 Hello. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Thank you all for being here. I'd appreciate it if people could find a seat. Take your time. No need to rush too much. But if we could find seats, that would be much appreciated. Looks like we still have some seats over here if people want to file in. How are you, sir? We still have a few more seats in the back here. If anybody wants to make themselves more comfortable, please feel free. Okay. Great. Well, again, thank you, everybody, for joining us here this morning. I can't tell you how excited we are to see all these faces, have all of these wonderful people here to come who have supported this process for the past three years. So, really, this means so much for us to be here today. My name is Simon Bacchus, and I would like to welcome you all on behalf of Brooklyn Housing Partnership. We're a partnership between the ARCA companies, Omni New York, Debar Development Partners, Restoration, NYCHA, and most importantly, the residents of the nine developments assembled under the Brooklyn Bundle II that we are here today to celebrate. I would like to thank in particular all of the elected officials that have been instrumental in supporting the residents and ensuring accountability throughout this process. Additionally, I would like to thank NYCHA, the New York City Housing Development Corporation, and our financing partners at Merchants Capital and Freddie Mac. Our partnership has engaged over the past three-plus years to conduct a conversion, preservation, and revitalization under NYCHA's PACS program. The project consists of nine developments containing over 2,600 units of housing, from home to over 6,000 residents across Brooklyn, from here in Williamsburg down through Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, all the way into Gowanus. This partnership demonstrates New York City's ability to engage in true community development. Under NYCHA's leadership, in partnership with private and nonprofit organizations, we work to build relationships with the residents of these developments to inform and guide the revitalization of these communities. Our partnership focuses not only on the physical renovations, but also providing services and opportunities within these communities. Our actions are guided first and foremost by community engagement. Working across these nine developments, we found the widest diversity of families, clearly showcasing all that is our city of New York. And across all nine of these developments, we found residents united in their concerns for their communities, but optimistic about the possibility for revitalization. We are here today to celebrate the first step in that new future. We have completed a comprehensive renovation of the developments, replacing major building systems, renovating apartments, and grounds. We are excited to share all this work with all of you today. However, this is just the beginning. Our partnership is long-term. Quality and responsive maintenance and management will continue to be paired with services and opportunities for residents driven by the input of tenant associations and their members. We are committed to the partnership and excited to see these communities continue to grow and thrive. Our partnership believes that affordable housing is the greatest challenge facing New York City, and that the permanent preservation and revitalization of NYCHA housing has to be at the center of our affordable housing efforts. As we see around us, one of the first steps towards a revitalization of NYCHA, I would like to acknowledge two people we have lost recently without whom we would not be here today. The first is Rich Frohlich, my longtime colleague and friend at HTC. His brilliance was instrumental in the structuring of the financing for this transaction, and so much of the affordable housing created and preserved over the last 30 years. The second is Saul Archer, our senior partner at the Archer companies. A visionary in the affordable housing community, his enthusiasm for a great deal was matched only by his respect and compassion for the families he created homes for. We miss them both and wish they were here with us today. Thank you. We have a great program today, and I'm excited to hear from all of our participants. I am honored to introduce our first speaker, Joel Gross, Lieutenant Association President of Williams Plaza and the chair of the Housing Committee of Community Board 1. Mr. Gross has been instrumental in this partnership and a true pillar of this community. Through his efforts, the residents and surrounding community benefit from a multitude of programs and services. Thank you, Mr. Gross. Good morning. I would like to congratulate the Omni Detire Omni team and the Arcus team, and I would like to congratulate them on their new construction and their lines for the great job, even with the COVID-19 and the epidemic with the supply chain, they accomplished their chief what we all see rehabbing our entire development even in the difficult time. I would like to acknowledge our assemblywoman, Emily Gallinger, Emily Samuel. We have a long working relation with the city council and by the federal monitors team. We're working together with Jonathan Gavaia from the NYCHA and Eugene Schnurr from Omni. Just for the fact, as we all know, with NYCHA and all NYCHA development, we have an issue with mold and lead. In our development, we were having a lot of mold. When we was calling NYCHA, NYCHA came with aclotic wipes, wiper up. In three days, the mold is back. What Omni was doing, they go to the source, why we have the mold. We have mold from leaky roofs, leaky pipes, and the exhaust system from the bedrooms is clogged or not working They replace all the roofs. We stop with the leaks. They replace all the pipings from the bedrooms. They put in our development 15 miles of copper pipes. Three miles on three miles for heating pipes. And they could, so with replacing all the pipes, all the leaks and rehabbing and putting new exhaust system, we now can say our all developments over here is free of mold. And the same issue was with lead. Everybody knows the citywide with NYCHA developments right now, we have an issue with lead. When NYCHA was checking my development, they say our development is lead negative. Omni came in with X-ray, they find in my development 50 apartments with lead. Included my own apartment. They was doing a professional job to cure to protect our kids from the lead. Let's give them a round of applause. During the construction, they replaced 17,000 windows in our three developments. They replaced 13,500 