyze the data and then create highly accurate reports from which NYCHA developed a detailed short-term and long-term capital investment plan. This ensures the preservation of New York's public housing stock for future generations and fulfils NYCHA's mission "to increase opportunities for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers by providing safe, reliable and affordable housing and facilitating access to social and community services."

Discover how we have empowered other government agencies to optimize their capital planning process >

We're proud to work with organizations like NYCHA to help preserve and improve the thousands of large-scale high-rise public housing buildings, which provide reliable low-cost and subsidized accommodation for over half a million New Yorkers!

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Sources

New York City Housing Authority Fact Sheet. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nycha/downloads/pdf/factsheet.pdf.

Anuta, Joe. “NYCHA needs $32B over next five years, study finds”. Crain’s. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20180702/REAL_ESTATE/180709992.

Warerkar, Tanay. “NYCHA needs $32B over the next five years for repairs”. Curbed New York. https://ny.curbed.com/2018/7/2/17525128/nycha-funding-requirements-study-repairs.

Citizens Budget Commission. "Stabilizing the Foundation: Transforming NYCHA to Address Its Capital Needs". https://cbcny.org/research/stabilizing-foundation

New York Housing Authority, "2011 Physical Needs Assessment (PNA) Summary". https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nycha/downloads/pdf/transparency-pna-2011.pdf, and "NYCHA Development Data Book 2016". http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nycha/downloads/pdf/pdb2016.pdf.