NYCHA is on thin ice with judge

Facing $32 billion in needed repairs and an ongoing criminal investigation, the nation's largest housing authority now confronts the very real possibility of the “R” word — receivership.

This drastic remedy emerged in between the lines of Manhattan Federal Judge William Pauley III's ruling Wednesday shooting down a proposed consent decree reached in June between NYCHA, Mayor de Blasio and federal prosecutors.

That decree called for the appointment of a monitor whose job would be to ensure NYCHA was in compliance with laws requiring apartments to be safe and clean. At the time, prosecutors filed a damning complaint detailing years of NYCHA lies and failures, and revealed they'd opened a criminal probe as well.

But the decree stated that the monitor would have had no involvement in NYCHA's day-to-day operations and would instead have to rely on broadly-worded enforcement powers to get the authority to fall in line.

In contrast, a receiver would take total control of the authority and be able to hire and fire, renegotiate labor agreements, bring in contractors and dictate policy — in short, pretty much run the place.

In his 52-page decision, Judge Pauley rejected the monitor plan reached in June as too weak and suggested the parties consider other options – including receivership. In fact, he brought up the possibility of a receiver three times. He noted: “These drastic remedies have been deployed successfully to reform other public housing agencies” in Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C.

This wasn't the first time Pauley has brought up putting NYCHA into receivership. During a September hearing where dozens of public housing tenants described their squalid living conditions, Pauley noted that prosecutors had already accused NYCHA of violating the decree after it was signed.