Build It — Eventually?

It was just one year ago that Mayor de Blasio publicly patted himself on the back for setting a hard-and-fast deadline — the end of 2016 — to finish rebuilding the homes wrecked by Hurricane Sandy. Oops.

“The only way you move a big, complicated organization,” he said then, “is to set a hard deadline and force everyone to live up to it, no matter how tough it is.”

Now, with the deadline just weeks away, the mayor is forced to admit that he and his administration just weren’t up to the job.

“We will fall short of that goal, for which my team and I take personal responsibility,” he says in a 26-page report outlining the Build it Back program’s myriad failures.

In fact, the program is running $500 million over budget, now tabbed at $2.2 billion, even though two-thirds of homeowners who signed up for it have dropped out. So the city is spending more to do less. The feds, who were supposed to pick up the tab, aren’t doing so — forcing the mayor to “reallocate” money from other budget programs.

Plus, he didn’t tell anyone — including the City Council — about the missed deadline or the budget raid beforehand. Nor will he say when the work will be finished. So “hard deadline” has now become “no deadline.”

De Blasio’s report says the city must “develop a better model,” since “government-managed rebuilding and construction of thousands of singlefamily homes has not proven effective.” We could have told him that long ago. As Nicole Gelinas noted on these pages last month, in most recovery efforts, government gives people the money to rebuild. But New York — starting with Mayor Michael Bloomberg — figured government could do a better job and control costs efficiently.

Nonsense: Project director Amy Peterson conceded that costs in New York are an average three times higher than in other major cities.

And City Hall imposed strict requirements to maximize the selection of minorities, women and local contractors. No wonder officials said there were only a limited number of architects and contractors available to do the work.

Another notable feature: The city will wind up paying $50 million to elevate the 53 most hard-to-protect houses — nearly $1 million apiece for homes that are worth far less.

De Blasio blamed “the tangle of bureaucracy” for the program’s failures. But since Jan. 1, 2014, he’s been “the bureaucracy” — which means it’s his job to cut through red tape, not use it as an excuse.

But the major flaw in this program was the city putting itself in the house-building business in the first place.