Soon I’m going to tell you about my excellent, efficient experience in New York City’s Housing Court — as a personal supplement to my own lawyer’s advisory article.
In yesterday’s Daily News, Juan Gonzalez reminded me to do so — although his column was about how the landlord-tenant complaint system did not work efficiently in a case that involved the New York City Housing Authority, which Gonzalez calls “dysfunctional.”
I trust Gonzalez so I assume the story he told about a subsidized tenant in a building owned by a nice landlord, penalized for the NYCHA’s “chaos,” is accurate. I did pick up shards of my experience in his “Broken records of NYCHA,” even while understanding that I was not dependent upon the Housing Authority (with its new mess of a computer system wittily, bitterly acronymed “NICE.”)
Indeed, my dealings were with the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, an entirely different agency. An admirable agency.
In fact, the landlord and tenant in Gonzalez’s article did finally resort to going to Housing Court. Which I promise I’ll tell you about after my own case has worked its (astoundingly fast) way through this really good government agency.
In the meantime, Gonzalez’s article points up two problems with government agencies: the local agency (NYCHA) doesn’t communicate well with its federal overseer, which supplies the money. And the endless crap about cutting taxes, crap that began with Reagan, really does have an effect on us middle-class voters, as well as those needy enough to require help from the government.
When they don’t get help, all of us suffer. No, that’s not quite true. Most of us suffer. The very rich don’t even notice.