The Troy Housing Authority has recently requested construction bids to rebuild the 50-year-old Taylor 3 building.  This, at a time when THA requested permission from HUD not even two years ago to tear it down as the Taylor 3 has outlived its public purpose and was no longer a suitable environment for low-income families and seniors.  (That’s why Taylor 3 is closed now and that’s why it should stay closed and be torn down like the Ahern units were.)

Mario Mussilino heads the Troy Housing Authority with Lynn Mahoney, Chairwoman of the Troy Housing Authority.  Both of these individuals have failed Troy miserably by making the decision to renovate Taylor 3. RPI and its President Jackson unfortunately have also thrown its support to THA’s ill-advised decision to renovate Taylor 3. I am especially disappointed that President Jackson would support high-rise low-income project for seniors, families with children, and working families and wonder if her support is institutional segregation in disguise and an attempt to keep public housing units away from RPI’s South Campus Development Project and the hundreds of graduate student housing units RPI is planning along Eighth and Congress Streets.

Mr. Mussilino, President Jackson, and Ms. Mahoney’s high-rise apartments are not the proper environments for children, seniors, or any family.  Instead of stuffing those in need of housing in a poor high-rise environment, the THA should have instead concentrated more on providing those in need with decent “scattered-site housing” units and single-family homes in Troy. THA’s efforts should also focus more on the promotion of home ownership, well-planned neighborhood revitalization, and the rehabilitation of the many many vacant building we have throughout the city.

THA’s use of their Section 8 vouchers to secure privately owned decent rental housing for low income families is what is needed. We don’t need to build another Ahern. Decent privately owned rental-housing units pay property and school taxes—they are not property tax exempt like RPI Student Housing and THA units are.

As this ill-advised renovation and reopening of Taylor 3 will negatively affect our great city for years to come, I urge the City and RPI to do three things:

1) Demand that the Housing Authority to put an immediate stop to this plan.

2) Ask for the immediate resignations of Mr. Mussilino as head of the Housing Authority and Ms. Mahoney as its Chairwoman.

3) Make a concerted effort to fully integrate at least 250 low income housing units into the estimated 1,000 graduate student housing apartments planned under the South Campus Plan. 

The decision to renovate Building 3 is the wrong one for Troy and is a disservice to those who would live there, especially seniors and families with children.