The National Association of Housing Information Managers (NAHIM) has spotted Spotty! In the December Issue of the NAHIM News, our NYCHA stories rated front page coverage.
(Click Here to view the entire NAHIM News December Issue!)
The NAHIM now has 250 Public Housing Agency members in 44 States and is a publication that contains a variety of news that is of particular interest to information technology professionals that work in the Public Housing area. I've read more than a half-dozen past issues of the newsletter, and it is a valuable resource for anyone who deals with HUD regulations or any of the myriad of data that goes through the daily PHA/HUD data chase.
The December issue of the newsletter took particular note of some of our reports on the unusual data handling by NYCHA. (Hey, if losing all records of inspection, credits and charges, insurance coverage and other important data about more than $50,000,000 in construction contracts isn't "unusual" in a paper heavy tight-ass operation like NYCHA, than please tell me what the hell is?)
Anyway, our thwarted attempts to get anyone, other than the IG/DOI cover-up troops, to look into NYCHA's wasting of taxpayer funds may just get another chance when all these other Public Housing Agency (PHA) employees read our tale. HUD may decide it is finally time to show that it really does care about the funds it spreads around,. If not, other PHA Execs may begin to use the PHA funds to lease friends $8,000,000 buildings for over $100,000,000. Then every PHA Exec can make their rich Real-Estate Mogul friends MUCH happier. And, maybe some of that happiness will be passed around, if you know what I mean.
NAHIM also mentions our latest reports on the problems NYCHA is having in getting its Y2K problems solved. Speaking of which:
Hey, Hey, JA!
How many shutdowns today?
We're told that NYCHA has decided that turning off the juice to entire developments is a good test of NYCHA readiness for Y2K problems. Of course, instead of fixing NYCHA specific problems, like the Interboro mess, NYCHA decided to prepare for circumstances totally out of their control.
Here's the plan
Although Con Edison has done everything but scream from the rooftops that it has completed its Y2K preparation and states that there will be no Y2K caused power problems, JoAnna Aniello apparently wanted an excuse to use one of NYCHA's snazzy Command Vans. So, she declared the tenants of many of NYCHA's Manhattan South would be used as laboratory mice in Joanna's experiment.
Joanna would travel from development to development, ordering the shut down of the main power to the buildings. Then, after turning the power back on, a team of Skilled Trades people would run around resetting this and restarting that. If everything worked well, the development was declared ready for a Y2K shutdown of Con Edison.
Of course, this test did nothing to prove that our developments would have no Y2K problems. Just that if the only problem was one caused by Con Ed, we could probably turn the lights, pumps boilers etc. back on.
Yet, even with this simplistic approach, Joanna missed testing a development, so those folks were all on "Aniello Alert" for nothing.
Are both Kalman Finkel and Paul Graziano
about to become NYCHA extinct?
© 1999 Public Housing Spotlight and John Ballinger. All rights reserved.
Issue links are at page bottom
or click here for a Directory page with Issue overviews.
Click on the mailbox to send us your thoughts!
Or Message/Fax us with info at 718/745-0170