doors throughout our developments. Seven and a half thousand cubic concrete throughout our developments. We have brand new concrete all across our development. What we was having broken floors for the last 20 years of concrete. And that was a huge issue for the senior citizen and for general for the population. They put in two million, above two million floors they installed in our development in the Williamsburg area. One of the biggest requests from our residents was safety security. Omni installed 1,500 cameras throughout our three developments externally, internally. All our staircases has cameras. Every single floor have cameras that's driven down the crime extremely. As well, as we can see, we have 24-hour security guards. We have a boot over there in every development. And I think even the NYPD acknowledged that the crime around our development was driven down because the cameras in our security. They replaced 23 elevators. They replaced 10,000 new lights in our developments. They made state-of-the-art playgrounds, a state-of-the-art boiler room. I think after, like in the next hour, we will be able to see it. And, of course, beautiful landscaping what everybody can just see behind me and around our development over here. On behalf of all the residents, we would like to welcome the president of the construction. Even with the pandemic, they were really working communicating. It was times when we were supposed to have a stop for a couple of months. At that time, the entire team was working to deliver food for our residents. I would like to mention a couple names from the construction. It was a great work in communication with the residents. Of course, our management teams, ISEAN management, Reliance, is always here for the residents. The benefit what we have now, we have living supers in our development. If anything happened throughout the night, they just had a wonderful time. I would like to congratulate all our residents. Today is like a holiday for us residents. We're completing the job from the construction for our development. This possible was only with the PEC program what we receive, I think $350 million construction for the residents. I would like to say thank you for all the partners over here, for all the elected officials. I would like to recognize David from the DA's office. We have representatives from the controller's office. And we have our state senators. Thank you so much, Mr. Gross. Really appreciate that. Now before our next speaker, Mr. Steven Davis, Tenant Association president at Armstrong houses. He's a tireless worker for his community. We really appreciate him so much. He unfortunately has to run, but I just wanted to make sure I gave him a shout out before he rode off into the sunset. So thank you, Mr. Davis. Appreciate you. And thanks again, Mr. Gross. Tenant Association president at Berry Street, South Night. We could not have done this project without Ms. Legions. Could not have done it. She is a tireless advocate for her residents. Thank you. My board, Rebecca, my vice president Torrien, two other board members that are not here. I would like to thank them. Abdullah, my superintendent Joey without you. But what's the problem? But MRT team. Yes, I was security team, but I prepared a speech. Well, anyway, Torrien prepared a speech for me. So good morning to the residents, elective representative, elective officials and reliant and renewed partners. Two long years, two long years and COVID and I believe that we are finally here. I can't believe we're finally here. When I found out that my development was one of the developments selected for the conversion to Rad and PAC, I had my concerns. When NYCHA was explaining to us the process of PAC conversion, it sound to be true. I was also concerned that the management company was going to continue putting band-aids on our issue as NYCHA has done in the past, like the sewer backups that has been an issue at Berry for 24 years. Today I'm happy to report that reliant and renewal have worked tirelessly during these last two years to put these concerns to rest. So Berry South Night Street thank you. In the two years that reliant has been managing our development I can say that I don't have I don't know of any evictions at Berry. We had none and also I can say and report I haven't had a sewer backup in my apartment my apartment for over two years. So if anybody lived I lived it. So I think these men the women that took a part in getting Berry packed together again. Because at one time we were proud to walk into our development. So today we walk in our development with our head zone. Thank you guys. Thank you so much Ms. Legions. Our next speakers are Joanne Brown tenant association president of 572 574 Warren Street and her vice president Tiffany. Come on down guys. Say a couple of words. Come on down. There are stars right here. Are you not prepared to talk? No. Neither one of us. You just said come to the thing. No. No. Okay. This is the relationship that we have with Simon. We constantly bust in his chops. We have to. Honestly speaking this is my role. We have to work together though. That's how we can do this. But no. To be told honestly speaking when Arthur and I move back. I'm going to get at you then. When y'all started coming to us telling us all these things here and letting us know what you plan on doing I ain't going to lie. I'm not going to lie. My God was so up that was just passing me by because I didn't trust because everybody kept giving us all these promises and they're going to do this, they're going to do that. I didn't see none of that happening. Up until back here when you came to us in 2019 and 2017 letting us know that this is what's going to happen but then we had to trust your word and we did that. We did that. But then we also had our elected officials helping us making sure that everything was going to go well I'm going to give things to Michael. I cannot pronounce his last name but he's our community board sixth chair. Okay community board sixth chair and also Lincoln wrestler I can remember that name though. But I mean like well all their dedication helping us to make sure that every tenant was going to be properly noticed and no matter what was happening their words can be heard even if they had like a complaint everybody was listening. We were listening across the board so now we are here to let you know that everything is going well even though we still have like a little bit of complaints hearing now and then but it being fixed as we go along and then but this is not by everybody that's having but this is most but then now I feel