This interview with James Rubin was quite interesting, and I learned a lot about NYCHA. He began by telling us how NYCHA is run by a board of directors of about 7 people, followed by 12,000 employees, and 2000 buildings. He also shared with us his unique background in finance, which he believes has helped a lot in his current role. He also mentioned something that stood out to me, which was that NYCHA is essentially like a really big landlord, which I thought was a notable way to put it. He also mentioned how many of these buildings were built 50-100 years ago when there was a limited amount of money that could be spent on each building. Due to this, many of the buildings are overdue for repairs, and he shared with us that it would take 85 billion dollars to fix all of the housing repairs in NYCHA. This is a large number, and due to funding uncertainty, he shared with us that it is hard to make smart choices without the proper funds.

When I asked what his ideal budget would be for NYCHA he mentioned how there are two different budgets, the operating budget and the capital budget. He shared that the operating budget consists of paying for the employees, day-to-day expenses, as well as painters, plumbers and jobs of that nature. He said that this budget could be better with around one billion extra dollars in funding. While the operating budget is the more costly one, where around 80 billion dollars is needed for maintenance and repairs. I also found it interesting when he mentioned how the city has offered to help, but they only offer loans, which is not a smart decision for NYCHA since they already do not have proper funding as it is, therefore they are not looking to put themselves in more debt. Finally, towards the end of the interview, he mentioned how NYCHA has been getting private investors to fund repairs and how they have been able to fix 1200 apartments in this manner. They are putting in place a strategy to accelerate this method to fix as many buildings and apartments as possible. This has caused a lot of backlash from people who have been arguing that in doing this they are privatizing public housing. However, at the end of the day, all projects face much controversy in the beginning and at least NYCHA is doing something to try and better these buildings and apartments with limited government funding.