De Blasio’s last chance to come through for NYCHA
Federal Housing Chief Ben Carson Visits a NYCHA Complex for the First Time (NY1)
BDB's panic-is not for the NYCHA victims of his lies & mismanagement-but for all his (& ex-GoldmanSachs Dep Mayor Glen) REBNY developer pals getting free infill property to build luxury housing which may be thwarted. Crooks abound in this administration. Yeah TRIAL for crimes!
Facing deadline to tell federal judge how they'll fix NYCHA, all parties kick the can down the road
A Federal Takeover of NYCHA? Ben Carson Issues Deadline for a Repair Plan (NY1)
Ben Carson sets deadline for city to make NYCHA deal with feds
“Please be advised that if an arrangement acceptable to [HUD] regarding the future of the New York City Housing Authority is not reached on or before January 31, 2019 I intend to declare a substantial default with respect to NYCHA,” Carson wrote to Stanley Brezenoff, the agency’s interim chair.
The one paragraph statement largely confirmed expectations that city and federal housing officials will ask Federal Judge William Pauley for more time to agree on a rescue plan for NYCHA.
Carson’s statement did not mention the bevy of proposals rolled by Mayor Bill de Blasio this week, which were part of a coordinated effort to try to head off a receivership.
But an accompanying press release also said that HUD wanted to retain “local control of day-to-day operations” by NYCHA and New York City.
The City Hall plot to prevent a federal takeover of NYCHA (NYP)
NYC congressional delegation comes out against receivership for NYCHA
Three top NYCHA execs lied about inspections right after public outcry over 2015 elevator death: DA
https://nydn.us/2Risep6 pic.twitter.com/OttyrP6O1s
The lies about the lead paint scandals never stop(NYP)
“If anyone had presented to me along the way that these reports from the Department of Health were being contested, that would have been the day that we started the process of turning all that around,” the mayor said at a Bronx press conference.
In fact, he had mountains of evidence “presented” to him.
The Daily News, for example, wrote in April 2015 about the Housing Authority’s habit of contesting every positive lead test: When a 2-year-old who’d spent his whole life in a Brooklyn project tested positive, NYCHA performed a test and declared the apartment lead-free.
(Numbers revealed this week show that NYCHA contested 95 percent of the “positive” tests it received from the city Department of Health from 2010 to 2018; private landords challenged just 4 percent.)
In April 2016, it was revealed that then-NYCHA chief Shola Olatoye had lied about conducting apartment inspections, which the agency had stopped from late 2012 through May 2016; de Blasio still insisted on defending her.
Meanwhile, according to now-ex-Investigations chief Mark Peters, the mayor was busy begging him to quash reports of his administration’s failures, including what Peters calls one “late-night screaming call.”
Indeed, Peters charges that de Blasio fired him because of his work “in exposing waste, fraud or abuse in city agencies” from NYCHA to Correction Department boss Joe Ponte’s abuse of his taxpayer-paid car.
The mayor says “it’s just false” that he ever pushed Peters to withhold a report — it was just heated conversations.
Hey, why stop lying now?
Lower East Side NYCHA residents say they are without heat and hot water since snowstorm last week
NEW:
sooner.
As 11,000 tenants endure outages NYC Controller wants records in probe of NYCHA heating bungle(NYDN)
City Comptroller Says NYCHA 'Stonewalling,' Issues Another Subpoena
It’s déjà vu for residents of the city’s public housing – more chilly temperatures bringing more problems with heat and hot water, just like last year
At a news conference at the Grant Houses in Morningside Heights on Saturday, City Comptroller Scott Stringer is ready to take the city’s public housing authority to court.“The practice and pattern of NYCHA management has been to delay, to life,” Stringer said. “They don’t want us to get to the truth.”
He says NYCHA has been doing everything it can to slow walk his nearly year-long audit.
“There is still so much information almost a year later that NYCHA has failed to turn over, and that’s why this week I had to serve them with yet another subpoena,” he said.
