Cannabis Greenhouses On New York City Public Housing Rooftops? What Is Mayor Adams Thinking?

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is considering allowing cannabis cultivation in greenhouses on the rooftops of public housing buildings, a proposal that’s not likely to go down well with tenants of the buildings nor the federal government that funds them.

Initially reported by WNYC Radio, the idea became clearer when Adams mentioned it recently at a conference organized by the New York State Association of Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislators.

WNYC and Gothamist reporter Jon Campbell quoted the mayor as saying that his administration wanted to “explore the possibility of having greenhouse space on NYCHA rooftops for” marijuana cultivation as the state prepares to launch its adult-use market. 

What Is NYCHA?

New York City Public Housing Authority (NYCHA), which has been around since 1934 thanks to Depression-era spending by the federal government, provides affordable rentals to people with low and moderate incomes. Some 600,000 people, roughly one in fifteen New Yorkers, live in NYCHA buildings. That’s more than live in Miami, Atlanta, Cleveland, New Orleans or Tampa. 

Since its founding, NYCHA has received federal funding, which at this point is up to nearly $1 billion in annual operating subsidies. As it stands, NYCHA’s 177,000 apartments within 335 housing developments in NYC are in need of an estimated $40 billion in repairs. 

Hence operating cannabis greenhouses on their rooftops would not likely be an acceptable gardening scheme in the eyes of the federal government, which views cannabis as a Schedule I drug.

Why Public Housing Rooftops?

In that cannabis users are not welcome in public housing, according to the Biden administration, why build weed greenhouses on their rooftops?

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) noted in November that it will keep denying federally-assisted public housing to those who use weed, whether or not they reside in a state that has legalized the plant.

Earlier this year, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s non-voting delegate to Congress, sent a letter to HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge requesting that she stop enforcing anti-cannabis rules against Section 8 and public housing residents “in compliance” with local cannabis laws.

One New Yorker suggested putting the cannabis greenhouses on the “needle high rises that tower over Central Park built by Chinese billionaires and cost $20 million per apartment.”