For NYCHA tenants, choosing between PACT, Preservation Trust and Section 9 is a decision that can impact the future of their homes. Some seniors from Bronx River Addition haven’t seen theirs in over a year.

In less than a month, 199 seniors will have the chance to vote on whether the New York City Housing Authority should bring in private capital, and possibly developers, to upgrade Bronx River Addition—two low-rise buildings in Soundview.

By casting ballots, they’ll be following in the footsteps of tenants at the Nostrand Houses in Brooklyn, a much larger campus where a majority of over 750 voters cast ballots for the novel Public Housing Preservation Trust in December.

But there’s a catch. While all of the Nostrand voters live on the Sheepshead Bay campus, walkable to pre-vote information sessions and ballot boxes, 57 Bronx River households are scattered around the city.

Among them are 60 seniors who once lived in Building 12, which NYCHA deemed uninhabitable in 2022 due to a faulty heating system. Their temporary apartments are located in Manhattan, Brooklyn and elsewhere in the Bronx, NYCHA said, including some apartments in the Bronx River campus adjacent to their old building. 

Remote voters will have the option to cast ballots by mail and online for 30 days starting March 13, and won’t necessarily need to travel to the campus for a subsequent 10 days of in-person voting. But tenant advocates say their geographic spread has complicated voter education efforts. 

Bronx River Addition has a capital repair need of $66 million, according to NYCHA. In addition to the Trust, a new public entity that can issue bonds to fund repairs, tenants can vote to remain in traditional public housing or join the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program. 

Under PACT, NYCHA leases properties to private developers, and outside management companies take over day-to-day operations. While traditional Section 9 public housing has long suffered from federal disinvestment, supporters of the model have raised concerns that private financing is risky. 

NYCHA has referenced the inhabitability of Building 12 in its messaging to tenants about the upcoming vote. In a presentation, the authority said it would “continue making limited repairs when possible” if voters opt to remain in traditional public housing. However, rehabilitating Building 12 would be “heavily constrained by funding” in that scenario.  

The authority told City Limits that it has had conversations with 91 percent of relocated voters as of Feb. 15. Its Voter Engagement Team, led by three NYCHA staff members, along with additional staff from other departments if needed, has visited these residents. 

But Community Voices Heard (CVH), an organization that received funding from U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer to conduct pre-vote outreach, has not been able to reach any of the scattered households. 

Instead, CVH started knocking doors in January at Building 11, the Bronx River Addition property that is still occupied, which currently has 146 residents across 133 apartments. NYCHA declined to provide CVH with addresses for the relocated residents citing privacy concerns, according to the organization. 

In order for the vote to be valid, at least 20 percent of heads of household must participate. Of the 199 voters, 184 are heads of households, nearly 70 percent of whom live in Building 11, NYCHA said.

This means the fate of the complex could be decided without any participation from remote tenants, though NYCHA told City Limits it is confident that relocated residents will participate. The prior vote at Nostrand Houses saw the majority of ballots cast by mail or online, the authority noted.

Juanita Lewis, the executive director of CVH, said the organization wants to ensure that tenants receive “independent and neutral information” about the options on their ballots. 

Even after the Nostrand Houses vote, a raucous tenant meeting in January revealed that many residents still had questions about the Trust model, including the timeline for repairs and what projects NYCHA plans to prioritize. 

“We’re concerned because… residents have been relocated and only NYCHA knows how to reach them,” Lewis said in a written statement to City Limits. “Further, this is a seniors development and we don’t know what mobility and health issues might prevent residents from being able to attend information sessions, get their questions answered, or cast a vote.”

Are you a Bronx River Addition tenant? City Limits wants to hear from you about the upcoming vote. Email NYCHA@citylimits.org

According to NYCHA, its visits to relocated seniors have taken place throughout the vote’s engagement period, which started in December and will be ongoing until the last day of voting. 

NYCHA also said that it has provided a transportation service for relocated tenants to attend four meetings ahead of the vote, two in December and two in January. But only four tenants took them up on the offer. 

The housing authority said that it is now focusing on one-on-one engagement at Building 11, as well as among the relocated tenants. Any future events will be posted on their website.

During a recent visit to Building 11, a resident who gave his name as Pablo said he believes NYCHA is doing the best it can on maintenance work, but that he’s interested in the Trust. 

“This building inside is falling apart,” he said. “All the apartments and everything… the walls and everything, the pipes are old pipes.”

Another Building 11 tenant who is 75 years old and declined to provide their name was critical of the engagement process.

