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Janae Pierre: Tenants returned to their apartments following a partial building collapse in the Bronx, and more on why the feds have paused funding in New York for two major infrastructure projects. From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Janae Pierre. We're still learning more about the explosion that tore up the side of a public housing high rise in the Bronx Wednesday. Here's a quick recap. At about eight in the morning, the 20-story ventilator shaft of a building in the Mitchel Houses in Mott Haven completely collapsed after an explosion. Tons of bricks spilled onto the ground below. Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt, but the incident is raising a ton of questions, like what caused the explosion in the first place. City investigators are focusing on a boiler that provides heat and hot water for the building. WNYC's housing reporter David Brand went up to the scene and even visited the basement of an adjacent building in the complex to get a sense of how the infrastructure worked. David, what was the scene like a day later?

David Brand: Crews are clearing tons of bricks and rubble that fell off the corner of this building, so work crews are starting to stabilize that building, make sure no additional bricks are falling down. They're going to have to start clearing out the bricks and rubble that's laying on the ground. For tenants, they don't have gas. Con Edison cut off gas service, so they can't cook. There's no hot water. NYCHA workers were giving them hot plates, so people are returning to their apartments, but it's pretty inconvenient for the foreseeable future.

Janae Pierre: To be clear, you're saying that tenants are back in the building?

David Brand: Yes, tenants were allowed to go back yesterday, except for residents of the apartments directly next to where that chimney once was that collapsed. They're being relocated for at least two days. Seems like it's probably going to be longer. City inspectors and engineers have been going to the apartments just to make sure they're safe and structurally sound before allowing residents to return, but others have been allowed to go back. That doesn't mean they're comfortable with it, though. I've been speaking with tenants a lot over the last 24 hours. One of them is Dee English. She's been living in the building for 25 years. She's a fourth-floor resident. She said she has no plan to return anytime soon.

Dee English: No way. I'm not staying. It's too dangerous. It's not safe. It hasn't been safe.

David Brand: She says she stayed at her friend's apartment last night, some of her family stayed with her sister, and she wants to apply for a transfer to move out of the building because she says she's traumatized and just doesn't feel comfortable going back.

Janae Pierre: What does this say about the city's state of public housing?

David Brand: NYCHA developments are in really bad physical shape after decades of federal disinvestment. NYCHA estimates that it needs $78 billion to address its capital needs, and that includes at the Mitchel Houses. They estimate that over the next five years, the Mitchel Houses need more than $630 million to meet the needs they already have before a big corner of the building collapsed to the ground here. Boilers have been a problem at NYCHA for many years.

There's a federal monitorship agreement that NYCHA entered into back in 2019, and one of the terms of that is that they need to replace or repair 500 boilers by the end of 2026. On Wednesday, after that building collapse, I went into the boiler room of a neighboring building and it was pretty stunning to see the condition that the equipment was in over there. The boiler was corroded. There was chunks of insulation missing. The pipes were rusted.

That being said, there was a handwritten log that I guess maintenance staff will test the boiler to see if it's functioning every day and mark it down what the temperature was, what the steam pressure was, it said it was working and they had the appropriate temperature in that boiler every day that was listed, but there was a note that piece of ceiling insulation had just collapsed a few days earlier, so just kind of shows the state of some of the equipment and the infrastructure in a lot of these buildings. I will say, though, that NYCHA spokesperson issued some new statements saying they're continuing their investigation. They don't know the exact cause just yet, but that the collapse was just a very unfortunate, isolated incident and that they don't have concerns for something like this happening elsewhere in the public housing system.

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Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's David Brand. In previous episodes, we've mentioned a couple infrastructure projects being halted by the Trump administration. We get into why after the break.

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Janae Pierre: This week, the Trump administration announced it's holding billions of dollars that have been promised for transit projects in our area. This impacts two major projects already underway. The administration says it's holding the money because of New York's DEI policies. WNYC's transit reporter Stephen Nessen joins me now to explain. Stephen, how much money are we talking about here?

Stephen Nessen: You have to look at the architect of this move, Russell Vought. He posted on X this week that he wants to withhold $18 billion from New York, and he specifically singled out two megaprojects in our region, Gateway and the Second Avenue Subway. Start with Second Avenue Subway, you remember, that would extend the Q train into East Harlem and connect to the 4, 5, that project is already underway, and the Gateway project, that's the project to build a new tunnel under the Hudson River, that's a project the Biden administration already pledged the money to, and the work on that project is already well underway.

