Mayor de Blasio was meeting behind closed doors with public housing tenant leaders Wednesday as more questions arose about NYCHA’s scrambled effort to remedy its lead paint inspection crisis.
Tenant leaders in Throggs Neck Houses in the Bronx told the Daily News NYCHA has found lead in 78 apartments in the last few weeks but did not inform the tenants who live in these apartments about the findings.
“There has been no transparency from day one,” said Monique Johnson, president of the Throggs Neck Residents Council. “I have absolutely no faith in this agency at all.”
The News reported Wednesday that NYCHA has placed hundreds of families into apartments they knew were tainted with lead paint without letting the residents know about the danger lurking within. That includes 9 children who subsequently registered elevated blood-lead levels.
“Once again, NYCHA has displayed an alarming level of negligence that has put our children at serious risk,” said Public Advocate Letitia James. “Putting families with young children in apartments that NYCHA knew had lead is not only highly immoral, but highly dangerous.”
On Wednesday the mayor was set to meet privately with the president’s council of NYCHA tenant leaders, a handful of top tenant leaders representing different borough sections containing NYCHA’s 320 developments. He declined to say where or when the meeting was to take place and refused to allow the press to attend.
NYCHA spokeswoman Jasmine Blake wrote in an email response, “This is a meeting about the resident association/NYCHA relationship. Not to do with lead. Lead may come up in the general conversation but is not the point of the meeting.”
City Hall has been roiled by NYCHA’s lead paint inspection scandal since November, when a city Department of Investigation report found that for years NYCHA had been falsely claiming to have performed required inspections. Since then The News has revealed that the authority has been relying on untrained workers to perform lead paint inspections and clean-up in violation of local law and federal regulations.
In the last year NYCHA has been rushing to inspect more than 8,900 apartments where young children live that are presumed to have lead paint. That includes a recent wave of inspections at the Throggs Neck Houses, which were opened in 1953 — years before lead paint was banned.
Tenant leader Johnson said NYCHA has registered lead paint in 78 apartments inspected in the last few months, then had staff come in and do various levels of repainting. In all these cases, she said, tenants were not told their apartments had tested positive for lead paint.
“Nobody has been told anything, so these residents are walking around blinded,” she said.
NYCHA has said that starting in October, they stopped using workers untrained and uncertified in lead paint abatement, but Johnson said in at least one Throggs Neck apartment it appears the repainting was begun by an untrained worker just two weeks ago.
The tenant’s apartment was repainted less than a year ago, so she was surprised when NYCHA staff showed up and insisted on more repainting, Johnson said. She didn’t want her daughter’s room repainted but the workers insisted she had to have it done – without explaining why.
At no time did they tell her her apartment had tested positive for lead paint. A worker began the job, then stopped after a day and didn’t return. Johnson said when the worker returned, she confronted him about the delay.
“He said he left because the super told him he had to leave because he had to take a test to become certified,” she said. “He completed the job on the third day. Once again the resident was not told the apartment tested positive for lead. There’s three children in the apartment under age 10.”
Asked about the 78 Throggs Neck units that tested positive for lead, Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a spokeswoman for de Blasio said, “Paint corrections are needed. The resident still has the option of a full apartment repaint.”
On Wednesday NYCHA spokeswoman Jasmine Blake said the authority’s “standard procedure” was to notify all residents on move-in notice that their apartments contained lead paint. That contrasts with the News findings that every tenant interviewed said they had not been told of lead paint presence in their unit.
Blake also contested empiric data cited by the News that a much higher percentage of public school students living in NYCHA developments are placed in special education programs with individualized education plans (IEPs) compared to non-NYCHA students.
“While one child exposed to lead is one too many, the story implies that lead is responsible for a higher percentage of children in NYCHA receiving IEPs than the general population. However the actual incidence of children with elevated blood-lead levels in NYCHA is less than half of those in the general population,” Blake said.
City health officials acknowledge that one in five children have not been tested for lead.
On Thursday, Johnson plans to discuss the lead paint issue at a regularly scheduled tenant meeting. Bronx state Sen. Jeffrey Klein, the Independent Democrat leader, plans to attend and offer tenants whose apartment test positive with free blood-lead tests for their children.
“Given the recent revelation that NYCHA lied about conducting lead tests, it’s unfathomable that the agency could continue to place families and their children at risk,” Klein said. “Residents shouldn’t be kept in the dark when NYCHA officials learn that certain apartments have tested positive for lead.”
