A major contribution to NYCHA’s budget shortfall over the decades was the fact that the federal government did not provide any operating support for buildings that were built with State and City funds early in the development of NYC’s public housing programs. The State supported them until 1998 and the City until 2003.

Since then, NYCHA had been operating these buildings with only the rents collected and by skimming from the budget for the whole program.

In 2008, NYCHA first converted some of these buildings to Section 8 without changing the ownership or management structure. This campus was included in that conversion. This was the first time since they were built that these buildings had any federal funding. The funding is on-going.

In 2010, NYCHA used an opportunity to get federal recovery bond money to arrange a deal that allowed Citigroup to become part owner, along with NYCHA, of these buildings and the rest of the City and State financed ones. This arrangement gave access to bonds and tax credit financing that NYCHA could not get by itself. It got a big chunk of money up front to be used for building upgrades and repairs.

• NYCHA continued to own the land and

• leased it a company shared by it and Citigroup.

• NYCHA continued to manage the buildings.

All the buildings it converted to Section 8 in 2008 were included in this deal, including this one.