NYCHA’s Way Forward

F ederal Judge William Pauley III is openly skeptical about whether a federal monitor is remotely enough to fix the New York City Housing Authority, and he’s entirely right: NYCHA needs massive reform.

Tenants last week attested to the agency’s failures in its mission to provide safe, decent public housing. They complained to him about mold, bad security, a lack of hot water, staffers who lie about repairs and more.

Yet the judge has been right all along to wonder if NYCHA is even fixable. He had invited tenants’ input on whether to assign a federal monitor for the agency, as part of a settlement in a case against NYCHA; they were skeptical — for good reason. The judge, too, it seems.

Pauley called it “ridiculous” for interim chief Stanley Brezenoff to tap an insider as the agency’s chief compliance officer. He blasted its failure to respond to prosecutors’ meeting requests. He railed that Brezenoff & Co. have yet to spend funds set aside by City Hall or any of the $300 million Albany has kicked in.

NYCHA’s woes may be too much for just an outside monitor, whose main role is just to vet spending. The agency runs 326 publichousing projects with 400,000 tenants. It faces a backlog of $32 billion in repairs.

Yet it spent years failing to do basic tasks, like required lead inspections, then hiding its failures. The problems didn’t start with Mayor de Blasio. But for years he turned a blind eye, even as the horrors became increasingly known. Yet despite new pressure, from the court and the public, progress has been slow to nonexistent.

No wonder the judge was exasperated. No wonder he threatened to hand over the whole operation to the feds via a receivership. After years of NYCHA failure from the mayor on down, it’s time for drastic action.