City comptroller has 'done nothing': NYCHA tenant (NYP)
Tests Showed Children Were Exposed to Lead. The Official Response: Challenge the Tests (NYT)
Jillian JorgensenVerified account @Jill_Jorgensen
.@NYCMayor says he'll "entertain" questions about the past (how kind of him) but that he wants to look forward for NYCHA. Some of those questions about the past might be: why were you challenging lead tests until you got asked about it this year?
NYCHA used appeals to dodge lead findings, records show (NYP)
NYCHA challenged 95 percent of the lead orders it received from the city Department of Health between 2010 and 2018.
A DOH spokesman told The New York Times, which first reported the figures, that the agency withdrew because its staffers believed the initial tests were simply coming back wrong.
Meanwhile, private landlords rarely appealed the DOH findings. Of the 5,000 positive lead tests at privately owned buildings over the same time period, only 4 percent were challenged.
NYCHA’s scheme to dodge lead findings via bureaucratic appeals was first outlined by federal prosecutors in a lawsuit brought against the authority in June.
“It is NYCHA policy to contest each and every NYC DOH order to abate lead paint,” they alleged. “Success in the contestation process does not answer the question whether the child was poisoned by lead paint in the home.”
More than 1,100 children have tested positive for lead in New York City’s public housing since 2012.
No exit on NYCHA: De Blasio blew too many chances to be trusted with a turnaround (NYDN)
HUD Tallied Numerous Violations in New York City Public Housing. It Still Gave Passing Grades.
Officials said the city’s housing authority used “every trick in the book to conceal building violations from federal inspectors,” but HUD inspection records suggest there’s more to the story.
But Pauley also flagged the agency’s insular culture — and fresh
evidence of that problem comes from city Comptroller Scott Stringer, who
charges that NYCHA leaders have “purposely done everything they can” to
delay his year-long audit. Even repeated subpoenas aren’t getting NYCHA
to cough up the info he’s been demanding for months on how it handles
heat and hot-water woes.
Clearly, the judge needs to demand the city agree to even broader
changes of some kind — whether that means full-blown receivership for
NYCHA, or wholesale management changes and a voiding of all its union
contracts.
With $32 billion in needed repairs NYCHA now faces possibility of federal receivership(NYDN)
Judge rejects government’s plan to take over NYC Housing Authority (NYP)
Judge William Pauley pointed to many factors in denying the plan, including funding from the city, which he described as insufficient. As part of the plan, the city promised more than $2 billion in the next 10 years, over and above what it had previously budgeted to fix the New York City Housing Authority’s problems, including toxic mold and poisonous lead paint.
“At the rate of the City’s funding obligation — which is the only committed source of capital funds in the Proposed Consent Decree —
NYCHA’s current capital needs would not be met until the year 2166,” Pauley wrote in his decision.
“This estimate also assumes that NYCHA’s housing stock will not deteriorate further over the next 148 years.”
He noted NYCHA’s bad behavior in dealing with the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office in saying that the plan needs more depth. The feds only won the settlement in the first place by threatening to sue the agency.
“The point is that NYCHA’s unilateral actions and statements decrying the monitor’s role while this court considers whether to approve the proposed decree — a time in which one would expect NYCHA to be on its best behavior — unearth fissures in the parties’ collaborative front and foreshadow the beginning of prolonged judicial management of NYCHA through a monitorship whose costs may be limitless,” the judge said.
The judge ordered the two sides to return with a plan of action Dec. 14.
“Our submissions will speak for themselves,” a spokesman for the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.
It's time to face reality with NYCHA (NYP)
The judge cited several issues, all of which we’ve been flagging since the draft decree dropped on June 11. The plan is billions short of the cash needed for repairs — even if, as Pauley dryly noted, you assume “that NYCHA’s housing stock will not deteriorate further over the next 148 years.”
More, the agency’s behavior since June indicates that the federal monitor envisioned in the draft decree wouldn’t be enough to change NYCHA’s culture, as Berman has said is necessary. Indeed, Pauley sees “fissures in the parties’ collaborative front” that foreshadow a “prolonged judicial management of NYCHA through a monitorship whose costs may be limitless.”
Kudos to the judge for recognizing a problem common to consent decrees: Time and again, they’ve set up oversight that never really fixes the root problem, even as they add expenses that also don’t buy improvements.
But what else has to change? As we noted back in June, money alone isn’t enough, not “unless NYCHA is massively reformed” — including that cultural shift, big management changes “and a major rewrite of the authority’s union contracts.”
That, too, may not be enough: Public housing used to be about decent domiciles for the working class, but many NYCHA residents no longer work much at all. How well can the system work when its mission has changed, but not the laws that govern it?
New York is pretty much the only major US city that still has significant government-owned and -operated public housing. Everyone else has given up on that model for a host of good reasons, and it’s plainly not working here, either.
If de Blasio and Berman don’t admit that, they’ll have a tough time producing a plan the judge will accept.
For Decades, NYCHA Fought Claims When Child Residents Tested Positive for Lead
While private landlords rarely contest the New York City Health Department's findings when it identifies lead exposure, the New York City Housing Authority almost always did.A new investigation by the New York Times, based on thousands of pages of documents and interviews with over 100 people close to the matter, found that for at least two decades, NYCHA pushed back almost every time a child in one of their units tested positive for lead. For the agency, this strategy was effective—the Health Department often backed down when NYCHA challenged the findings.
"When a child would test positive for lead, the Health Department would send an inspector, and the inspector would actually find lead paint using a device inside the child's home," explained J. David Goodman, who co-reported the story for the Times. "Afterwards, instead of going to fix the spot where the lead had been discovered by the Health Department, the housing authority sent a person to test the lead again, and to dispute those findings."
Because lead paint has long been banned—and because endemic issues like underfunding and rampant leaks have topped NYCHA's list of concerns in recent years—lead exposure was not considered a major problem. But the paint itself isn't what's dangerous. Lead poisoning mainly starts when paint flakes off or becomes dust.
Now, the city is starting to take this seriously. An inspection of 140,000 apartments is underway, with the goal of finding all sources of lead paint in NYCHA buildings.
"They're made some steps to correct the problems of the past already," said Goodman. "We're going to be looking to see if they follow through with those."
Tuesday October 31, 2018
The feds give NYCHA yet another warning (NYP)
In a speech before the Police Athletic League, Berman took aim at NYCHA chief Stanley Brezenoff’s belated effort to upend the consent decree that settled the federal civil case against the agency.
Brezenoff is warning of disaster if a federal monitor takes operational control of NYCHA, as the decree orders. Berman countered: “The real disaster is the management of NYCHA and its culture of deception.”
So far, the evidence is on Berman’s side: With winter coming, over 35,000 tenants went without heat and/or hot water in recent weeks. Meanwhile, The Post recently found that the three NYCHA workers suspended for leading boozy on-the-clock sex parties are still on the payroll.
And that’s on top of all the shenanigans exposed by Berman’s office — shutting water to entire buildings to hide leaks, skipping inspections so work-order backlogs won’t grow; literally papering over damaged areas.
True, Brezenoff has only had a few months to turn things around. But it’s not clear he has the leverage to get the agency’s unions to agree to even basic reforms, such as scheduling regular shifts beyond 9-to-5.
On the other hand, Berman’s office still seems to be trying to find someone who can do the monitor’s job overseeing the agency — an official who “will be responsible for the remediation of extensive health and safety deficiencies in NYCHA housing, as well as oversight and reform of NYCHA management, controls, and operations,” according to the decree.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Brezenoff accepted those conditions, on top of City Hall anteing up $2.2 billion over 10 years for needed repairs. But even with other new cash from the state, that $2 billion will barely make a dent in the $32 billion in needed repairs.
