alt Hacker NewsYou can't blame Adams for delinquent payments. He dramatically expanded housing vouchers (the source of the budget crisis) which in theory should have reduced delinquency.
Moreover rents for affordable housing haven't kept up with inflation while benefits have.
Arm chair speculation like what's in the article won't suffice. People need to be surveyed and interviewed to get to the bottom of this.
I can and do put some blame on Adams here, but I don’t think the story is ineptitude or corruption, at least on this issue. I think his administration mostly chose to prioritize the long-term housing supply problem, even if that meant more short-term pain for tenants.
He had a pretty good "Abundance-style" agenda IMO: City of Yes didn’t go far enough, but passing it at all was a big deal in NYC land-use politics. Various tax policies like 485-x are at least serious long-term attempts to restart housing production, even if the details are debatable.
> He dramatically expanded housing vouchers
This is being extremely charitable to Adams. The big CityFHEPS expansion was vetoed by Adams and the city council overrode him. The Adams administration was clearly skeptical of short-term tenant-side relief.
You can see that in simple things like his rent board appointees: Adams-era boards approved rent increases every single year. I'm not saying that's bad and it's in-line with his general view of housing as a supply-side problem. He inherited a system coming off years of freezes and very low increases under BDB, so some correction was necessary.
But overall when given the choice, he did choose to inflict a bit of short-term pain for a longer-term view.