NYCHA lead data blasted
THE CITY Housing Authority relies on a flawed computerized system that raises serious questions about the integrity of its lead paint inspections, a lawyer for tenant leaders said Friday.
Attorney Jim Walden brought up the issue in a lawsuit he’s filed on behalf of NYCHA tenant leaders demanding that the authority properly address the presence of toxic lead paint in thousands of aging apartments.
In a court document filed last month, Shireen Riazi Kermani, a top NYCHA manager, revealed that the authority uses a system called Maximo to track lead paint checks.
The authority has been scrambling to address its lead paint problem since it was revealed in November that NYCHA had failed for years to perform required inspections.
Since October, NYCHA has inspected 8,910 apartments with likely lead paint and children under 6, of which 7,229 have required remediation. That information has been entered into the Maximo system.
In court Friday, Walden cited a 2015 audit by City Controller Scott Stringer red-flagging significant flaws with Maximo.
Outside court, Walden questioned whether that system is accurately reflecting NYCHA’s efforts to address its lead paint problem.
“Since the Comptroller’s Office has already found the Maximo system has serious reliability problems and we know that NYCHA’s data-entry system is a disaster, relying on Maximo alone to conclude that 9,000 inspections were done properly is an enormous risk for families,” he said.
In July 2015, Stringer’s auditors found NYCHA could not account for 5.7 million of 9.6 million work-order tracking numbers assigned by Maximo.
The auditors discovered that Maximo would sometimes skip over large numbers of requests when assigning work-order numbers. NYCHA admitted there was a problem but insisted that no repair requests were lost.
On Friday Walden — representing tenant leaders known as the Citywide Council of Presidents — argued that NYCHA lawyers have been trying to delay the release of this information.
“All of this resistance is based I think on a fear that this wasn’t done properly,” he said.
NYCHA lawyers say the information will be released in July per Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead’s order.