One Way To Change NYCHA

You can’t say Lynne Patton isn’t making life better for NYCHA tenants: As regional administrator for the federal housing department, she’s been forcing cleanups in one project after another . . . by living there.

After a delay thanks to the federal shutdown, Patton has started making good on her vow to guest with public-housing tenants. And in advance of every stay, the Housing Authority has done a fast cleanup, sending in flying squads of workers to pick up trash and polish floors at the Frederick Douglass Houses in Harlem and, before that, the Patterson Houses in The Bronx.

Tuesday, she even got a quintessential public-housing experience, trapped in a stalled elevator, even if the cause seemed to be the car being overloaded by media. (Sigh — they always blame the press.)

Though Patton told The Post she isn’t “going to blame NYCHA,” she did gently note that the experience is “not unfamiliar” for public-housing residents. Indeed, as re- cently as 2016, the agency averaged more than 13 outages per elevator.

As for fast cleanups: The feds last year exposed NYCHA’s longtime habit of papering over problems (sometimes literally) before inspectors came to visit.

Critics snarked when the president named Patton, a former Trump family event planner, to this job. But hand it to her for not just calling attention to the deplorable conditions at many projects, but for getting at least some of them fixed.

Of course, some problems aren’t so easy: Douglass Houses tenants told The Post that swarms of rats have been roaming the project’s 18 buildings. And the snow predicted this week may pose another test.

Whether NYCHA can actually be saved is still very much an open question. It needs deep reforms and added funding that only got waved at in Mayor de Blasio’s recent settlement with Team Trump.

Still, it’s great to see Patton prove you can make a difference simply by showing up.