Embattled NYCHA Chair To Step Down After Months Of Scrutiny

NEW YORK, NY — The New York City Housing Authority's embattled chairwoman will step down at the end of April after months of scrutiny over heating failures and a lead-testing scandal, city officials said Tuesday. Shola Olatoye first announced her departure Monday night, saying she will leave the helm of the nation's largest public housing agency "secure in the knowledge that we created a path for a stronger and safer NYCHA in the years ahead."

"I will depart this role very proud of the team that I have assembled and the steps that we have taken to support our residents," Olatoye said at a Tuesday morning news conference at NYCHA's Ocean Bay Bayside Apartments in the Rockaways.

Stanley Brezenoff will take over as NYCHA's interim chairman while city officials search for Olatoye's permanent replacement, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. Brezenoff recently served as the interim head of NYC Health & Hospitals, the city's public hospitals corporation.

The announcement of Olatoye's departure comes amid city officials' battles with state and federal authorities over the agency she's led since 2014.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week ordered the selection of an independent monitor for NYCHA, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is reportedly flexing its authority over the agency's capital spending. A tenant group, the Citywide Council of Presidents, is also suing NYCHA for ignoring deteriorating conditions that have plagued residents.

Olatoye stayed in the job despite repeated calls for her resignation in the months since the Department of Investigation found NYCHA failed to conduct legally mandated lead-paint inspections for four years but falsely told federal authorities they had been done. Olatoye filed one of those false certifications herself in 2016 despite knowing the inspections had not been performed.

More scrutiny came this winter, when more than 80 percent of NYCHA tenants lost heat or hot water at some point from October to January as their complexes' aging boilers struggled against especially cold temperatures.

Olatoye said she was "unnerve(d)" by those "unacceptable shortcomings," but defended the steps NYCHA has taken during her tenure to improve conditions for its 400,000 tenants.

"These real issues are just part of the story," she said. "It doesn’t make them acceptable, but it is a testament to the dedicated men and women who work at the New York City Housing Authority and continue to drive their efforts to change how things are happening."

Olatoye said she had committed to serving for de Blasio's first term, which ended last year. The Democratic mayor has vigorously defended her in recent months, rejecting any suggestion that the recent scandals outweighed the good she had done in her tenure.

De Blasio credited Olatoye with bringing the housing authority back from the brink of bankruptcy, cutting repair times by nearly 70 percent and driving down crime in public housing by 7 percent last year. She also helped develop NextGeneration NYCHA, a 10-year plan to put public housing on strong footing for the future.

"It would have been very easy to just walk on by, but she took on the challenge because she cared about the people who live here," de Blasio said.

Olatoye's critics called her departure long overdue step that would allow NYCHA to finally get out from under the dark clouds of scandal that have shrouded it in recent months.

"While this change will not cure all the problems that have been plaguing NYCHA for years, a reorganization of its management structure, including financial transparency and government accountability, will go a long way in improving operations and conditions," Public Advocate Letitia James said in a statement.

Danny Barber, the chairman of the Citywide Council of Presidents, said he hopes NYCHA's new leader will consult residents on how to fix the housing authority's "broken bureaucracy and infrastructure."

"We hope that the new Chair will be considerate and will listen to the life-or-death concerns of our community, working with us to resolve the humanitarian crisis that NYCHA has created," Barber said in a statement.

De Blasio said NYCHA will continue to improve under Brezenoff, who he called "one of the great public servants in the last generation in this city." He touted his administration's $3.7 billion investment in the housing authority, including $2.1 billion in capital funds that paid for 65 new roofs that were recently finished.

But the City Council plans to push the mayor to nearly double that commitment to NYCHA's construction needs. Lawmakers called for $2.45 billion in new capital funding for the authority in their 2019 budget proposal unveiled Tuesday, citing the $25 billion gap between NYCHA's needs and projected funding.

Speaker Corey Johnson said he saw "black corrosive mold" on a visit to NYCHA apartments in Brooklyn last week.

"We need capital money to fix these apartments immediately," Johnson, a Democrat, said.

This story has been updated and corrected.

(Lead image: NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye testifies at a City Council hearing in February. Photo by William Alatriste/New York City Council)