NYCHA Looks to Expand its Footprint With Private Partnerships

The city’s public housing agency is calling for proposals from private partners to create new housing near NYCHA campuses.

A view of NYCHA’s St. Nicholas Houses near the intersection of Frederick Douglass Boulevard and West 127th Street in Harlem. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Being New York City’s largest landowner comes with some perks.

NYCHA is looking to leverage its large footprint together with private development to help address New York City’s housing crisis and the agency’s own deep rehabilitation needs.

NYCHA has 2,473 acres of land in the city and a population the size of Minneapolis. As of 2025, the aging NYCHA housing stock has a $78.6 billion backlog in physical repair needs after decades of federal disinvestment. 

Now, officials want to expand their footprint even further, developing housing projects on private land near NYCHA sites. The public-private partnerships would create new affordable housing and potentially help NYCHA address its deep repair needs.

“NYCHA will leverage private-sector partners which will lead to the development and expansion of deeply affordable housing,” said Deputy Mayor Adolfo Carrion in a statement.

Officials say it’s part of an all-hands-on-deck strategy to address the housing crisis in the city. 

NYCHA is already converting 38,000 units to private management under the city’s PACT program. PACT converts public housing subsidies to project-based vouchers, which command a higher payment from the federal government, generating revenue NYCHA plans to use on repairs. Another 1,700 units have voted to be part of NYCHA’s Preservation Trust pipeline, which retains NYCHA management while converting to Section 8.

With this initiative, NYCHA is seeking proposals from private developers that leverage new funding and development tools the agency has developed. That could include building new units that would join the federal government’s RAD program, supporting new affordable housing with project based vouchers, or selling development rights to fund repairs or new housing.

“Returning to its roots as a public developer, NYCHA must leverage available assets to serve current public housing residents while creating more affordable housing opportunities citywide,” added NYCHA Chair Jamie Rubin.

Councilmember Chris Banks, who runs the City Council Committee on Public Housing, expressed skepticism about the proposed effort.

He said that past private partnerships have not delivered what they promised.

“I don’t buy that,” said Banks. “I don’t trust NYCHA or these developers that it’s going to help and support the surrounding buildings.”

The proposals could include “build first” projects where new housing is constructed offsite and made available to current NYCHA residents who can move in with a voucher. It may also create vacancies that would enable NYCHA to make repairs in older buildings, and eventually move new tenants in from the agency’s long wait lists for housing assistance.

“Wouldn’t it be great if you could get access to that vacant lot [across the street] to help free up the space for the regeneration of that campus—that’s never been done before,” said Jessica Katz, former Chief Housing Officer for the city and leader of the NYCHA Regeneration Initiative.

Any redevelopment project is logistically difficult, especially when rehabilitation requires tenant relocation, but the conditions at NYCHA increasingly demand it, Katz says.

“The physical needs of the NYCHA portfolio have deteriorated very significantly over the last 10 years,” said Katz, who noted that rehab requires more money and longer relocations. “One goal of this new construction model is the fact that there just needs to be a place for people to go while the buildings are being rehabbed.”

It’s notably different from more controversial “infill” projects, where NYCHA partners with developers to build on parking lots or other open space within campuses, generating revenue that supports repairs at existing buildings.

NYCHA has tested infill projects recently, like when it sold a slice of land to fund repairs at the Manhattanville Houses in West Harlem or a contested plan to move NYCHA tenants to new buildings and demolish and rebuild the Fulton and Elliot-Chelsea Houses in Manhattan. 

Infill projects have garnered criticism from residents, but gained more vocal support from elected leaders in recent years, like Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo also mentioned infill at NYCHA campuses in their primary election housing plans.

A spokesperson for NYCHA said that the Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) only seeks proposals for private land, not infill.

Banks said NYCHA’s priorities are in the wrong place. After a NYCHA apartment is vacated, it takes the housing authority an average of 339 days to move a new tenant in, while more than 173,000 applicants sit on a waitlist. 

“I find that very presumptuous of NYCHA when currently there’s about 5,000 vacancies… I think they should actually deal with that issue before they step outside to develop more, to be a part of these types of partnerships,” said Banks.

The tools used and the ownership structures of the plans NYCHA is soliciting may depend on the specific project.

Developers have other tools to play with in their proposals. NYCHA hopes that lending some of its affordable housing funding mechanisms to private development will chip in on filling a citywide affordable housing need.

NYCHA has some wiggle room under a federally-mandated cap on the number of public housing units in the city. Under one of the tools, it could build new public housing units up to the cap, then convert them to PACT, making room to build more under the cap, and doing it all again.

Another way is through a transfer of assistance, where public housing residents would switch to Project Based Section 8 assistance and move into a new development, freeing up vacancies in existing public housing that could facilitate repair and rehabilitation, or get people off the housing authority’s long wait list.

Because of its “towers in the park” design, many NYCHA campuses have a lot of land at their disposal. Where NYCHA campuses don’t have as much housing as zoning would allow on their lot, a transfer of development rights enables them to sell off that extra buildable area to an adjacent owner, who could build bigger than otherwise permitted.

Getting tenants on board will be a challenge no matter the project.

“We’re heavily focused on making sure that residents have input when these programs are being introduced to them,” said Banks.

“Trust is very hard won, and it is very easily lost, and NYCHA residents have lots of reasons not to trust that these projects are going to go forward,” said Katz.

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