Toni Wiggins recently recalled receiving some irritating news. Her kitchen cabinets needed to be removed because of a mold problem — and she’d have to wait five months for the New York City Housing Authority to send a crew to replace them.
Ms. Wiggins, a resident of the Brevoort Houses in Brooklyn, a development run by NYCHA, was used to long wait times. Still, five months? “That’s a long time,” she said.
Where some may have seen a headache, Ms. Wiggins, 49, saw a creative opportunity. She got out her pink electric drill and headed to Home Depot. “I could not take the sad beige,” Ms. Wiggins said of her kitchen. “I want to walk in and forget that I’m actually living in housing.”
After carefully watching tutorials online, Ms. Wiggins, who works as a leasing agent, designed and built new shelves herself. While she was at it, she painted her lower cupboards a lush green and coated the off-white walls in a golden hue called Butternut. She uploaded the transformation to YouTube as well as TikTok, where nearly three years later the video has been viewed more than 12,000 times.
While renter-friendly home improvement projects are common in market-rate apartments, NYCHA housing is subject to strict regulations, including about trash-bag sizes, holiday decorations and other aspects of home life; tenants must also seek permission from management before altering their apartments. But residents who are fed up with long repair wait times, or who believe the public housing units are drab, are choosing to roll up their sleeves. With peel-and-stick tiles, paint and ingenuity, Ms. Wiggins and dozens of other D.I.Y. creators are showing fellow tenants how to breathe new life into their apartments.
