In Starrett City, Brooklyn, and in front of a few hundred adoring residents, Hillary Clinton was in fine form today. She was at a rally, to support the passing of a bill by Democrats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, which seeks to preserve affordable housing initiatives in the country. Congressman Ed Towns, who has introduced legislation that specifically deals with saving the affordability standards of the Starrett City housing development, was also on hand to speak to the concerned residents. Starrett City is the largest development of its kind in the nation. For the past two years or so, the residents have been embroiled in a battle with the old-owners, who were intent on selling the complex to a group of speculators.

Mrs. Clinton was given a rousing welcome by the mostly female audience, and was fired up as she demanded President Bush sign the bill into law. She spoke well of Barack Obama and his presidential bid, projecting that she was presently a strong supporter of his effort. Standing with her (beside congressman Towns) were Brooklyn’s ebullient Borough President Marty Markowitz, Assemblyman Vito Lopez (the county leader of Brooklyn’s democrats), Congressman Anthony Weiner, plus the district leaders of the 40th AD and some tenant activists of the development. Notably absent was the council member for the area: Charles Barron.

NYC’s Housing Authority (NYCHA)has sold off property because, perhaps in part, it is being pushed over a fiscal brink by the combined defunding efforts of decades of GOP office holders at the city, state and federal level. (For a very cursory – but perhaps too long – overview of some of NYCHA’s financial and operating woes, click here ).

Those of you of a certain age who remember the War in Vietnam, may recall a puzzling Military concept:“we burned the village in order to save it.” Similarly, public housing operators across the US have from time-to-time destroyed huge public housing projects in order to save them. Forty years ago, for example, I spent a moderate amount of time in the Pruit-Igoe projects of St. Louis Mo.—a 33 building forest of medium-rise buildings so badly-built, so badly maintained so crime-ridden that they were torn down altogether in 1972. Since then, the dynamite & bull-dozer solution to public housing failures (and even some successes) has been applied in other locales (famously Cabrini-Green in Chicago and recently, in Staten Island). In general, NYCHA housing – even at its worst moments of disrepair and dangerousness – never equaled the disgrace of Pruitt-Igoe.

The right-wing idea is that the solution to the financial crisis in public housing

No! I don't mean NYCHA is not broke but ...New York City’s Housing Authority (NYCHA) has been and is being mugged and robbed by Federal, State and City Republicans. NYCHA operates more than 2600 buildings with more than 180,000 apartments and many more than 400,000 residents. (It does a lot more, but for purposes of this post and the next, I focus only on its role as housing operator) As a result of planned policies federal, state and local subsidies for NYCHA have declined dramatically over the Bush, Pataki, Giuliani and Bloomberg years. As a result, cash for routine maintenance is drained away, fees and rents have increased and surprisingly, NYC continues, vampire-like, to suck hundreds of millions of dollars a year from NYCHA. (See the figures after the jump)

NYCHA’s GOP government-induced financial crisis was the subject of a fascinating forum a few days ago at the New School's Center for NYC Affairs. There Daily News columnist and editorial board member and former NYCHA resident Errol Lewis convened a panel of experts and officials and an audience of alarmed tenants and activists. The tales they told, the problems they debated and recent developments point to a NYCHA crisis which could, if not addressed, severely damage the largest single bloc of affordable housing in NYC – some of it imposed by Mayor Bloomberg right this minute.(Check out the forum here)

By the time you read this, we are fifteen days and some hours too late. By the time you read this, Lillian Milán is already dead and buried, victim of the daily little violences carried out by our tax-funded bureaucratic neglect.

We arrive more than half-way into the story because, even though there's a mother and wife missing, the bureaucratic violence that killed Ms. Milan is still going strong.

You don't need to go to New Orleans to witness the havoc and devastation of our government's willful neglect.

All you need to do is take the train to 140 Moore Street in Brooklyn.

Errol Louis (columnist from NY Daily News) asked me to come to Bushwick Houses in Brooklyn and help him interview Mr. Gonzalez. His wife had died in his arms 10 days before our meeting. She was a chronic sufferer of asthma who depended on her oxygen tank. She died of an asthma attack triggered by having to walk 10 stories up to their apartment after waiting in the lobby of her building for over 5 hours for anybody from the New York City Housing Authority to come in and repair the elevator.