that my vice president speak some more too. Just keep on talking. Okay to kind of add on to what she was saying this oh my god just Darnie has been challenging. We were very opposed to converting to RAD we had our guards up because anybody tell you if you live in NYCHA you hear promises out the wazoo and nothing gets done so we was expecting the same thing typically when it comes to NYCHA the residents are often unheard pushed to the side and overlooked this is what we was expecting walking into a RAD conversion we told Simon this from the get go when we was going through the whole conversion process we was unsure we was apprehensive we were loud and obnoxious to the point we still are we definitely brought all of our concerns to the meetings and I have to give Simon and his crew they definitely came they heard they listened nobody told us to be quiet or you know pacify you because that's what we used to we used to be in pacify they give you the glitz and the glam and show you what it's going to look like and eventually when you get it it looks like trash so we didn't we really expected that and like I said Simon and his crew they definitely were attentive to our needs with Lincoln Rusler and Mike I can't pronounce his last name either but the director of CB6 we came together collaborated to ensure that residents rights were reserved through NYCHA rules and regulations and policies we made sure that the tenants were heard their concerns were addressed that we ensured that they weren't being displaced because in the borderline of Parkesville Cower Gardens area they keep changing their area so you know we assumed that they were going to push us out and that's what we were afraid of being pushed out and displaced thank you and being displaced so that was one of our major concerns we went through it went through the process to ensure that residents weren't being displaced we weren't forced out we weren't agreeing to something that we were unsure of so like I said Simon his group and Garfield the whole construction team everyone has been amazing continuously answering our concerns even the concerns we still have now we have a wonderful super that we thank you for Richie Richie Richie and Richie Mike I call them Big Mike Little Mike because there's two of them there's two Mike's okay so I got to remember which one which who but then we have then we have Richie I mean they are groundskeepers but I mean and I mean like I really you know let me give them a pause right now those boys I'm just saying I have to give them their props because they have really been working with us making sure everything is done I don't care what time or night just like the Rabbi said they will call them up at the middle of the night he will come go fix whatever the case is I'm just saying I'd like to give everybody their props and you know let them know that we appreciate everything that they are doing whether for the business and hopefully they to keep on going you know keep on going on this path so that we can keep on praising them brother for the work that they are doing brother for us making it livable so we can feel proud of where we live instead of us being like ashamed all of the time when somebody came over okay now we are proud okay and Simon Mr. Arthur let them know that we did say thank you to him and then to all the work companies and if they keep up the good work and stop putting me on the spotlight then man you don't do that that's not nice thank you guys so much our next speaker is Mr. Gutman tenant association president of independence towers our host here today Mr. Gutman is the steady presence that guides this community we can't thank him enough for his partnership we hope so because Mr. Gross we have the speaker from the barn houses good morning everyone welcome our guest our city officials our elected officials city and state from HUD and from UGL Robin Ederman my colleague Mr. Gross from tenant association from Williams Plaza and from barn houses and then on behalf of our our TA board Peter, Sonia Mr. Rosenberg Lee I want to thank everyone for coming in today together here today it's called the ribbon cutting everybody knows you look at the pictures of ribbon cutting everybody has a shovel in his hand or some bricks so what's the ribbon cutting over here I was born and raised in Williamsburg I would say this ribbon cutting 2022 is a continuation of a ribbon cutting of 1965 at independence my grandmother lived right over there 121 Wilson apartment 1A she came in 1950 she was an elderly woman 60 years after the war she lived although she couldn't I wasn't able to work luckily the city built beautiful houses they built independence towers they built Williams Plaza I don't know I could talk only for independence as everybody know independence was the sample of night show housing it was always beautiful always nice we still have plaques we had the ladies taking care of the grounds of the flowers and everything so I would say this ribbon cutting is something else and different than other ribbon cuttings it's a continuation of 1965 but what happened Mr. Gross told already anything what Archer did but nobody knows how it happened that we need to have Archer and everybody and reliant over here from 1990 this place I don't know how but it merged together with Taylor White since 1990 this is over 30 years I don't know if anybody over here can remember maybe Mr. Robert Niederman it went worse and worse and worse I guess management couldn't handle I'm talking on behalf of 725 tenants Taylor White had another 500 tenants I guess management couldn't handle so much and everything as the lady said before the TA from the barn houses it was like a band-aid on a band-aid everything was done we had mobile boilers we had the elevators there wasn't a single day but the elevators were in stock there wasn't the last 10 years there wasn't a single day which would be full hot water not a single day in the winter we should have steam regularly it was unbelievable whoever was able moved out parts became empty you had people from different areas different communities moving in and then I have to give a special thanks for NITRA they realized in 2018 that they can't handle this anymore they gave her over to a new management which is reliant the first minute when one of our board members Lee Siegel and myself we met the reliant team we met a couple of meetings with companies we see this gonna click ideas if we had trust in him was very difficult but as I always said in all the meetings this was not the way NITRA is not the way to handle there it wasn't for them to manage those