NYCHA DEAL A NO-GO, RAGE TENANTS
Day after historic federal settlement, group balks
A DAY AFTER federal prosecutors announced an unprecedented settlement with the New York City Housing Authority to implement sweeping reforms, a group of NYCHA tenant leaders is saying hold on.
The Citywide Council of Presidents wrote Tuesday to the judge overseeing a newly signed consent decree asking him to reject the deal as written and send NYCHA and the Manhattan U.S. attorney back to the table.
The tenant leaders say the deal is no good for tenants because they weren’t included in crafting the final language and are kept out of the selection process for the federal monitor who will oversee NYCHA’s finances.
“As a result, the decree represents a bad deal which does not meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of residents of public housing,” Daniel Barber, the council’s chairman, wrote in a letter to Manhattan Federal Judge William Pauley.
The group’s objection comes 24 hours after Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman reached a deal with Mayor de Blasio and NYCHA to resolve the feds’ 31-month investigation of NYCHA.
Berman’s civil division issued a disturbing 80-page complaint detailing NYCHA managers’ and staff’s longstanding practice of lying about conditions, including the scope of lead poisoning in children, and tricking federal inspectors to hide the squalid condition of apartments.
Barber wrote that the group met with Berman three weeks ago and asked to be consulted in the crafting of the final settlement, but that the feds ignored them after that.
“Mr. Berman promised me (the Citywide Council of Presidents) would be a ‘major stakeholder’ (his words, not mine),” Barber wrote. “That is not reflected in the decree at all.”
The final deal, Barber argued, leaves tenants out of the process. The decree allows tenant leaders, along with the mayor, the
City Council and the governor, to weigh in, but only to make objections to the monitor proposed by the U.S. attorney.
None of the parties — including the tenant leaders — have veto power over selection of the monitor. Ultimately that monitor will have to be approved by Pauley.
In a statement, Berman countered that the tenants group will have input in the final selection of the monitor, along with “the prioritzation” of NYCHA upgrades.
“Our office places a high priority on receiving input from the major NYCHA stakeholders, which is why we met with the Citywide Council of Presidents prior to finalizing the consent decree,” Berman stated. “We will continue to seek their views, and the views of other stakeholders, as this process moves forward.”
The tenants also argue that the agreement gives NYCHA too much control going forward, noting that no managers or staff were fired or disciplined following the feds’ complaint. Two top NYCHA managers were fired last year after a city Department of Investigation probe exposed parts of the authority’s longstanding effort to cover up its failures to perform required lead paint inspection.
Pauley — who is already presiding over two other narrower cases involving NYCHA — agreed early Tuesday to take on the much broader consent decree.
Meanwhile, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson expressed outrage at the feds’ finding on NYCHA’s elaborate coverup scheme and promised to have “internal discussions” about possibly reviewing whether NYCHA management misled the Council in past hearings.
During one hearing, former NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye misled Council members during her sworn testimony on lead paint inspections. She later claimed she’d received bad information from her underlings.