Janae Pierre: Russell Vought posted on X that this is because of the state's DEI policies, specifically the requirement that big projects commit to hiring women and minority-owned businesses, which is something that's pretty common. Other states do it. What does this have to do with the Second Avenue subway extension and the Gateway program?

Stephen Nessen: I'll try to explain it as well as I understand it. New York State law requires, like you noted, many public works projects to set aside funding to hire minority and women-owned businesses, but the Trump administration is arguing that that's unconstitutional. They also argue that pulling the funding will actually make things more efficient because they believe DEI makes things less efficient, and as you know, the administration has been waging this battle against DEI policies in the federal government, higher education, and now infrastructure.

Janae Pierre: The timing seems questionable. Here we are days into a government shutdown. Is that a coincidence?

Stephen Nessen: I don't think it is. This comes as the Trump administration has been battling with Democrats over the spending bill, and this notice about withholding the funding came the first morning of the shutdown on Wednesday, and Senator Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, top Democrats from New York, are not giving in. In fact, on the Department of Transportation's website, it even blames them for the shutdown, reading, "Thanks to the Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries shutdown."

The review of these DEI policies which they're calling for for these federally funded projects will actually take more time without the budget for the Department because they've been forced to furlough the state civil rights staff responsible for conducting these reviews. Essentially what the federal government's doing is they're both calling for a review of all these projects to see how many minority and women have contracts, and they're also saying the review is going to be late because of the government shutdown, which, by the way, is all the Democrats' fault. It's a lot going on here.

I spoke with David Glasgow. He's the executive director of the New York University Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. He's also an adjunct professor of Law at NYU School of Law. He says all of this really just fits into this federal clawback of progress when it comes to racial justice, following some of the progress, or at least some of the efforts that were made after George Floyd's killing in 2020.

David Glasgow: I would say this is just the latest iteration of a kind of multi-pronged assault that this administration is engaged in against anything that it considers to be DEI.

Stephen Nessen: Of course, the administration frequently calls anything related to racial justice woke or DEI, and assailing these things was one of Trump's top campaign promises.

Janae Pierre: Do those big New York projects just stop now, or will people in East Harlem ever get the Second Avenue subway?

Stephen Nessen: I guess it does remain to be seen to a certain extent. The Department of Transportation says they're reviewing New York State's practices, and the MTA says they're reviewing everything. The Gateway project says they're going to continue their work for now, though, and like we mentioned at the top of this, both of those projects are underway. The MTA has been relocating utilities, buying properties it needs to get out of the way. It just penned a contract to start digging the tunnels, and Gateway is also very much well underway. They expect to start digging the tunnel under the Hudson River really soon. Meanwhile, big chunks of this project are actually already done, so this announcement is not going to slam the brakes on all that.

Janae Pierre: What's been the wider reaction in the New York City region?

Stephen Nessen: We heard from a few folks. Reverend Al Sharpton calls it a new low for the Trump administration. He says it's a one-two punch to Black and Brown folks. On the one hand, the Trump administration, he says, is trying to take away jobs from Black folks, women, minorities, who've been historically excluded from these kinds of contracts and opportunities, and on the other hand, the other punch is delaying the Second Avenue subway, which would serve East Harlem residents, a historically Black community, with better and faster subway access.

Janae Pierre: Yes, they've been waiting for that a long time.

Stephen Nessen: Hochul, for her part, calls this bringing the culture wars into infrastructure projects and putting real jobs at risk. Meanwhile, I did want to check in with some good government groups about what this could all mean, and I spoke with Rachael Fauss with Reinvent Albany, she calls the Department's move arbitrary and expects there will be a lawsuit, and just like congestion pricing, you recall, the federal government also sued the MTA over congestion pricing.

That didn't go so well in court, and one of the reasons why is the federal Department of Transportation is essentially changing the rules of the game after all these contracts have already been signed. Just like this DEI provision, there was no provision before that they couldn't provide contracts for women and minority-owned businesses. Now they're saying, well, that is part of the rule. Courts generally don't look favorably on that sort of thing, so it may not be very persuasive in court, but they're certainly going to give it a try.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's Stephen Nessen. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.

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