The glaring omission in Mayor Mamdani’s “rental ripoff” hearings, called to spotlight the sins of private landlords, are the problems of New York’s public landlord, the city’s Housing Authority, which houses at least 400,000 residents. NYCHA’s estimated $78 billion in deferred maintenance is reflected every day on its sobering “service interruptions” website. Over the first nine weeks of this year, 318 public housing developments saw 558 such issues, from no heat to no power.

Mamdani is on record in support of “doubling the amount of money we spend on preservation for NYCHA” — but has not made clear where such funds would be found. But there’s actually a practical way to bring private funding into public housing renovation — and, if he has a pragmatic streak, the mayor should go to the Stanley Isaacs Houses in Yorkville to sell its 1,130 tenants on just that.

Tenants there are in the last stretch of a month-long vote on the future of their buildings — facing a choice of whether they should continue to be managed by NYCHA, with no guarantee of renovation, or supporting an infusion of private rehab dollars and management of the property, which would still be owned by NYCHA.

Up until Monday, residents have a chance to opt into the so-called Permanent Affordability Together (PACT) plan, which, by converting federal financial support into housing vouchers for tenants rather than a check to NYCHA, can allow a private developer to finance improvements.

In other words, it’s a way to upgrade the projects not on the city’s dime.

Serious rehab money can flow. Last year, reports NYCHA, it has used the approach to attract $1.6 billion in renovations. This is a bonanza for what has tragically become the city’s largest slumlord.

Similar projects are going on by the hundreds across the country — but only in New York do tenants have to vote to approve a change in management. It might seem a foregone conclusion for tenants to choose a property manager other than NYCHA, which is under a federal monitor’s oversight owing to problems of leaks, mold, lead paint and more.

But there’s a “devil you know” dynamic at work among tenants — such as those at the Throggs Neck Houses in the Bronx who voted to stay in traditional “Section 9” NYCHA management.

Hard as it is to believe, there’s an ongoing pro-status quo organizing drive at the Isaacs Houses, whose three towers need $248 million in repairs — part of a citywide campaign led by a group called the Justice for All Coalition. One longtime resident, Saundrea Coleman told the news outlet The City that she opposes “any forms of privatization.”

“I don’t want us to not get repairs, but there’s other ways of getting the repairs done,” she said

As a practical matter, however, that’s just not true; a federal funds infusion did not happen during the Joe Biden years and is even less likely under Donald Trump.

The current vote instead provides an opportunity for Mamdani. He should go to the Isaacs Houses — and reassure residents that a change in management and funding won’t lead to their fears of eviction being realized.

He could, however, back a third option, the Preservation Housing Trust — which combines private development funding with NYCHA management once work is complete. Unionized tradesmen have backed this approach,

But either change from the status quo — PACT or the Trust — will mitigate the city’s biggest rental ripoff — a public housing system that has become the slum it was meant to replace. The mayor should go to the Isaacs Houses and say so.

Husock is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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