buildings those 1200 tenants mobile boilers and everything was the reason money NITRA was very good we had these people not even a garbage can not even a plastic bag was able to be received in the summertime when the parks are full we need an extra bag there is no money everything is counted every bag is counted so I would say thank you again NITRA for choosing reliant it's unbelievable the growth set. We had COVID. They changed all the piping, everything. There wasn't a single day which I went into the shower and we turned the hot water knob and it came out cold water. It wasn't a single day. My wife should call me, Oh, Sam, there's no how could I wash my dishes? There's no hot water. There's no such thing. So thank you again. Thank you, Eugene. Now, special thanks for Abdullah. Abdullah, Abdullah, and also Luzer. Those, they are on a speed dial. Those two names, those two numbers are on speed dial. But let me tell you, I think I have my number also on speed dial on their phone. They also called me right away back. Mr. Goodman, I'm here to help you. What's going on? But as I said for you, Eugene, before everything is good. Everything is beautiful. It's not 100%. If it's 100%, then nobody reaches on a level of 100%. But I could fully, fully say it's 99.99. And and he promised me that this bit also going to be fixed. So thank you again, everyone. I don't know the names. I don't know everyone, but if it's city officials, state officials from Omni, Archer, who else do I miss from renewal and the staff from Binham's Plaza and from the other housing from Berry houses as well, because I learned a lot from from the other mistakes I tried that shouldn't happen over here. And then they fixed it over there. But but they didn't need it to fix it. They made it right away. Good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Goodman. And again, thank you for hosting us today. I'd like to just say really quickly before we get to the next speaker. We this is all about the residents. There's no way we do this without our TA presidents. They've just been such strong advocate advocates for their residents and just working and building that relationship is really what this pack program is about. So so thank you all for being here today and support in this process and this partnership. Okay, well, I think we can fit in one more before before the mayor makes his way over. It is my great pleasure to introduce New York City's chief housing officer, Jessica Katz. Miss Katz is a public servant of the highest caliber of brilliant housing and community development professional. We cannot wait to see the impact her leadership will have on affordable housing in the city. Good morning, everyone. And thank you so much, Simon. I'm excited to be here with you today celebrating these night your homes that finally reflect what residents deserve for too long. Night your residents have suffered, but having the TA leaders here with us today is a testament to how the Brooklyn packed bundle has reset relationships and given more than 6,000 New Yorkers homes they can finally be proud of. I want to congratulate Archer, Omni, Debar and Bed-Stuy restoration for their great work, as well as NYCHA for their commitment to find creative ways to do better for residents. One of the many things that makes New York so great is that we have the loudest and the most active tenant advocates in the city. So when NYCHA first started contemplating the RAAD program, we didn't just take it as it is. We made sure that residents were at the table to codify the rights and protections they would get alongside the repairs that they desperately needed. As you've heard from some of the tenants and Mr. Gross in particular, 7,000 windows, three miles of copper pipe. We've been expecting our tenant leaders to become experts in mold remediation and property management and lead paint regulations. And I want to get us to a place where the developments here at NYCHA are in a place where the tenants can go back to living their lives and taking care of your families and not have to be those kind of experts anymore, but also to use that expertise to move these projects forward. So we've continued to strengthen the voice of residents and give them more choice since the first PAC project six years ago. But one thing that is clear since the beginning is these results that you see today. These homes are beautiful, a place that any one of us would be proud to live in. And what makes them even better, half a billion dollars of work that has been taken place across this bundle was completed in two years on schedule despite a global pandemic. Um and NYCHA needs new resources. They need new partners and new tools. We have a long road ahead of us to get every NYCHA apartment to look as great as these, but with our PAC partners and hopefully the NYCHA Trust legislation in Albany. And most importantly, the residents standing by us, we will get there. Congratulations to everyone for their incredible work on this project. You gave thousands of residents pride in their homes back. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jessica. I'd like to welcome the mayor, but we have a few other speakers that are going to continue to run through the program. So it's my pleasure to ask our next speaker up to the podium, Miss Alika Ampris-Samuels, HUD Regional Director. It's still morning. Good morning, everyone. And you know, I was sitting here listening to all of the residents and I had all these all these different things I wanted to say in my speech that's prepared, but I'm not going to say any of this because it's already been said. But as the mayor walked in, I thought back to all of the times we did press conferences in front of NYCHA developments, right? Complaining about all of the living conditions, right? And calling on NYCHA, calling on the federal government, calling on the mayor and the governor, right? And today is a new day. Today is a new day. If there was a, you know how you see the big apple buses that do the tours of New York, right? If there was a rad opposition bus, right, or a skeptic bus, right? I might have been on that bus at one point in time and I might have drove the bus a few times through certain neighborhoods, right? And I may have even conducted some of the tours on the microphone. But that was 10 years ago, right? When they first introduced rad and the conversation was around, why don't we just put a hundred billion dollars into section nine? That was a conversation, but it wasn't realistic. And it's no secret that there's a need for billions of dollars, right? When rad was first