Good Old Lower East Side

CITY COUNCIL HEARING ON PREVAILING WAGE AND SECTION 3

May 15, 2001

By Edward Garcia, President

I live at Vladeck houses and am the President of the Residents Association. For several years now, we have been experiencing difficulty with getting the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to enforce Section 3, a federal program that would make construction work and training available to residents of public housing.
On April 26, 2001 there was a City Council Hearing on Section 3 and prevailing wage with City officials and representatives from NYCHA?’s office of Contracts. NYCHA representatives talked about how contracts go to the lowest bidder and they explained their system for monitoring the contractors. From NYCHA?’s testimony it appeared as though they didn?’t get out of their offices much because they don?’t have any accountability in their system.
It would have been nice if NYCHA stayed at the hearing after testifying so they could listen to residents, local elected Officials and Union members all testify about the need better implement Section 3, but as usual they wouldn?’t.
We need more of these types of hearings investigating NYCHA until they can fix their system.
We are only asking for what is fair!