State Assemblyman Keith Wright, D-Harlem, is calling for Sean Moss to be fired as Department of Housing and Urban Development Regional Director after Moss proposed that the New York City Housing Authority sell public housing in affluent areas in order to finance public housing in cheaper neighborhoods.

Moss made the statements last Tuesday at a forum on the future of the NYCHA, which currently has a $200 million annual deficit due to federal budget cutbacks. “It may displace some people, and that is a concern,” Moss said, according to the New York Daily News. “That is not necessarily a bad thing if you can create more housing with that. Instead of having 300 units [in a project], maybe there is a way to increase that if they are able to ... sell those assets so that you can create more housing.”

In a letter to U.S. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, Wright called the plan “at least elitist and at worst segregationist.”

“Creating new neighborhoods of entirely lower income residents is neither the solution to the affordable housing crisis nor is it the solution to abject poverty,” Wright wrote. “Such a plan is just not right for the City of New York and will, in practice, simply worsen our preexisting problems.”

“If one was to take these comments at face value, one would assume that Mr. Moss does not feel that public housing residents have the right to live in upper class neighborhoods and that they should be moved into areas where people of similar economic status already reside,” he wrote.

Moss did not return calls for comment.

Wright noted that over 14,000 people in his district live in public housing. “To privatize just one building in our community would be entirely destructive to both our culture and our neighborhood,” he wrote.

Laura Schreiber can be reached at laura.schreiber@columbiaspectator.com.