“There needs to be more information on the voting system in regards to what is going on or what is going to happen,” the tenant of 10 years said. “I don’t understand it correctly.”

For Norma Saunders, the tenant association president at Bronx River and Bronx River Addition, getting relocated residents back to their homes is a priority.

At a Federal Monitor meeting hosted in September at the Bronx River Houses, Saunders told a crowd of NYCHA representatives and tenants that many of the relocated residents did not have relatives with them and that the complex at large was their family.

“That building was their sanctuary…now they’re all over the city,” Saunders said.

Voting at Bronx River Addition will begin on March 13 and end on Apr. 11. The last 10 days of voting, between Apr. 2 and Apr. 11, will take place near Bronx River Addition at a to-be-determined address between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. on all days.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Tatyana@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Emma@citylimits.org

MOBILE, Ala. — Kerry Joseph doesn’t have any thoughts yet on the Chicago Bears’ biggest offseason decision, the one that holds the key to the NFL draft.

The team’s new quarterbacks coach, hired Friday, doesn’t even know where his office is at Halas Hall. He has been on a whirlwind tour since the season ended, free to seek a new job after the Seattle Seahawks forced out coach Pete Carroll.

Joseph, the assistant quarterbacks coach for the Seahawks the last two seasons, spent one day in Lake Forest interviewing for the Bears job. In between, he was scrambling to get to Mobile, where he’s serving as quarterbacks coach of the American team in the Senior Bowl.

Somehow along the way, Joseph got hooked up with Bears gear and was wearing a team-issued navy hat, navy shorts and gray sweatshirt at practice Tuesday at Hancock Whitney Stadium on the South Alabama campus.

He doesn’t have preliminary thoughts on Justin Fields. Joseph was the assistant wide receivers coach in Seattle in 2021, when the Bears drafted Fields. He has yet to dig in on this year’s draft, in which the Bears hold the first and ninth picks and are in position to select a new quarterback.

“I was getting transitioned to coming out here,” the 50-year-old Joseph said.

It’s the first time he has been an NFL position coach — above the assistant position coach level. The connection is easy to make. He worked with new Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, who came from the Seahawks. The Bears also interviewed Seahawks quarterbacks coach Greg Olson for the offensive coordinator job.

The last first-time quarterbacks coach the Bears hired was Shane Day in 2010 based on his experience working with then-offensive coordinator Mike Martz in San Francisco. Since Day, the Bears have rolled through Jeremy Bates, Matt Cavanaugh, Dowell Loggains, Dave Ragone, John DeFilippo and most recently Andrew Janocko.

It would be overly dramatic to say this is the most important offseason for a Bears quarterbacks coach. There has been urgency to get the position right for the longest time. It just so happens they own the No. 1 draft pick as they prepare to thoroughly examine a talented group of passers, including USC’s Caleb Williams, North Carolina’s Drake Maye (who was a spectator at practice Tuesday), LSU’s Jayden Daniels and Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy.

Joseph, who was responsible for red-zone preparation with the Seahawks, had a hand in helping revive Geno Smith’s career in Seattle as Smith threw for 4,282 yards and 30 touchdowns in 2022. Joseph’s knowledge of Waldron’s system will be critical whether the Bears draft a quarterback or not.

“When you think about Shane and what we were able to do with the (Seahawks) offense, I think quarterback play is about having confidence,” Joseph said. “Quarterback play is just about being competitive. It’s about being smart, being dependable, having a good IQ of the game, being passionate.

“When you think about traits, when you talk about quarterback play and when you talk about Shane’s mentality, it’s just about being connected to the play caller, being connected to the offense. There are some things you’ve got to have and you’ve got to bring to it.”

Joseph was a quarterback at McNeese State and had a 42-11 record as a four-year starter, helping the Cowboys to two Southland Conference titles. He spent time with the Cincinnati Bengals in 1996 as an undrafted free agent before playing in NFL Europe. He tried to make the Washington Redskins as a slot back and then played safety for the Seahawks from 1998 to 2001, appearing in 56 games with 14 starts.

He returned to quarterback in the Canadian Football League in 2003, winning a Grey Cup with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 2007, when he was named the league’s most outstanding player. After retiring following the 2014 season, he got into coaching at the college level with stops at his alma mater and Southeastern Louisiana before joining the Seahawks as an offensive assistant in 2020.

The diverse background — having played defense in the NFL — gives him a different perspective to teach offensive football.