developed, there was a $26 billion need across the country, right? And now we see across the country a $80 billion need. And in New York City alone, there's a $35 billion need, right? And so HUD is in a position of making sure that our families live in healthy, safe environments. We conduct inspections every single day. And so if we are not making sure that the cities in the states that are receiving billions of dollars from the federal government, if they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, then the next conversation is about demolition, right? But that's not what we're talking about today. This is a beautiful day. This is a new day, and I am so happy for the residents today in this bundle. And I have to shout out because before I was a HUD Regional Administrator appointed by President Biden, I was a city council member, so I want to recognize the council members here. I also worked for the state assembly. I want to recognize our state leaders, right? But I also want to recognize the community development team from NYCHA, who was out here every single day, knocking on doors at one point, trying to talk about change with so much resistance. And before I walk away, I also want to recognize the partners that are in the room because we talked about Omni and Acre, and I also want to talk about Best-I-Restoration. I want to talk about Daybar Dhwana. I see you because we did new construction housing development across the city, right? And in my former district, and we always talked about we could do new construction, but what about the NYCHA residents? What about renovating their buildings? And so to partner with NYCHA with some amazing developers is such a good thing. And so on behalf of HUD, congratulations on today, and we look forward to working with you to do much more. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for those moving remarks. We really appreciated our next speaker. Just our next speaker, happy to call up is Jonathan Gavaia, Executive Vice President of NYCHA's Real Estate Development Group. Jonathan has been with us since the start here. Really, he's accredited to NYCHA, reinventing his department, and is just so passionate about the revitalization of NYCHA. So thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Simon, and thank you to everyone for coming today to celebrate the completion of over $400 million in comprehensive repairs to over 2,600 apartments across nine developments and 37 buildings. Thanks to the hard work of our PAC partners and our residents, family at Armstrong, Berry Street, Independence Towers, Marcy Avenue, Green Avenue, 572 Warren, Weeksville, and Williams Plaza now have, as you've heard, fully rehabilitated, safe, clean, and beautiful homes to live in, while continuing to enjoy the same important resident rights and protections that they had under the Section 9 program. Thanks to our Tenant Association presidents, Mrs. Brown, Ms. Davis, Ms. Gross, Mr. Guttman, Ms. Legions, who kicked us off today to celebrate the exciting moment for all the residents that live in the nine developments in this project. I know it was a lot of work during this extremely challenging set of times to get to this moment, but without your collaboration and your constant dedication we wouldn't be here today. And thanks to the PAC partner team, which you also know by now is consists of Archer companies, Omni New York, Debar Development, Bed-Stuy Restoration. Your vision for your vision for and commitment to this rehabilitation was impressive from the start and it is evident in the quality of the work that you've completed, your ability to complete this massive project on time during a global pandemic, and the respectful and professional approach you took to addressing resident and stakeholder issues as everyone has heard today. I know people will enjoy seeing the finished work on this tour. I'd also like to thank the electives who are here today, as well as HDC and other city partners, and to HUD for your continued support of the PAC program. It's an honor to show Mayor Adams, Chief Housing Officer Jessica Katz, HDC President Eric Enderlin, and HUD Regional Administrator Alika Ampris- Samuel this development today. And a big thank you to the NYCHA team who spent countless hours making sure this development came to fruition. While the real estate department leads these efforts, our packed work touches almost every department at NYCHA, and so I want to thank the entire NYCHA team. The full scope and investments made to these nine developments is vast and comprehensive, and includes the replacement and modernization of elevators, plumbing, roofs, windows, facades, security systems, common areas, community spaces and playgrounds, and of course new kitchens and bathrooms. And as you heard from Mr. Gutman critically the boilers. It's a shame that at independence they had to rely on a temporary boiler for almost 10 years, but as you heard those days are over with steady reliable heat. This project also included investments in sustainability such as solar panels at four of the nine developments and enhanced programming including new computer labs, technology programming, a new casper of chess program, as well as social services and onsite case management. While we are here to celebrate the significant investments in these communities, I wanted to spend a few moments highlighting the importance of resident engagement, which of course you've also heard about here today. Residents really did help us improve every aspect of this project. For example in 2019 prior to this conversion, I and other members of the NYCHA team spent many hours working with our tenant leaders to clarify many aspects of the project and to provide assurances on various deal points. We even changed and improved many aspects of our resident lease based on comments from Mr. Gross. Another example, and you heard about the sewage issues at Berry Street, Ms. Legions was a passionate advocate and made sure that we addressed that issue right away and I can say that right upon the closing the development team very immediately went to rebuilding the drainage and sewer system and as you heard those drainage issues among other issues that were resolved right within the last two years. Last summer Ms. Legions invited us to see her finish development and the transformation was incredible. In addition to the beautiful apartments, lobbies and community spaces, Ms. Legions and all of the residents at Berry Street no longer have to deal with those sewage backups. In addition, the development team and residents work closely together to make sure that each