NYCHA’S LEAD-FIX LIES ARE REVEALED
Probe finds new toxic violations
They did the job . . . all wrong. New York City’s embattled Housing Authority failed to properly supervise thousands of lead fixes in public-housing apartments — and to properly protect tenants from the toxic substance as they performed the repairs, a blistering report from the Department of Investigation revealed on Thursday.
The findings are just the latest entry in a yearslong catalog of scandals over toxic living conditions, mismanagement and fraud at the housing agency, which resulted in a partial federal takeover in 2019.
“The findings of this investigation involving NYCHA’s lead-abatement process illustrate the profound and damaging impact of government t wrongdoing and d incompetence,” said DOI Commis- sioner Margaret t Garnett.
“In this case, NYYCHA managers involved in the lead-abatement process had a total disregard for the facts, for the law and integrity, and, most importantly, for the well-being of NYCHA residents.”
Because of lead’s toxicity, especially to children, federal law and city regulations banned its use in paint and building materials decades ago and place strict rules on how lead abatements are to be conducted and overseen.
Those include requirements that all work be supervised by someone certified by the Environmental Protection Agency, and that NYCHA create a plan for each apartment to protect tenants from lead dust and other toxic particles released by the work.
But time and again, NYCHA ignored or violated those regulations, according to the report, which looked at the agency through 2018 and found that:
■ On at least 163 lead repairs between 2016 and 2018, NYCHA’s lead-unit bosses made employees falsely certify that repairs were overseen by EPAcertified supervisors.
■ NYCHA used the false certifications to exempt at least 323 apartments from annual city-required lead checks.
■ NYCHA maintenance officials provided agency executives “clearly misleading” information about how lead repairs were being conducted and overseen.
The investigation — conducted with the inspector general for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the criminal-investigations arm of the EPA — was triggered by a complaint from a NYCHA whistleblower.
The insider revealed that at one point in the summer of 2017, the head of NYCHA’s lead unit, Ralph Iacono, ordered him to report to the office and handed him a stack of paperwork covering roughly 60 lead-repair work orders and told him, “I need your signature.”
The whistleblower had the certifications from the EPA to oversee lead work, but NYCHA never assigned him to the role.
A second employee in NYCHA’s lead unit confirmed the scheme, telling investigators that Iacono directed him to fraudulently sign paperwork certifying repairs.
“I can’t sign too many of them,” Iacono told him, according to the DOI.
Tenants sued in federal court over NYCHA’s failure to fix rampant mold infestations in developments across the city and won a settlement in 2014 that installed a court-ordered monitor to ensure repairs were completed.
But the agency’s troubles exploded into view after a string of newspaper stories revealed the growing lead-poisoning crisis in public housing.
Then-Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara launched an investigation in 2016.
In 2017, the DOI published its first bombshell report that revealed NYCHA stopped conducting required checks of apartments for lead in 2013 but continued to certify them as completed.
Throughout much of the crisis, City Hall and NYCHA officials claimed that lead was not commonly used in public housing and that when it was found, it was removed.
Those claims were undercut by two yearlong Post investigations.
The paper revealed in 2019 that NYCHA frequently used a littleknown bureaucratic appeals process to cancel or reduce orders from the Health Department to remove lead from apartments where a poisoned child lived.
NYCHA said that Iacono got a 30day suspension without pay, and that it is seeking his termination.
“As stated by the inspector general, NYCHA cooperated with this investigation and has made significant systemic changes to its lead abatement program,” said NYCHA spokeswoman Barbara Brancaccio.