“It helps me tremendously,” Joseph said, “because playing the safety position, playing that dime (position), playing down in the box helped me understand how defenses attack the offense, how guys fit. So now that I’ve gone back to quarterback, I see it from a defensive mentality.

“Being able to help guys to understand the game, not just from the offensive side but from the defensive side, kind of helped (with) where to put their eyes. That’s what it did for me as a player, and I try to teach it that way with a defensive mentality.”

Joseph will learn where his office is soon, and then he can hit the ground running as the Bears prepare for the draft and install a new offense — quite possibly with a new quarterback. As far as his philosophy on developing a young quarterback, he leaned into some basic tenets.

“I use three things: accountability, responsibility, communication,” Joseph said. “It’s about trust, believing and having confidence in each other. A quarterbacks coach and a quarterback, you’ve got to have those three things.

“Then, hey, it’s about the fundamentals. It’s about developing the fundamentals, developing the mentality to be a good leader. To be a winner. Just willing to compete. There are so many things that I have in my philosophy as a person that I take into the coaching world and into the quarterback room to help develop a group of guys.”

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When the Chicago White Sox unveiled a sparkling new stadium on 35th Street in 1991, owner Jerry Reinsdorf declared he was “awestruck” at its beauty and predicted it wouldn’t “take a back seat” to any stadium in Major League Baseball for years to come.

But since that April day after the Sox had shuttered the original Comiskey Park across the street, the South Siders’ current home stadium has been a consistent source of criticism, tension and angst, with fans clamoring for a change even as major improvements have been made.

This week, a new twist developed in that long-running saga when it was revealed that Reinsdorf and the White Sox were in discussions about building a baseball-only Sox stadium about 3 miles to the northeast at Roosevelt Road and Clark Street as part of a massive development at a property in the South Loop called “The 78.″

Ald. Pat Dowell, whose 3rd Ward includes The 78, confirmed Related Midwest, the developer that owns the parcel, wants to discuss a White Sox relocation to that site.

“I will meet soon with the developers of The 78 to discuss the possibility of a stadium being built for the Chicago White Sox,” Dowell said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

Ald. Nicole Lee, who represents the area that includes Guaranteed Rate Field, where the team plays now, said she will also meet with Related Midwest and the Sox on the proposal.

“The White Sox have proudly called Chicago and Bridgeport home for over a century,” Lee said. “As a lifelong fan and now alderperson of the 11th Ward, I am wholeheartedly committed to keeping the Sox on the South Side.”

While serious questions remain about how real the talks are, whether such a plan will get off the ground and how it would be paid for, the news the Sox might leave their longtime home in the Bridgeport-Armour Square neighborhood spurred dreams that a modern ballpark ringed by skyscrapers and closer to downtown could breathe new life into the team and its fan base.

“The ballpark is right now not really in a neighborhood, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and a not very attractive nowhere,” said Allen Sanderson, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago who studies the economics of sports. “And getting to the ballpark, there is nothing wonderful about that experience.”

Related Midwest declined to comment through Tricia Van Horn, vice president of marketing and communications. The Illinois Sports Facilities Authority — which owns Guaranteed Rate Field — has not been involved in the talks, the organization’s CEO, Frank Bilecki, told the Tribune.

“I’m not part of the discussion, at least as of yet,” Bilecki said. “I truly know nothing. I’m a landlord and they’re a tenant, and they’re looking at options as tenants do everywhere.”

The Chicago Sun-Times reported Thursday that “serious” negotiations have taken place between the Sox and Related Midwest about the potential move to The 78.

The Sox and Mayor Brandon Johnson released a joint statement Thursday that did not address the possibility of a new stadium being built on the site.

“Mayor Brandon Johnson and Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf met to discuss the historic partnership between the team and Chicago and the team’s ideas for remaining competitive in Chicago in perpetuity,” the statement reads. “The partnership between the city and the team goes back more than a century and the Johnson administration is committed to continuing this dialogue moving forward.”

Sanderson, a Sox fan who often attends games, and who is also a longtime critic of using public funds to finance stadiums, said a new ballpark may not do much to boost attendance.

“The bigger problem might be it’s a really bad baseball team, coupled with the fact that senior ownership hasn’t exactly endeared itself to the public,” he said.

But a new White Sox stadium could act as an anchor for the South Loop, much like Google will be a north anchor when it occupies the James R. Thompson Center, said Robert Sevim, a Chicago-based president of Savills, a commercial real estate firm.

“This would be transformative if it occurs,” he said. “You will be able to create an entire community around the ballpark. Wrigley Field has an entire community around it, and that’s what makes it special, and in some ways, a White Sox park might even do better because you have a clean slate.”

