United States Attorney, Geoffrey Berman, (Sam Costanza for New York Daily News)
NYCHA managers have for years used carefully crafted lies and elaborate deception to cover up the squalid condition of public housing, filing false documents, tricking federal inspectors and betraying the 400,000 tenants who have long endured heartbreaking conditions and the growing sense that nothing will ever change.
A blistering complaint made public Monday by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman ripped the lid off of the city Housing Authority’s longstanding culture of deceit, revealing a long bureaucratic tradition of lying about NYCHA’s failures to address everything from toxic lead paint to mold infestation to rat burrows.
Most alarmingly, Berman asserts that NYCHA and the city Health Department have deliberately underplayed the extent of lead poisoning in children living in public housing, choosing not to count untold hundreds who’ve tested positive for blood-lead levels considered dangerous by the federal government.
“The people who suffer as a result of NYCHA’s misconduct are its residents, including lead-poisoned children, elderly residents without heat in winter, asthma sufferers whose condition is worsened by mold and pest-infested apartments; and disabled residents without functioning elevators,” the complaint says.
In settling a 31-month investigation, Berman agreed that he would not bring criminal charges against the authority itself, but did not rule out pursuing charges against individual NYCHA managers or staff.
New York City Housing Authority chairwoman Shola Olatoye during a news conference on Tuesday, April 10, 2018 in Queens, N.Y. (James Keivom / New York Daily News)
The settlement was accompanied by the release of a detailed 80-page complaint that affirms the findings of a long-running Daily News investigation that began in 2012. Many of the lies told by NYCHA managers and documented by the prosecutors were made in response to News’ inquiries.
The deal marks a watershed moment for the long-troubled agency, with NYCHA and Mayor de Blasio for the first time agreeing to the appointment of an independent monitor to ensure compliance with rules and regulations requiring the agency to provide “decent, safe and sanitary housing” going forward.
“The New York City Housing Authority violates basic health and safety regulations of the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD),” the complaint filed in Manhattan Federal Court states. “These regulations require NYCHA to protect children from the lead paint that is present within apartments in roughly one-third of NYCHA developments and, more generally, to provide residents decent, safe and sanitary housing. NYCHA has repeatedly made false statements to HUD and the public regarding these issues and has deceived HUD inspectors.”
The complaint was filed an hour after the city and NYCHA signed what’s known as a consent decree that will begin the process of bringing in a monitor and require the city to commit $2.2 billion to the authority over the next 10 years. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney will propose a candidate for the monitor in consultation with NYCHA, the city, the City Council, the governor and tenant leaders.
NY Mayor Bill de Blasio at a bill signing ceremony in City Hall on Monday, April 30, 2018. (Jefferson Siegel / New York Daily News)
A federal judge will have to approve the appointment and the consent decree will be in effect through 2027, though it can be extended if needed. The monitor will have broad powers to ensure NYCHA will remedy lead paint hazards and mold infestation, make sure apartments have adequate heat and functioning elevators, and eradicate vermin.
The agreement also loosens up procurement protocols to speed up the hiring of contractors, and super-cedes the emergency manager position created by Gov. Cuomo in April to oversee city and state funds allotted for NYCHA. HUD agreed to lift stricter contract monitoring it imposed in March and NYCHA will create new positions, including a Compliance Department and an Environmental Health & Safety Department.
The U.S. Attorney’s investigation began in November 2015 under Preet Bharara and involved a review of tens of thousands of internal documents and emails along with interviews with dozens of former and current NYCHA employees.
A look at peeling paint inside Sixto Martinez's bedroom in the Melrose Houses in the South Bronx. (Gregg Vigliotti For New York Daily News)
Prosecutors discovered that from 2010 through 2016, NYCHA had falsely certified to HUD that it was in compliance with all laws and regulations regarding keeping its apartments habitable at least 12 times. Six of these false claims were made under Mayor Bloomberg, six more under de Blasio.
The cover up included its failures to address “pervasive leaks and unchecked mold, inadequate heat in winter, widespread pest infestation and failed elevator service.”
But the biggest issue was lead paint.
The U.S. Attorney revealed ex-NYCHA Chair Shola Olatoye lied to HUD about its failed lead paint program three separate times in 2016 — two more lies than what the city Department of Investigation alleged last fall.
The complaint revealed that the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene joined NYCHA in deliberately hiding the true scope of the lead paint problem.
Peeling lead based paint is seen in the South Bronx NYCHA Melrose Houses (Gregg Vigliotti For New York Daily News)
Between 2010 and 2016, NYCHA officials have claimed “19 lead-poisoned children were found to have been exposed to deteriorated lead paint in their NYCHA apartments,” the report says.
“But the 19 cases understate the true extent of lead poisoning likely to have been caused by crumbling lead paint at NYCHA.”
