JuDGES PAINT A BuMBLING NYCHA

To get lead – & mold – out

THE CITY Housing Authority has been ordered to redo thousands of lead paint inspections and go back to the drawing board on its latest plan to clean up mold.

Two judges took NYCHA to task Monday and Tuesday, issuing edicts highlighting the agency’s failure to improve living conditions for its 400,000 tenants.

On Tuesday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead ordered the reinspections of thousands of apartments — even those without young children — for lead paint.

Edmead said she would grant a request by a NYCHA tenants group, the Citywide Council of Presidents, to recheck apartments with likely lead paint that the Housing Authority failed to inspect as required by federal regulation.

The rule requires that all apartments where lead paint is presumed to be present must be checked annually.

From 2012 through much of 2016, NYCHA failed to check those apartments.

She also ordered NYCHA to visually inspect units with young children where tenants complained about peeling paint but NYCHA did no remediation.

Edmead also indicated she may require reinspection of another even larger universe of units exempted from inspection during the 1990s, after random testing of some apartments came up negative for lead paint.