house will receive the individual attention it deserved and to make sure building upgrades were responsive to different cultural and religious needs. This type of partnership and responsive design highlights the best of what the PAC program can provide to our communities. In closing I want to thank everyone for their partnership and commitment to this project. All PAC projects are extremely complicated. In this case we had to deliver comprehensive repairs to over 6,000 residents during the peak of the pandemic, making this project even more complicated. As such we could not have completed this project on time without strong partnerships between our residents, NYCHA and our PAC team. Today we're making great progress toward converting 62,000 apartments through PACs with over 35,000 units in some stage of the program. We learned a lot from this project and we will continue to improve the program and bolster resident engagement as we bring more comprehensive repairs to more NYCHA communities across the city. So thank you and congratulations once again to our residents and to ARCHER, OMNI, Dabar, Bed-Stuy Restoration for putting in an incredible amount of work to achieve the stunning results for our residents. Thank you. Our next speaker is City Council Member Lincoln-Ressler. Lincoln was here with us in this partnership from the very beginning. He knows and cares about the residents of these communities and is here to fight for them. He holds this partnership accountable working as a steady and constant presence. Thank you, Lincoln. Let me first recognize the four most important people here who have made this a success, our Tenon Association presidents. I see Mr. Ann Brown from Orange Street, Mr. Joel Gross from Jonathan Williams, Mr. Samuel Guttman here at Independence and Ms. Vivian Legion from very South Ninth. You all deserve an extraordinary round of applause. I'm going to show a picture when my hair was brown. I don't know if you can see it and my belly wasn't quite as big. That's from 10 years ago and it's the first time I came into Independence when we were without heating gas. And I'll tell you, I've come back countless times in the decade since where residents, this was a middle of February, residents in the middle of winter had no heat, no ability to even cook food. Given crappy hot plates and told good luck, it's been unacceptable the conditions that folks have had to live here at Independence for far too long and across these developments. And I can say I'll be honest, this is probably not the right room where I'm supposed to say it. I'm not a big fan of the RAV program, but the success that we've seen here is telling. And I want to thank the leaders at ARCR and at Omni, Simon and Gene in particular, and your teams, you all have been exceptionally responsive, you've been exceptionally on the ball, and you have made in very difficult times dramatic improvements here in these developments. And it hasn't been easy because this deal closed in March of 2020, right? So as the pandemic struck, this deal closed and these guys got to work. And it was not easy on the tenants. It is not an easy thing to have your apartments renovated while you're living in it. It is not an easy thing to see your buildings torn up top to bottom, but the work got done. And we are in the process of having brand new elevators and independence. We had new sewer systems in place over at Berry, South Nine. I have seen Ms. Legions and our friend Ms. Ada. May she rest in peace. I'm thinking of her today. Cleaning out the sewage with their damn hands, right? Berry, South Nine was the last NYCHA development built in the city of New York 30 years ago. And the conditions are toad have been totally unacceptable. They didn't build a sewer system to meet the needs of tenants. It was wrong. The anger that we all feel in this community is real and that has changed as a result of this partnership. It's real. So and I'd be remiss to not thank our great partners in government and partners in the community. Emily and and will you are here. Our congresswoman I know is here in spirit. Our mayor Eric Adams is here. I want to thank each of you for your great partnership. I also want to thank my dear friend, the one and only and a partner in this deal. Rabbi David Moshe in Niederman, the leader of UJ of Williamsburg. Thank you all. And I just want to say this, the tenants how could I forget? Our HUD region two, we could not have a better person at HUD region two for truly. Let's give Alika a big round of applause. Truly. Oh my God. What an inspired choice. I am hopeful for HUD because she is there. And I want to thank all the folks at NYCHA who have taken all of our calls who have partnered with us consistently, who always strive for real responsiveness to make this partnership work. What I can say moving forward is this with these great elected officials, side by side, partnership together, we are going to continue to hold ARCR and Omni accountable. We're going to do our best to make sure that the tenants across these four developments live in the conditions that they deserve. I know that Mr. Ann Brown will not allow any less. I know that Mr. Joel Gross will be on me every day. We together in partnership are going to make sure that the tenants here have the conditions they deserve. We are going to continue fighting for you, continuing to hold our landlords, our management accountable because you deserve it. And I'm hopeful for the future together. Thank you all. Thank you, Lincoln. We appreciate you. Our next speaker is State Senator Julia Salazar. Our partnership is so appreciative of Senator Salazar's work to support these communities. Thank you. I'll I'll be brief because Lincoln said said so much of what I feel today. First and foremost, this would really be impossible. This project wouldn't be a success without the leadership and the persistence of our tenant association presidents who are here with us today. I'm looking at Mr. Gross at Miss Legion's. I remember it's now more than three years ago being at Berry South 9th and listening to a presentation I believe from from Omni at the time about the project about packed about the proposal. And to be honest, I was very skeptical I was fearful I was concerned and when Alec Amprey Samuel mentioned being on the no rad bus generally speaking to be honest I'm still on that bus. However, it actually it speaks volumes for that reason that I can be here with all of you today and say confidently that these repairs and improvements that have been made to the developments to thousands of units are beautiful and really that the entire