Prosecutors assert that city Health Department data show “many hundreds of additional children living in NYCHA housing have been found to have blood-lead levels” of 5 micrograms per deciliter, the amount the national Centers for Disease Control considers a “reference level” that triggers public health intervention.
The report reveals that DOH, however, does not generally investigate cases at levels below 10 to 15 micrograms per deciliter, depending on their age. Nor does it notify NYCHA about children who register the lower level of blood-lead that CDC considers to be unacceptable.
“As a result neither NYCHA nor NYC DOH has investigated whether the vast majority of children with elevated blood lead levels were exposed to lead paint in their NYCHA apartments,” the report states.
The feds note at one point NYCHA was pressured to downplay the extent of the lead problem because of the scandal over lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan.
NYCHA has a policy to automatically contest DOH’s findings when they register lead paint in an apartment where a child has tested positive for high blood-lead levels.
In 2015, after inquiries by The News, NYCHA revealed that DOH had identified 202 children with blood-lead over 10 micrograms in NYCHA apartments, but claimed only 18 were confirmed cases. Since then they’ve confirmed one more case.
The prosecutors question the validity of the contested results, citing cases revealed by The News of apartments that tested positive for lead after NYCHA’s claim there wasn’t any.
“Success in the contestation process does not answer the question whether the child was poisoned by lead paint in the home,” the report states. “There is every reason to believe the true number of children with lead poisoning is materially higher.”
Nearly 70% of NYCHA’s day-to-day funding and 90% of the money used for long-term capital projects comes from HUD, and HUD performs regular inspections of its buildings to make sure the authority is providing habitable housing with that money.
Peeling paint from inside the the Linden Houses in Brooklyn on April 10, 2015. (Debbie Egan-Chin / New York Daily News)
As a result, NYCHA goes out of its way to make HUD think everything is fine, even if that means deliberately fooling inspectors who show up for what’s called a Public Housing Assessment (PHA). The feds documented a culture of deception that treats the HUD inspections as a game.
The game was openly discussed via email. In 2013 a NYCHA superintendent emailed staff to notify them “We’re hiding four big pails of oil behind your containers for our PHAs inspection today.” The email was forwarded to a top NYCHA executive.
At some buildings NYCHA managers hid chronic water leaks from HUD inspectors by shutting off the water before inspectors showed. Sometimes workers were told simply to wrap duct tape over holes in pipes just before a scheduled inspection.
Sometimes the game was a last-minute affair. At one development, a NYCHA supervisor instructed elevator technicians “to stay one building ahead of PHAS inspector” during an inspection. It must have been a risky scheme — the next year the technicians were told to stay 2 buildings ahead of the HUD team.
In one development, a NYCHA manager installed a refrigerator motor inside a broken roof fan and turned it on so the sound would fool the HUD inspector into thinking the fan worked. This trick succeeded.
They stuffed newspaper into holes in walls and painted over them. They used foam spray to make flaking plaster seem intact.
“NYCHA management even included a document with suggestions for deceiving inspectors in NYCHA’s official training materials,” the report found.
That guide included “quick fix” suggestions, including using painted cardboard to replace busted wall tiles, substitute missing drains with custom-made plywood covers, complete with drilled holes “for drainage,” and moving all gasoline-powered equipment outside the day of the inspection.
The quick-fix tips were standard operating procedure for more than 10 years and were well known to top NYCHA management. They were only removed in the summer of 2017 after the feds started asking questions about the tips in front of NYCHA’s lawyers.
Another disturbing pattern emerged in the way NYCHA mishandled a particularly unsettling problem — vermin.
In 2012 NYCHA stopped performing routine extermination in developments, responding only to tenant complaints. They never informed the tenants of this, and – not surprisingly – the number of pest complaints “exploded.” Regular extermination wasn’t resumed until 2016.
The feds made clear that NYCHA did not attack this problem with foresight by making sure to clean up trash, patch holes in walls and create an unfriendly environment for vermin. Often there weren’t enough pesticides, so NYCHA staff would “fake it” by spraying water in apartments or close work orders as “tenant not home” without actually visiting the apartment, the report says.
In 2015, for instance, a city health inspector criticized NYCHA for its failure to combat vermin, predicting new kitchen cabinets installed in one apartment “will quickly become a beautiful rat condo” because the installation left a gap that would allow vermin inside. And NYCHA made no effort to exterminate the existing roach population before installing the cabinets so “the existing roach population had no trouble moving in.”
The feds cited a 2016 work order from a Marcy Houses tenant who wrote, “Too many mice. They climb on my baby crib and I have an asthmatic child and it affects him.” And the feds noted a report about the presence of a “labyrinth of rat burrows” below the Paterson Houses in the Bronx in 2016.
The News was the source of that disclosure.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment