Hundreds of vacant New York City Housing Authority apartments intended for tenants instead became crash pads for squatters, sometimes doubling as bases for drug dealing and other crimes. More than 600 empty NYCHA units were illegally occupied between 2022 and 2025 as the authority’s inventory of vacant apartments ballooned, according to a report from the city’s Department of Investigation. The lapse came as roughly 165,000 households sit on the public housing waiting list, The City reported. The watchdog found NYCHA often didn’t verify whether supposedly vacant apartments were actually empty. Between January 2022 and May 2025, the number of units […]

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