development team that NYCHA they have fulfilled their commitment to the residents here and I'm so deeply grateful for that. Public housing tenants residents across the city deserve to live in beautiful housing. And as Mr. Gutman mentioned there was a time when NYCHA developments across our city were beautiful and I'm so grateful to see these photos and to walk through the developments and see that thanks to this project we have beautiful public housing again right here in Brooklyn. So I really appreciate I can't thank you enough the entire team who made this possible as Lincoln mentioned we are going to continue to hold the team accountable because as long as residents are happy we are happy and I'm just really appreciative of all of you and grateful that this is finally a reality. Thank you. Thank you so much senator. Our next speaker is assembly member Emily Gallagher. We are so thankful for all the assembly member does for the residents and the surrounding district. Good afternoon everyone I'm so pleased to be here with my partners in government the partners in HUD and NYCHA and with as as my my predecessors my the folks who spoke before me said with these fantastic tenant leaders personally in my district I have Mr. Gross Mr. Gutman and Ms. Legions and I have I have also very similar feelings to the senator and the council member there's a reason why we all share the same district and that is you know a large skepticism about these public-private partnerships but I think that the beauty of of what has happened here is that we saw true partnership from Abdullah and from the Reliant team there were so many meetings that my team was in with Abdullah with Mr. Gross with Mr. Gutman with Ms. Legions where we were all equal partners in the conversation and at every Christmas event at every Hanukkah event at every event that we had Reliant was there participating and I wish that we saw that more my district has a great deal of real estate investment in it and I want to see that kind of of true partnership with the communities that are in it after the buildings are built and the revenue is collected and I think that this is a really good opportunity to see that we do have the resources that everyone needs to have safe, clean, healthy housing and we can do it when we all work together to build and repair these houses that every single person as a human on this earth deserves he agrees with me so I see this as a new chapter in our journey in housing I see this as an opportunity for us all to learn about what is possible when we work together and when we really build something beautiful and the pride and the hopefulness that comes from that is a return on investment because that helps people walk outside with their head held high and approach life every day with a sense of pride and opportunity so I want to thank you to this team for giving that to my constituents and I want to thank my core team of the tenant leaders and my government partners for really continuing this process and of course Rabbi Niederman who is really such a linchpin in this community so thank you very much everyone thank you so much and with that our next speaker is Rabbi Niederman who needs no introduction a true leader of greater Williamsburg community and all of Brooklyn thank you so much Rabbi good morning almost good afternoon it's so wonderful to be with all of you it's so wonderful to see that the mayor takes time of his precious schedule with so many issues fighting crime fighting injustice for equality but also takes time to pay tribute do we be with us when we celebrate success not afraid of headlines press here's get to work and get to done and that's why he's here to show the example that we are here and will support more progress and as said before everybody even if he lives in public housing deserves a unit that is proud to be called home let me say let me say I'm a product of public housing I was born not born I'm sorry I was the first tenant in 125 Taylor and I remember housing then and the last 30 years I have I have followed what's going on in public housing and I have to say on the personal level thank you to everybody over here for the past few years there wasn't a night that I didn't call NYCHA and say there's no steam there's no boiler and even the temporary boilers didn't work either and here I remember when we were sitting down the first time with the development team said what do you want I said the first thing is security and then making sure decent housing and definitely heat and hot water must be available to every tenant thank you for making it happen I'm not going to talk about how many copper went in and how much steel went in how much glass went in but as they say one picture is worth a thousand words here are the pictures this is how it looks Mr. Mary be proud of public housing and our dear elected officials elected officials here Lincoln and Julia and Emily thank you for fighting with us it's a wonderful fight look at the fruit that you have developed the result of that and I'll finish with this one everybody makes a confession he was skeptical he's still skeptical I have to say that I was not skeptical why? why? because I believe that working together and I see that from the mayor on an ongoing basis private public partnership works you have an inches of people to make it work the only thing I confess I was before challenged by our hot secretary that she still remembers when she worked for David Yoskey so many years ago I was a nooch I was a nooch and I said that my name is David and Nederman and N stands for nooch thank you very much wonderful to be with you and we know that this is the beginning of celebrations Mr. Mayor and our elected officials under your leadership with many more developers and more people will have the affordable housing you are so passionate for thank you thank you Rabbi Nederman now it is my distinct honor to introduce our next speaker the preeminent public servant and a passionate advocate for affordable housing the mayor of the city of New York Eric Adams look at this look at this look at this so we can be intellectual philosophical theoretical but this is how people were living what we're learning today is not the program is who implement the program you could have the best program going but if you have a bunch of shysters that think they're just going to steal the money of taxpayers and residents then it's a terrible program these programs could work and we have to move from a place of no to everything and put people on trial when we campaign as elected officials people tell us all the time we don't believe