The New York City Housing Authority said on Monday that it had made substantial strides in catching up on repairs at its buildings, fulfilling 73,000 work orders since January.
That leaves the agency with about 350,000 repairs to go, officials said.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has blamed cuts in federal funding over the last decade for much of the backlog in maintenance orders among the city’s 178,000 public housing apartments.
The reductions have led the city to cut staffing for its aging public housing stock and left the authority with $6 billion in unmet capital needs and deteriorating conditions, city officials said.
In January, the mayor and the authority’s chairman, John B. Rhea, announced steps to speed up work orders for tenants, who sometimes have to wait two years to see a carpenter.
The authority directed $40 million toward tackling the backlog, including hiring more than 400 workers for repair jobs. It also said it would improve hw it manages scheduling and communication so that workers have the materials they need when conducting repairs and do not waste time on additional travel.
At a news conference on Monday, housing officials said they hoped to winnow down the backlog to about 100,000 pending orders by the end of the year. (The agency gets an average of 50,000 repair requests a week.)
That means getting closer to the goal of no more than a 24-hour wait for emergency repairs like a leaking roof, one week for minor maintenance and two weeks for skilled work, like fixing a cabinet door.
But officials cautioned that the repair timetable was threatened by the across-the-board cuts in federal spending that took effect this month after President Obama and Republican lawmakers failed to reach a budget agreement.
The federal housing secretary, Shaun Donovan, has warned that the spending cuts, known as sequestration, would force public housing authorities throughout the country to defer maintenance and capi! tal repairs.
New York City officials said that up to $150 million in federal aid was at stake.
“The reality is, as goes Washington, so goes Nycha,†Mr. Rhea said, using the acronym for his agency. “There will be pain associated with it.â€
