City Agrees to Spend $2B More to Fix Public Housing Woes

NEW YORK CITY—New York City has agreed to spend an additional $2.2 billion on public housing to settle a federal complaint that alleges years of neglect and safety violations by the New York City Housing Authority, including the protection of children from lead-based paint at city public housing properties throughout the city.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District and a host of federal agencies filed the complaint on Monday and simultaneously announced a proposed settlement or Consent Decree with New York City that requires the city to spend approximately $2.2 billion over what it had originally budgeted over the next five years to address lead-based paint and other safety issues identified by the federal government in the complaint.

The Consent Decree, which is subject to the review and approval of the court, requires the appointment of a federal monitor and requires the city to provide $1.2 billion of additional capital funding to NYCHA over the next five years, and $200 million every year thereafter until the problems are fixed. Along with other federal, state, and city funding, there will be approximately $4 billion available for capital improvements in the first four years of the agreement, the U.S. Attorney stated in order to address long-standing health and safety issues at public housing properties in the city.

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said. “NYCHA’s failure to provide decent, safe, and sanitary housing is simply unacceptable, and illegal. Children must be protected from toxic lead paint, apartments must be free of mold and pest infestations, and developments must provide adequate heat in winter and elevator service. NYCHA has put its residents at risk. Today’s unprecedented settlement will improve life for the 400,000 residents who call NYCHA home, while ensuring accountability, reform, and oversight at this troubled institution.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the plethora of problems at the New York City Housing Authority did not begin with his administration. He said that the health and safety issues at NYCHA stemmed from the federal government’s disinvestment over the years and charged that city and state governments beginning in the 1980s “often turned their backs on public housing as well.” However, the mayor certainly did not hold his administration harmless and admitted upon review of the federal complaint “that it made me angry as all hell to know that there were some people in NYCHA who withheld information, tried to deceive the federal government and NYCHA’s own leadership. It disgusted me. It’s unacceptable.”

He said that it will take at least five years to fix the problems detailed in the Consent Decree and with the agreement signed he is now pressing New York State to release $500 million it has previously committed to NYCHA and also allow for design-build authority on NYCHA projects that would expedite repairs.

Judith Goldiner, attorney-in-charge of the civil law reform unit at The Legal Aid Society, said, “Although we have been fighting NYCHA for years to ensure better conditions for residents, today’s complaint from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York on NYCHA shocks the conscience. There is no excuse for these deplorable conditions that have plagued tenants for so long. Nevertheless, NYCHA’s settlement with the SDNY is welcome news for the hundreds of thousands of residents who have borne the brunt of decades of disinvestment and neglect from federal, state and city governments.”

She continued, “While Mayor de Blasio’s $2.2-billion capital commitment to NYCHA is an important and tremendous step forward, it is not an excuse for the federal government to turn its back on its responsibility to support public housing. It is also not an excuse for the state to shirk its fiscal responsibilities.”

The city admitted to a host of charges in the Consent Decree, including:

• At least once a year, beginning no later than 2010 and extending through 2016, NYCHA’s certifications to HUD contained untrue representations that NYCHA “will comply with” HUD’s federal lead paint safety regulations.

• In more than half of NYCHA’s developments, NYCHA’s inspections (including statistical sampling) confirmed the presence of lead paint somewhere on the premises, and in at least 92 developments, the inspections (including statistical sampling) confirmed the presence of lead paint inside apartment units.

• Between 2010 and 2016, at least 19 lead-poisoned children were found to have been exposed to deteriorated lead paint in their NYCHA apartments, and thousands more were put at risk.

• Since at least 2010, NYCHA has not performed most of the biennial lead paint risk assessment reevaluations required by regulation for developments containing lead paint.

• From at least 2012 to 2016, NYCHA failed to perform visual assessments of apartments for lead paint hazards as required by regulation. In 2016, NYCHA began performing visual assessments in units where children under six reside, but NYCHA has not yet performed visual assessments in the majority of apartments that may contain lead paint.

• Since at least 2010, NYCHA has not ensured that staff use lead-safe work practices when performing work on surfaces that may contain lead paint.

• Currently, after NYCHA has removed mold from apartments, the mold returns at least 30% of the time.

• In the winter of 2017-2018, more than 320,000 residents, 80% of the public housing population, lost heat.

• In 2016, NYCHA experienced an average of more than 13 outages per elevator.

• NYCHA’s data reflects more than 260,000 work orders for roaches between 2013 and 2016. For the same period, there were more than 90,000 mouse work orders and nearly 36,000 rat work orders.

• For a decade, NYCHA provided its staff with a list of “Quick Fix Tips” to improve its Public Housing Assessment System inspection scores.