As we’ve said before, the question isn’t whether a monitor is too much, as Brezenoff suggests. It’s whether “oversight” is enough.
If NYCHA doesn’t see truly radical change, its 400,000 residents will soon start having to find somewhere else to live.
A repair truck belonging to the beleaguered city housing authority has been parked on a Brooklyn street — with a brick lodged in its windshield — for at least the past two months, making it the perfect symbol for an agency mired in probes and complaints about its failure to address tenants’ woes.
Fredric U. Dicker @fud31 11 hours ago
"Fixing Nycha 'requires political will at all levels,'..& may even necessitate 'abrogating collective-bargaining agreements&vendor contracts.' But neither politician will take on the public unions whose wages&pensions are bleeding New York’s budget."
A Tale of Two New Yorks (WSJ)
Billions for Amazon but rats, lead paint and mold for public housing.
Tuesday October 30, 2018
Feds blast top NYCHA management as a ‘real disaster’ (NYP)
Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman blasted the top management at the scandal-rocked New York City Housing Authority on Monday, calling it a “real disaster” and saying there was “no more important case in his office.”In an extraordinary speech at a Police Athletic League luncheon fundraiser, the federal prosecutor fired back at NYCHA chair Stanley Brenezeoff, who has been mounting a public campaign to block a federal monitor from assuming control of the agency’s day-to-day operations.
“The real disaster is the management at NYCHA and its culture of deception,” Berman said.
“Mr. Brezenoff should be getting on board with the monitorship he signed off on.”
our months ago, Berman filed a lawsuit charging NYCHA lied for years about conducting federally-required lead inspections and mounted a systematic effort to cover up conditions in its projects.
City Hall signed off on a deal to settle the lawsuit, agreeing to a federal monitor to oversee reforms and agreeing to spend up to $2.2 billion over the next decade to help repair the developments.
Meanwhile, the three employees that NYCHA suspended without pay following explosive revelations of sex parties at the Throggs Neck Houses in The Bronx are back on the job, as NYCHA’s four-month probe into the allegations continues, a spokeswoman confirmed.
Under Civil Service law, the three employees could only be suspended without pay for 30 days, pending the investigation’s completion.
“It’s seems that no amount of scandal disqualifies you from employment at NYCHA,” said Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx), who heads the Council’s Investigations Committee and whose mother and grandmother live in the development. “If you’re found to have sex with your subordinates or any kind of misconduct of course you should be held accountable.”
He added: “In most places you would be held accountable, but NYCHA is an alternative universe of accountability.”
How Brezenoff Made Money Closing LICH
Hamill: Long Island College Hospital merged to death (NYDN)
Back in November 2009, when Gov. Cuomo was state attorney general, I wrote here about the doomed merger of LICH with SUNY Downstate Medical Center in which the state hospital would absorb $300 million in LICH red ink run up by a hospital consortium called Continuum Health Partners.
Continuum is run by a ruthless powerbroker named Stanley Brezenoff whose nickname at LICH is Darth Vader.
Brezenoff
is a quintessential member of what muckraker Jack Newfield called The
Permanent Government of New York. This professional politico was
appointed by Mayor Ed Koch to run the city's Health and Hospitals Corp.,
the feudal lord of a medical fiefdom within the city's patronage-larded
permanent government.
While
in that post, Brezenoff compiled a Rolodex listing all the shadowy
players in the city, state and federal medical rackets swimming in
Medicaid and Medicare dollars.
When
he left HHC, Brezenoff took his Rolodex with him and wound up heading
Continuum, of which Beth Israel is the mothership with satellites like
Roosevelt Hospital, New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, LICH and St. Luke's
Hospital.
Under Continuum, the once-profitable LICH ran up $300 million in debt from pure administrative malpractice. And then Brezenoff brokered the smelly SUNY Downstate merger, with state taxpayers absorbing the $300 million debt.
