Nixon visits NYCHA for first time – and blasts foe as Andy come-lately
Shocked by conditions at B’klyn project
ACTRESS AND gubernatorial hopeful Cynthia Nixon visited a Brooklyn housing project Wednesday to attack Gov. Cuomo’s sudden interest in reversing the longstanding deterioration of public housing in New York City.
Invited by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, the “Sex and the City” star — who has no prior government or housing experience — toured the aging 1957-built Albany Houses in Crown Heights.
The media-conscious visit resembled, in many ways, Cuomo’s recent drop-ins at NYCHA developments over the past month — visits he used to blast the authority’s mismanagement and decrepit conditions.
Nixon — conceding this was her first time inside public housing — took shots at both Mayor de Blasio and Cuomo over their handling of NYCHA, and said it would be different if she was in charge. “When I’m governor, I may have disagreements with the mayor, but I can promise you I won’t get into this kind of pissing contest,” she said.
But mostly, Nixon expressed shock at what she had witnessed inside the complex.
In one apartment, a wheelchair-using tenant had requested a wider doorframe to make coming and going easier, but NYCHA had yet to respond to her request.
In another, sewage from an apartment above dripped at times into the shower a floor below.
“It was really awful,” she said following the Dickensian tour.
“I’d heard a lot about the lead paint and the mold, but I wasn’t prepared for what a health crisis this is.
“Every branch of government has been failing,” she said. “This shouldn’t be happening in 2018.”
Nixon’s visit comes as Cuomo and her most famous political supporter, de Blasio, have been battling to lay claim to being NYCHA’s savior.
The authority’s 600,000 residents have long endured declining living conditions as NYCHA struggled with a mountain of repair requests and backlogged maintenance needs.
De Blasio has steered millions of dollars to the authority to upgrade roofs and install new boilers, and stopped charging NYCHA for police coverage.
Cuomo in 2015 reversed a longstanding state policy of refusing to send NYCHA a dime and began steering funds its way. On Tuesday, a preliminary budget emerged in Albany that included $250 million the governor targeted for NYCHA repairs.
Nixon made a point of criticizing de Blasio for the slow pace of a boiler replacement plan that could take up to four years, calling the delay “unacceptable.”
But she also went after Cuomo, who has so far allocated $300 million for NYCHA repairs — of which only a fraction has been spent on actual work.
Cuomo repeated Wednesday his position that he won’t give money directly to NYCHA, which he and others have criticized for spending the funds it gets too slowly. He wants to give the cash to an independent monitor or construction manager to oversee upgrades NYCHA requests.
That put Nixon in the position of having to criticize the de Blasio team that currently runs NYCHA, including Chairwoman Shola Olatoye, who has come under fire for falsely certifying the authority was performing required lead paint inspections.
Despite calls by some politicians and tenant leaders for Ola-
toye to resign, de Blasio — who for more than a year knew of the lead paint failures but withheld them from the public and tenants — has continued to stand by her.
Nixon said it was “terrible” that Olatoye gave false information about the lead paint inspections, but she added NYCHA’s woes wouldn’t go away if the chairwoman were forced out.
The visit appeared to have a big effect on the star of TV and Broadway. She seemed visibly upset at the conditions in the Albany Houses apartments she toured.
In one 13th-floor unit, Nixon asked tenant Paula Frazier, 53, what had caused an 18-inch bare spot to open up on the wall where the paint had peeled off in her kitchen.
“There’s a hole behind the wall that keeps causing problems,” Frazier said.
“There’s a whole lot of issues I was told to look for and I wind up seeing even more issues,” said the clearly rattled actress.
As she ended her news conference, Nixon was buttonholed by Kayaswonna Williams, 40, who burst into tears while trying to explain her longtime battle with NYCHA over remaining in her apartment at the Taylor-Wythe Houses in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Nixon hugged her and said, “I’m so sorry for what’s been going on. It’s so important that people like you speak up.”