He knew.
For more than a year, Mayor de Blasio concealed from the public and 400,000 public housing tenants, the city Housing Authority’s failure to perform legally mandated lead-paint inspections in thousands of apartments.
Pressed by the Daily News, the mayor’s office admitted Friday that NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye told de Blasio in 2016 that her agency was widely violating both a local law and federal regulations governing lead inspections.
“After the chair dug further and realized the full extent of the problem, NYCHA immediately notified City Hall of noncompliance with Local Law 1 in April (2016),” spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie said in response to News questions.
In July 2016, after Olatoye learned that NYCHA was also violating HUD’s lead inspection rules, she told the mayor, Lapeyrolerie said.
Last week the city Department of Investigation revealed that in 2016, Olatoye falsely certified that the authority was in compliance with lead paint inspection requirements when she knew it wasn’t and hadn’t been for years.
De Blasio at first avoided comment on the finding, then called NYCHA’s failure “unacceptable.” He nevertheless stood by Olatoye, but forced the resignation of two senior managers and demoted a third.
All of this occurred without the mayor acknowledging that he himself had known for a year and a half that NYCHA was in non-compliance and failed to correct a blunder on inspections designed to protect children from dangerous lead paint poisoning.
During that time, the mayor was aware that for years NYCHA had been breaking a local law and violating a federal regulation by not performing required lead-paint inspections in its aging apartments.
The mayor was first informed that NYCHA was in noncompliance on lead-paint inspections in April 2016, weeks after he’d boasted to the public about NYCHA’s “aggressive” program to find and remove lead paint. De Blasio was notified by NYCHA, a spokeswoman for the mayor said.
Until last week, when he called that gap in inspections “unacceptable,” he withheld from the public, including NYCHA’s 400,000 tenants what he knew: That NYCHA had for years failed to live up to its responsibilities to keep tenants safe from toxic exposure to lead paint.
On Friday de Blasio was unavailable as he continued his vacation in Connecticut. But a spokeswoman for the mayor, Olivia Lapeyrolerie, insisted that the mayor didn’t hide anything.
In May 2016, she said tenants were told “that inspections would resume,” although they were not told why or that NYCHA had not been in compliance with its lead-paint inspection requirements for years.
“NYCHA notified tenants in May 2016 that inspections would resume, and also disclosed to HUD its gaps in compliance. Hardly call that hiding,” she said in an email to The News.
The issue exploded into vivid public view on Tuesday when the city Department of Investigation revealed that Olatoye had certified NYCHA was in compliance on lead checks when she knew it wasn’t.
The DOI found that Shola Olatoye, who was appointed by de Blasio in March 2014 to run the nation’s biggest housing authority, had signed an October 2016 document certifying that the authority was in compliance with all lead-paint inspection requirements.
At the time, Olatoye knew this was not true. In fact, the DOI discovered that as far back as 2012 NYCHA had not been doing the required annual inspections of thousands apartments with likely lead contamination.
Last week, de Blasio at first declined to discuss DOI’s findings. Pressed by The News, he released a statement through a spokeswoman: “The circumstances surrounding the city’s failure to conduct lead inspections and the false reporting that followed are simply unacceptable.”
Since the report was released, several local politicians, including Public Advocate Letitia James, have called for Olatoye to resign. Gov. Cuomo has been asked to appoint a state monitor to oversee the authority.
On Friday NYCHA announced the resignation of two senior managers and the demotion of a third. Olatoye promised “sweeping changes” to its operations.
De Blasio, meanwhile, has strongly defended Olatoye and the reforms she has initiated to remedy this longstanding potentially disastrous health problem.
The journey to this moment began in November 2015 when the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s civil division subpoenaed thousands of documents from NYCHA. The prosecutors were looking into possible “false claims” regarding what NYCHA claimed it was doing to maintain safe and healthy living conditions in its 178,000 apartments.
Among several areas of exploration, prosecutors zeroed in on what NYCHA tells the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) about how it monitors and abates lead paint in its aging apartments.
A Daily News investigation published in June 2016 detailed the extent of lead paint in NYCHA’s aging buildings: 55,000 apartments with potential lead paint hazards, including 4,321 that list children 6 and under as tenants.
The News found that 202 children “associated” with public housing apartments since 2011 had tested positive for higher-than-acceptable blood-lead levels. Lead can cause brain damage in young children.
NYCHA officials have said they have directly connected high blood-lead levels to lead paint in their apartments in only 18 children.
Bronx Councilman Rafael Salamanca, whose district includes several NYCHA developments, questioned whether the authority is dangerously underplaying the potential for harm to children living in apartments with lead paint.
“While some are saying that evidence shows that only a minimal amount of children have displayed elevated lead levels, without proper testing we don’t know how many others are susceptible to dangerously elevated lead levels,” he said. “That’s a huge problem.”
But because lead paint is considered such a serious health hazard, the city in 2004 adopted Local Law 1 – co-sponsored by de Blasio when he was a Brooklyn city councilman.
Local Law 1 requires all landlords in the city – including NYCHA – to annually inspect all apartments where lead paint is suspected and where children 6 and under live.
In addition, HUD requires all housing authorities to inspect all units with possible lead-paint hazards every year, whether or not children live there.
In 2012 and 2013, NYCHA stopped doing annual inspections altogether as it tried to address a huge backlog of repair requests. And from 2014 through 2016, NYCHA was still unable to perform the annual inspections on all 55,000 lead paint apartments.
Nevertheless during that time, NYCHA’s former chairman, John Rhea, and then current Chairwoman Olatoye signed off on documents filed with HUD certifying that they were completing all inspections as required.
In March 2016, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s investigation became public in court filings. The filings specifically mentioned lead-paint inspections.
The day the investigation was revealed, de Blasio shrugged it off at a press conference, boasting, “We have a very aggressive inspection and abatement program and that is certainly being carried out in the Housing Authority and has been for years.”
On the day he said that, some NYCHA senior staff were well aware that this was not true. In its report, DOI revealed that by then, high-ranking managers knew NYCHA was not meeting its lead paint inspection requirements under Local Law 1.
Within weeks of de Blasio’s boast in April 2016, Olatoye herself learned NYCHA was not in compliance with Local Law 1 and a few weeks later, the HUD regulation.
Neither de Blasio nor Olatoye amended the mayor’s statement about NYCHA’s “aggressive” lead-paint inspection.
In July, a year after Olatoye learned about NYCHA’s non-compliance, she revealed that fact at the very end of a NYCHA board meeting attended by zero tenants. Sources familiar with the matter said she was required to do so by HUD, which funds nearly 100% of NYCHA’s capital needs and about 67% of its operating budget.
The investigation by Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon Kim is now complete and prosecutors are now in settlement talks with NYCHA.
On Friday in announcing its new “sweeping changes,” NYCHA referenced the federal probe and stated “NYCHA has engaged with the U.S. Attorney’s office…throughout its investigation and further reforms will result from those discussions going forward.”
