NYCHA fails to exclude them

WHEN THE city Housing Authority kicked Jameek Baker and Matthew Gerard out of the Sheepshead Bay Houses for dealing crack there, they were tagged with the Draconian label “permanently excluded.”

Turns out it wasn’t so permanent.

Gerard, 32, and Baker, 24, moved right back in and lived openly in the development, resuming their criminal activity and making no effort to hide their return, court records and other documents show.

In response, the New York City Housing Authority did nothing.

Even after Gerard and Baker were charged in January with dealing drugs at Sheepshead Bay and the city Department of Investigation blasted NYCHA for its “permanent exclusion” failures, the authority rejected a push to keep them out.

That’s because NYCHA more often than not refuses to punish tenants when members of a household are caught committing serious and sometimes violent crimes in public housing developments.

Baker and Gerard epitomize what the Department of Investigation has red-flagged repeatedly as NYCHA’s stubborn refusal to enforce its own rules.

Since 2015, DOI has detailed three times NYCHA’s failure to utilize the “permanent exclusion” tool to reduce crime in developments. The latest was Feb. 22, when NYCHA rejected DOI’s recommendations to get tough.

NYCHA has long had the ability to evict tenants for a variety of lease infractions from nonpayment of rent to committing serious crimes on development property.

But while the authority often moves to boot tenants for nonpayment of rent, it rarely uses the weapon to kick out perpetrators.

In 2016, for instance, 317 tenants were evicted for nonpayment, and 14 for criminal activity within developments.

And, DOI notes, NYCHA almost never holds the heads of household accountable when they ignore the agreed-upon exclusion and allow relatives to move right back in.

That’s true even when the tenant lists the excluded person as a member of the household on their NYCHA lease, or the excluded tenant registers his or her car at that address, or gives it as a home address when arrested.

The latest example of this unfolded Jan. 19 after the arrests of 15 people charged by DOI, the Brooklyn district attorney and the special narcotics prosecutor with operating a drug ring out of Sheepshead Bay Houses.

Those charged included Baker, Gerard and a third public housing tenant, Keith Daniels, 32, all of whom had already been “permanently excluded” from the development.

The gang, named by police as