Sevim was a consultant on The 78 project several years ago, but was not involved in any potential deal with the White Sox.

A major league ballpark would likely help kick off other on-site development, perhaps including residences, offices, restaurants and retail, he added, all accessible to downtown residents and workers, he said.

Less clear is what losing the team would mean for the Bridgeport area that has been its home for over a century.

Bill Jackson, executive director at the University of Illinois’ Discovery Partners Institute, said a new home for the White Sox won’t interfere with his group’s plans to construct a $250 million headquarters at the 78.

DPI still plans to break ground this year on the eight-story, glass-and-steel dome, and complete it by December 2026.

Jackson added that he was shown drawings of the proposed stadium this week and believes having an on-site ballpark will help attract more scientists and startup firms to DPI’s future lab, research and office spaces.

He also expects the new infrastructure needed for the ballpark, including additional parking and transportation upgrades, will be useful to DPI as it expands.

A Sox stadium on The 78 site would be a huge positive development for the team and the city — but that doesn’t mean it will happen, said SportsCorp Ltd. President and consultant Marc Ganis, who is not involved with the proposal.

There are many roadblocks, Ganis said, the first being money. Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is not known as a big spender, and Johnson has other priorities eating up resources, such as schools, pensions, public safety, and now, the migrant crisis.

“This site could be a great one for the Sox for generations to come,” Ganis said. “But a lot of things that make sense around here don’t happen.”

The question about how any new ballpark would be funded is significant. Guaranteed Rate Field — where the Sox lease runs through 2029 — was paid for using money raised through an increase in Chicago hotel room taxes in a last-minute deal in Springfield in 1988. The city and state also each kick in $5 million per year.

The ISFA still owes about $50 million toward the construction of the stadium, which opened near 35th Street and Shields Avenue in 1991.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has indicated he’s generally not supportive of state money going toward private, professional sports teams. He expressed this sentiment in the last year over rumblings about whether the Sox would move and in the Chicago Bears’ quest to find a new stadium in the city or suburbs.

As for the reports of the latest talks involving a possible new stadium for the Sox, Pritzker suggested he’d be open to listening to any proposals.

“Nobody’s made an ask yet, so having said that, I think you know my views about privately owned teams and whether the public should be paying for private facilities that will be used by private businesses,” the governor said during an unrelated event at an elementary school outside of Springfield. “Having said that, I mean, there are things that government does to support business all across the state, investing in infrastructure, making sure that we’re supporting the success of business in Illinois.

“So, as with all of the other (things), whether it’s sports teams or other private businesses, we’ll be looking at whatever they may be suggesting or asking.”

Where the Sox will be playing in the future has been a topic of conversation for several months.

In August, Crain’s Chicago Business reported the team was considering a move when its lease at Guaranteed Rate Field expires.

At that time, the Sox said in a statement: “We have not had any conversations about our lease situation, but with six years remaining, it is naturally nearing a time where discussions should begin to take place. The conversations would be with the city, ISFA and the state and most likely would be about vision, opportunities and the future.”

The Sox confirmed a meeting between Reinsdorf and Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell took place during the MLB winter meetings in December. But they did not disclose the topics discussed.

Nashville has long been mentioned in speculation as a city to consider if MLB decides to expand.

A Sox move could add a wrinkle to the Bears’ efforts to build a new enclosed stadium. The Bears spent $197 million to buy the former Arlington Park racetrack almost a year ago but have made little progress since then to get tax subsidies or resolve a dispute over property taxes with local school districts.

The Bears have also had discussions with Johnson about staying in the city and with officials about potential sites in Naperville, Waukegan and elsewhere.

Arlington Heights Mayor Tom Hayes said he couldn’t speculate about how the Sox talks might affect the Bears’ options, saying he was still trying to arrange face-to-face meetings between the team and the schools.

“I don’t anticipate that this would negatively impact the momentum we’ve been trying to gain,” he said. “We’re very hopeful things are moving in the right direction, and we’re continuing to work on it.”

A Sox relocation to The 78 might be modeled on the Atlanta Braves’ Truist Park, which opened in 2017 as an anchor to The Battery, a surrounding area of restaurants, housing and entertainment.

Such a mixed-use development is what the Bears have proposed for Arlington Heights. But at 62 acres, the Chicago site is much smaller than the 326 acres at the former Arlington horse track.

Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner, reporting from Rochester, Ill., and Jake Sheridan contributed.