Contractors Guilty Of Wage Theft Also Received No-Bid Contracts From Housing Authority

New York City, NY (WorkersCompensation.com)- As recently reported on WorkersCompensation.com, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) contractors Sima and Avtar Chand who owned SAC Restoration admitted to committing workers’ compensation as well as failing to pay its employees the correct wage in a New Year's Eve plea deal with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

In a follow-up to the story, it turns out the contactors were also reportedly NYCHA’s no-bid king.

For nearly a year, the NYCHA has been under the supervision of federal monitor and has struggled to make sure that contractors and its own employees are behaving ethically. However, reports indicate the NYCHA themselves haven't been conducting business in an ethical matter.

In 2018, a review of public housing contract by the independent non-profit news outlet THE CITY revealed that in 2018 alone, SAC received 29 separate no-bid contracts totaling more than $141,000. Each contract was just below $5,000, which is the amount that would require NYCHA to put the job out for competitive bids.

It’s been also revealed that between March 30 and June 26, 2019, SAC received 13 separate contracts for work at the Patterson Houses located in the Bronx. Each contract was right below $5,000, with the total for all the contracts more than $63,000.

According to The City and The Daily News, the city Department of Investigation has warned NYCHA three times in the last three years about allowing mid-level bureaucrats to pick a select group of contractors for repair jobs without bidding the work out. The NYCHA has had to rely on no-bid work for quite some time now because they’ve been pressured to make a dent in the backlog of repair requests they are dealing with. Despite receiving warnings that these kinds of contracts were susceptible to corruption, the spending on no-bid contracts rose from $38.8 million in 2017 to $61.1 million in 2018. Since August, $41.6 million has been spent on no-bid contracts and is said to be on pace to even be higher in 2020.

In a media release, NYCHA spokeswoman Barbara Brancaccio has said “NYCHA does not have any current contracts with SAC, and we have put additional measures in place to ensure that contracts will not be awarded to this vendor."

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