New Lead Inspections Coming To These NYCHA Complexes First

NEW YORK — Inspectors kicked off an effort Monday to check about three quarters of New York City's public housing stock for dangerous lead paint. Contractors will perform inspections at 135,000 New York City Housing Authority apartments by the end of next year under an initiative Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last July, city officials said.

The inspections started Monday at the Harlem River Houses and seven more developments will see them starting May 1, officials said: the Williamsburg Houses, the Bronx River Houses, the Saint Nicholas Houses, the Johnson Houses, the Red Hook West Houses, the Castle Hill Houses and the Marble Hill Houses.

The tests are part of the city's campaign to eradicate childhood lead poisoning that followed intense scrutiny of how NYCHA handled the toxic substance.

"This is the definition of leaving no stone unturned," de Blasio, a Democrat, said at a news conference in Williamsburg. "We’re literally going to go to every apartment where there’s an open question."

NYCHA has selected seven companies to inspect 5,000 to 7,000 apartments each month for $88 million using devices with so-called X-ray fluorescence technology. The technology can peer through layers of paint to determine whether any lead is present, interim NYCHA Chairwoman Kathryn Garcia said.

The apartments set to be inspected were built before 1978, when lead paint was outlawed at the federal level, City Hall says. The city banned it in 1960.

The inspections will allow the city to learn "once and for all" which apartments still contain lead and concentrate resources on addressing the problem in those homes, de Blasio said. The city will also create a symbol to label apartments that are lead-free, he said.

"It means there’s going to be a lot more peace of mind for residents who know that their apartment not only doesn’t have lead, it never did have lead," the mayor said.

The Williamsburg Houses and Harlem River Houses were the first two developments where NYCHA is required to abate lead-based paint under its sweeping oversight deal with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

As testing moves forward, officials say, the housing authority will prioritize complexes with the most kids younger than 6, the ages at which they're most at risk for lead poisoning. NYCHA will post results of the testing online by May 1 and update them every two weeks, the mayor's office said.

NYCHA has faced scrutiny from federal prosecutors, the City Council and others over its previous failures to inspect apartments for lead paint. NYCHA admitted to federal prosecutors last year that it falsely told federal officials it had done lead inspections for years when they had not occurred.

The new testing scheme is part of the city's "LeadFreeNYC" initiative to eliminate childhood lead poisoning, which the city says has already declined by 90 percent. The initiative also aims to tackle the problem in private housing, partly by requiring lead paint inspections in one- and two-family homes.

"We want no child exposed," de Blasio said. "… We want a day to come in this city where not a single child is exposed to lead anymore, ever."