in you politicians you have a lot of talk but you know where around and what we have to do we have to convince voters that we stand for something this group of people here that did this project yes this night your residents were burned they were denied they were betrayed they were left behind but you can't stay at no one day you got to say yes because we said yes these residents move from one state of living to another state of living so it doesn't matter what the program is generations after generation we've been philosophical as elected officials while tenants was they were living like this while we were debating on how and why we should have focused on one thing get stuff done I saw tenants are asking get it done and so I say thank you to those who critique the situation we're supposed to we're supposed to hold the feet to the fire we have a standard now that anyone who comes to state they're going to develop nature they need to look at this standard this is our expectation so if it doesn't matter if it's the land trust if it's rad no matter what it is the bottom line is it's the employees and the entities and the partnerships that implement the program you could have the best program possible but if you don't have the right oversight and implementation you're not going to get a qualitative product and that's what we got here and so now we need to have others you got to live up to the standards night your residents deserve better deserve better but this is this is a gut check moment and we have to be honest about this this is a gut check moment it's going to cost 30 plus billion dollars just in new york city and you know what it's not coming it's not coming let's not lie about this the federal government has tried with the Biden administration to push through legislation with nitty of the last squares Tommy Torres all of our congressional delegations they fought hard to get the 30 plus a billion dollars here so we can finally do what was right and it was decided from the other side of the aisle no we're not giving it to NYCHA so that's our reality so what must we do either we can wallow in that despair and allow NYCHA residents to continue to live on the left on the right side of that or we can say let's become creative on how do we ensure we transform this look at this to this that's what my chief housing officer is responsible in doing you've been asking for this for the longest we have to be creative and finding the solution to deal with NYCHA the bugles you are hearing it is not the Calvary coming from Washington it's taps being played that's saying NYCHA is dying we walked through these apartments we spoke to residents we discussed this it's time to make it happen now that's what this moment is about and so the bus shouldn't be the anti-rad the bus should be bringing people here and say see the possibility see the possibility that's what the bus should be now see the possibility and we know there's distrust we know what people who lived in NYCHA have gone through we know to fight with the tenant association leaders and president we know it we know it but you elected a group of advocates that are pro NYCHA they're fighting on your behalf similar to Salazar I've been talking about this for God knows how long they're fighting on your behalf but now we got to get it done I said got to get it done four years later I'm not going to be the mayor of this city when NYCHA is still in the condition that it's in can't happen it can't happen it's time to get it done we're going to roll out our plan we're going to present it to you but we're going to ask you let's have trust we got to start trusting somewhere I don't know who made that record from Cartwash you got to believe in somebody why not believe in me got to start we got to believe in someone it's time to believe in this right here it's time to start believing again there's been a real abandonment of belief it's time to start believing again because if we don't believe again we're never going to transform NYCHA we're going to be back here again talking about what NYCHA deserve and not spending this moment of giving them what they deserve let's make this happen we do up top I'm wondering if you're optimistic that the conservation trust will be approved my job is to present to Albany present to Washington DC give them all the facts they go deliberate and they make the determination that's the level of government we're in I follow the rules of the level of government we present it if it's not the land trust then I'm hoping they come up with how we fund this fixing NYCHA can't be a sound bite it has to be how we fund it so if we're not going to do land trust if we're not going to do rad how we fund it we need 30 something billion dollars so we have to come up with a way to transform these apartments so we presented our case in Albany it's up to Albany to make the determination and I respect whatever decision that they come out with we're doing a complete analysis of what we have been doing with housing we're looking at why is it taking so long why are we re-traumatizing people by having them tell the stories over and over again when we have the data we are looking at what units are available how many people have vouchers that are being ignored so there's a complete analysis of the dysfunctionality of housing in this city and I keep saying this I know it's hard to believe but I've been here for only five months I know it feels like that I've been the mayor for five years but I've been here for five months I've inherited a broken city with broken systems and we can either put a band-aid on top of these broken systems or you can go to the core and fix them I'm going to the core to fix them so no matter who's the mayor we're going to fix the dysfunctionality of this city that's the focus and there's no there's no rush to doing this we got to get it right but first of all we put in five billion dollars in a 10-year program was making a total of 22 billion dollars more than we've ever invested we need to acknowledge that we've invested more in housing totality than any other mayor we're up to 22 billion dollars we're going to continue to invest in NYCHA we will have a strong feeling that we were going to get the 30 plus billion dollars from Washington DC based on what we were seeing we're going to continue to analyze and manage this budget that we have we understand how difficult a budget cycle that we're in and we're going to invest in NYCHA continuously but we need help from Albany we need help from Washington DC and we're going to use our dollars here to continue to invest in NYCHA yes i am