NYCHA ADMITS SINS
LETTER TO FEDS SPELLS OUT WOES
Battered by scandal and facing looming federal oversight, the city Housing Authority on Wednesday tried to come clean — by revealing a laundry list of many other rules it’s failed to follow beyond lead paint and mold.
During a board meeting, NYCHA managers announced they were sending a letter to federal housing officials with a list of all the federal regulations they believe they’ve been failing to follow for the last several years.
In a letter to the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, NYCHA said an initial review revealed the authority is not in compliance on overtime, staffing of the Office of Equal Opportunity, and mandated staff training.
The letter to Luigi D’Ancona, director of HUD’s New York-New Jersey office, says “NYCHA expects additional areas will be added to this list as the reviews continue.”
NYCHA, for instance, has discovered it’s not in compliance with what are known as Section 3 requirements. These federal regulations require that NYCHA must press vendors to make a good faith effort to hire a healthy percentage of NYCHA tenants as laborers when doing work on authority buildings.
They’ve also discovered they weren’t following the rules on setting minimum thresholds for bids when soliciting contractors for work at the authority, and on keeping track of rules that protect tenants.
The internal exam follows the revelation last year that NYCHA has for years failed to perform required lead paint inspections while falsely claiming they were in compliance. During that time, more than 800 young children living in NYCHA housing were lead poisoned.
In June, NYCHA and the city entered into an agreement with Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman to bring in a federal monitor who will make sure they comply with all laws and regulations going forward. That consent decree must still be approved by a federal judge.
At the request of interim NYCHA Chairman Stanley Brezenoff, the agency has begun a deep dive to understand all of the regulations it has been neglecting to follow — either by design or by mistake — regarding its obligation to maintain safe and healthy living conditions.
Last year the city Department of Investigation revealed that former NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye had falsely certified that the authority was in compliance in lead paint inspections when she knew it was not.
On Wednesday, her successor, Brezenoff, steered a very different path.
“Given the history of the issues that NYCHA has been dealing with, we wanted to be absolutely certain that any assertions we make, any certifications we make, are not subject to challenge,” he told reporters. “We want to be transparent, and we want to be absolutely sure that when NYCHA — when I — put my name on something, that we are being fully forthcoming.”