Feds slap NYCHA
Hammered over slow response to lead taint
Weeks after the New York City Housing Authority signed a consent decree with the federal government promising to get its act together, the embattled agency keeps breaking the rules by failing to properly address the problem of toxic lead paint, prosecutors alleged Friday.
On June 11, the authority and Mayor de Blasio agreed to the appointment of a monitor after the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s civil division revealed NYCHA’s longstanding cover-up of its failures to clean up lead paint and toxic mold, and remedy other squalid conditions in public housing.
As part of that decree, NYCHA agreed to immediately “comply in all respects” with all applicable rules and regulations going forward.
In legal papers filed late Friday, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said that’s still not happening.
In recent weeks, Berman revealed, NYCHA admitted it was still not in compliance with federally mandated “rules designed to protect residents during maintenance or abatement of lead paint surfaces.”
These rules require that workers safeguard apartments before they disturb lead dust, so they don’t make the conditions worse.
NYCHA management told the feds in an Aug. 3 letter that it did not expect to have workers properly trained to comply with those practices until sometime next year.
As a result, Berman argued to Manhattan Federal Judge William Pauley — the judge who must still approve of the consent decree and the monitor — that the ongoing non-compliance makes the appointment of a monitor even more urgent.
“The need for the monitor is underscored by NYCHA’s conduct since it executed the decree,” Berman wrote.
“Absent the oversight from a monitor policing NYCHA’s compliance with its legal obligations and directing NYCHA to achieve compliance, NYCHA will continue to violate the law and put residents at risk.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Monica Folch stated in court papers that after NYCHA let the feds know it wouldn’t be in compliance on lead paint for months, prosecutors tried repeatedly to arrange a sit-down with the authority’s managers.
“NYCHA refused to schedule a meeting and did not respond substantively regarding compliance,” she wrote.
NYCHA Chairman Stanley Brezenoff switched course on Wednesday, suddenly claiming the agency could come under compliance much sooner.
“In short, NYCHA took finally steps it was required to do on June 11,” prosecutors wrote.
In his letter to the feds, Brezenoff wrote “we reject the contention” that NYCHA is in noncompliance on its lead paint abatement effort.
He said 1,400 of the 2,150 staffers NYCHA needs to train to properly inspect and abate apartments have been trained, and that the authority expects to train the rest soon.
“No one could reasonably have believed that the many complex and interrelated steps to operationalize this program . . . could occur overnight,” he wrote.
The prosecutors said they have demanded NYCHA certify in writing that it is in compliance on these leadsafe issues by mid-September, adding, “NYCHA cannot be allowed to continue to put its children residents at risk.”
Judge Pauley has raised questions about whether the monitor will be effective in making NYCHA follow the rules and provide clean, healthy apartments for its 400,000 tenants.