Mamdanis $607M NYCHA makeover costs taxpayers a staggering $528K per apartment

Mayor Zohran Mamdani just inked a public housing rehab so pricey it works out to more than half a million dollars for every single apartment — on city taxpayers’ dime.The city closed financing Tuesday on a $607 million overhaul of Nostrand Houses, the aging NYCHA complex in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Spread across the development’s 1,148 units, the math lands at roughly $528,700 per apartment.That’s nearly $38 million for each of the campus’s 16 buildings and north of $300,000 for every one of its roughly 2,000 tenants.Jay Martin, head of the landlord group Community Housing Improvement Program, didn’t mince words either.“My criticism is not about NYCHA getting needed repairs,” Martin wrote on X.

“It’s not that those repairs cost $522,000 per unit.It’s not even that the average NYCHA unit costs 80% more per month to operate than a pre-1974 rent-stabilized unit. “It’s the inability to acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of private rent-stabilized units have rents that don’t cover operating costs.”Those units get a rent freeze and show trials.

Public housing gets billions of dollars. City Hall, meanwhile, was popping champagne.“This $607 million investment means new kitchens, safer and healthier apartments, modern building systems and the dignity of a home that works the way it should,” Mamdani said in a statement.So what exactly does half a million bucks buy in Sheepshead Bay?Kitchens and bathrooms will be gutted down to the studs and rebuilt with quartz countertops, new appliances, fresh plumbing and scratch-resistant floors.Every apartment gets double-pane windows, new intercoms, laundry hookups and window heat pumps that let tenants control their own heat and AC.

Crews will also scrub out lead and mold hazards.Building-wide, the money covers new elevators, boilers and hot water systems, rewired electrical, expanded security cameras and an on-site guard.Officials said 81 units will be retrofitted for residents with mobilit...