The Jersey City Housing Authority Board of Commissioners approved a 2 percent rent increase for several hundred residents living in the public housing complexes at its Jan. 7 meeting, and also increased the fees for damaged items in their units.
Also at the meeting, Executive Director Maria Maio told the commissioners that due to successful union negotiations, housing complex managers will receive a 3 percent salary increase starting this year. After the meeting, Maio noted that members of her administrative staff also received 3 percent salary increases and bonuses ranging from $500 to $1,000 based on her evaluations of their work.
Trying to vouch for relocation
There was some controversy at the meeting.
Housing Commissioner John Garvey criticized the Housing Authority’s plan to move its Housing Choice Voucher Program office from the Hudson Gardens Housing Complex, on Newark Avenue, to the Authority’s main office at the Marion Gardens Housing Complex on Highway 1 near Sip Avenue, where most of the commissioners’ meetings are held.
The office enables residents apply for vouchers to use for rent when they move to non-Authority apartments.
Garvey questioned whether the relocation would inconvenience residents. Several local buses have routes that run past the old office, while none run past the Marion Gardens complex.
Moving into the old office is the Jersey City Episcopal Community Development Corporation, who will be paying a first-year rent of $33,000.
Maio said if senior citizens are unable to get to the office, the Authority will bring voucher applications to the housing units where they live. There are already renovations taking place in the Authority’s main office, where walls are being taken down to put in removable furniture and to make room for 30 employees of the Housing Choice Voucher Program office.
Robert Bruner, vice president of the Independent Service Workers of America (ISWA), the Jersey City-based union representing the Authority’s maintenance workers, said in an interview during a break in the meeting that the renovations are being done by JCHA maintenance workers after an outside contracting company ran into problems doing the project.
Where’s our raise?
The maintenance workers renovating the main office did not get a pay raise, unlike other Housing Authority workers.
Bruner said he will meet with Maio on Jan. 27 with a mediator to try and win the maintenance workers the same salary increase as other employees. The union has been without a new contract since April of last year.
“I don’t know why she is giving increases to other employees and not us,” Bruner said.
When asked why the maintenance workers were not getting raises the same as other employees, Maio’s only response: “You have talk to the union. I don’t talk about negotiations.”
Taking off
Maio told her staff in a Jan. 8 internal memo that she will take a vacation day to go to Washington D.C. for the Jan. 20 inauguration of president-elect Barack Obama, and she authorized supervisors to “make every effort” to approve vacation and personal leave time for Authority employees who want to celebrate the inauguration.
The Authority is also arranging for residents to view television coverage of the inauguration at the Community Revitalization Center of the Curries Woods Housing Complex (see brief).