NYCHA Lead Paint Scandal Puts Chair Under Fire

NEW YORK, NY — Top city officials on Thursday questioned the New York City Housing Authority chairwoman's ability after an investigation revealed the agency failed to test public housing complexes for lead.

But others, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, came to Chairwoman Shola Olatoye's defense, saying she's put NYCHA back on the right track.

Olatoye "is turning NYCHA around and she isn’t going anywhere," de Blasio said in a tweet Thursday. "She didn’t create the agency’s shortcomings–she's the one I trust to fix them."

Olatoye is under fire after a city Department of Investigation report revealed Tuesday that NYCHA failed to test its buildings for lead paint over four years starting in 2013.

The agency falsely told the federal government that it had done the inspections, despite Olatoye and other top officials knowing they hadn't, the investigation found. About 55,000 NYCHA apartments have potential lead problems, Olatoye told PIX11 on Wednesday.

Other Department of Investigation probes have revealed "other serious safety hazards and breakdowns" in recent years, the agency said Tuesday. The DOI report recommended that the state appoint an independent monitor to ensure NYCHA follows safety rules.

After meeting with Olatoye on Thursday morning, Public Advocate Letitia James called for "sweeping operational changes, independent monitoring, and transparency." But James did not mention Olatoye by name and didn't explicitly call for her resignation.

"Most importantly, it's time for new leadership and a fresh start at NYCHA," James said in a statement Thursday afternoon. "The circumstances surrounding the City's failure to conduct lead inspections and the false reporting that followed are simply unacceptable."

While he didn't weigh in on Olatoye's future, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. asked Gov. Andrew Cuomo to appoint a NYCHA monitor as the DOI report recommended.

"More than 400,000 individuals live in New York City's public housing developments, and they need your help," Diaz Jr. wrote to Cuomo, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. "It is clear that the only way forward for public housing tenants at this juncture is State involvement."

But de Blasio and others say Olatoye should be the one to right NYCHA's ship after the scandal, noting that she admitted her mistake. Olatyoe told city investigators that she notified federal staffers of the oversight after she learned about it in 2016, the DOI report says.

"The City has a responsibility to get to the bottom of this failure, as well as to ensure the agency’s systems for conducting and reviewing its inspections are working the way we expect," Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said in a statement. "Chair Olatoye has rightfully owned the error. She needs to lead efforts to correct it going forward."

Since de Blasio appointed her chair in 2014, Olatoye has helped develop the agency's strategic plan called NextGeneration NYCHA, part of which allows private developers to build on public-housing land in exchange for payments that fund repairs to NYCHA complexes.

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said she thinks Olatoye is "working diligently to address" the mismanagement that plagued NYCHA before she took over, according to POLITICO New York.

(Lead image: NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye is under fire this week after a city probe revealed that NYCHA failed to test its buildings for lead paint. Photo from nyc.gov)