Public housing is falling apart around the country, as federal money has been unable to keep up with the repair needs of buildings more than half a century old, according to an article by Cara Buckley in yesterday's edition of The New York Times.

"Over the last 15 years," the article said, "150,000 of the nation's public housing units have been lost, officials said, as agencies have sold or torn down decrepit properties. An additional 5,700 units are pending removal from federal public housing programs."

The article said that New York City has a three-year backlog of repair requests, adding that "tenants of New York's public housing say repair delays have never been worse, a belief borne out by figures from the New York City Housing Authority. It already has 106,000 unfulfilled work orders, 9,000 of which are scheduled for 2012 and an additional 300 already for 2013. The State Assembly's Committee on Housing is holding a public hearing on Tuesday focused on the maintenance delays. Michael Kelly, the housing authority's general manager, said his agency simply could not keep up. A 2005 independent study found that the agency needed $7.5 billion to put its buildings in good condition. But the authority had only $1.5 billion for such needs."

"As the federal government began reducing appropriations for public housing early in the last decade," the article continued, "the authority trimmed its staff, cutting 1,540 operations jobs from 2005 to 2009. Meanwhile, work orders for those very people - carpenters, painters and plasterers - began to soar, from 180,000 in 2005 to 250,000 this year, as of Sept. 24."

"All told," the article said, "the country's housing authorities still need $22 billion to $32 billion to rehabilitate their buildings, said David Lipsetz, a senior adviser in the Office of Public and Indian Housing with the Department of Housing and Urban Development - an average of $25,000 for each of the 1.175 million public housing units. But that figure is based on a 1998 study, he said; an updated report is in the works....A $4 billion federal stimulus infusion helped, but 'with that capital backlog,' he said, 'they're never catching up.'"

In response, the article continued, "HUD has drafted legislation that would allow housing agencies to borrow public and private money, using their land and buildings as equity, to finance repairs. Money received annually from Congress would be used to repay the debt over time. Mr. Lipsetz said that based on other forms of subsidized housing programs the department runs, the risk of default was less than one-tenth of 1 percent. The bill, yet to be formally introduced in Congress, stirred mixed reactions among housing authorities and advocates, many of whom feared the prospect of public housing falling into private hands."

"'Across the country, some advocates are against any private lending,' said Victor Bach, a senior housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society of New York. 'On the other hand, a lot of advocates feel that this is the only way, given the way Washington works, to preserve our public housing resources. We're not going to get the capital appropriations needed from Congress.' But the proposed legislation, currently being reworked, met stiff opposition at a Congressional hearing in May. 'I agree we need more capital funding,' said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, which held the hearing. 'But putting a private mortgage on public housing is not a good idea.'"

New York is unusual in that it has demolished very little of its public housing stock. Elsewhere in the country, notably in Atlanta and New Orleans, housing agencies have torn down decrepit buildings and instead given poor residents federally subsidized housing vouchers to use toward their rent.