Under Continuum, the once-profitable LICH ran up $300 million in debt from pure administrative malpractice. And then Brezenoff brokered the smelly SUNY Downstate merger, with state taxpayers absorbing the $300 million debt.
The Post Wrote de Blasio's NYCHA Strategy Was Deceptive From the Start of the Lead Paint Cover-Up True News Wrote During His 2013 Campaign That His Promised for NYCHA Fixes Were Lies
De Blasio's NYCHA strategy was deceptive from the start (NYP)
Investigators seize NYCHA records in office raid (NYP)
Breaking Fed Investigation NYCHA and Housing, Rent, Sell Off
Campaign 2013 Media Failure And Broken Political Promises
NYCHA still hasn't really changed - New York Post
The agency’s chief even (sort of) admits it: “We are not viewed currently as a competent organization, we are not viewed as a credible organization,” interim NYCHA chair Stanley Brezenoff said at a Citizens Budget Commission event Wednesday.Just drop the “viewed as,” and you’ve got it.
No, Brezenoff is simply the guy dragged in to help out (at age 83!) by Mayor Bill de Blasio — who left NYCHA to rot for his first four years, refusing to consider anything resembling reform even after winning office with stalwart vows to deliver for the “other New York.”
(And, yes, the mayor for 12 years before that shares plenty of blame: Mike Bloomberg had better be ready for NYCHA questions in the 2020 presidential primaries.)
Yet Brezenoff’s top issue now seems to be questioning the consent decree that resulted from that federal investigation. Specifically, he’s warning that giving the incoming federal monitor a say in the agency’s day-to-day operation will mean “disaster.”
Hmm: That leaves him agreeing with Judge William Pauley III, who’s overseeing the federal settlement — except that Pauley is asking if installing a monitor is remotely enough to address NYCHA’s dysfunction.
After all, Brezenoff admits he’s left doing “triage” because he simply lacks the resources to repair thousands of apartments. And he has neither the power nor the political backing to resort to the radical steps required to get the cash, or to slash costs.
New York City housing authority lied about squalid conditions for years, feds say
The housing authority and the city have agreed to set aside $2.2 billion for repairs and submit to a monitor.
Public housing tenants unhappy with NYCHA settlement - NY1.com
New York City Housing Authority Agrees To $2B Settlement Over Massive Health Violations
NYCHA improvements mandated by federal government could cost NYC $1B
New York City Housing Authority Agrees To $2B Settlement Over .
Federal prosecutors lay bare health and safety violations at NYCHA in ...
De Blasio Emails Shed Light on how ‘Affordable Housing’ is Packaged for the Press (City Limits)
The recent court-ordered release of 4,251 pages of emails [PDF] between the administration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his favorite outside consultants—which de Blasio futilely called “agents of the city,” advisers deserving confidentiality akin to inter-agency communications—reveals far more than the mayor’s frustration with press coverage.The emails (below), pried loose after a lawsuit by NY1 and the New York Post, also show how media events are staged, and why consultant BerlinRosen—both unpaid advisor and a paid consultant to de Blasio’s Campaign for One New York nonprofit, which operated 2013-16—might be prized by real estate developers aiming to stay on good terms with de Blasio.
Though the Mayor’s Office claimed, as cited in the court decision, that the “withheld documents relate to communications in which Mr. [Jonathan] Rosen was not acting on behalf of any clients nor interests they represent,” but rather offered advice “represent[ing] solely the interests of the Mayoralty and the City,” clearly there were overlaps.
Consider the calculations behind the June 12, 2017 official opening for the 535 Carlton tower in Prospect Heights, the first “100 percent affordable” building in the Pacific Park (formerly Atlantic Yards) project.
The emails show developer Greenland Forest City Partners scripting quotes from a grateful new 535 Carlton resident; a mayoral aide transforming a corporate press release into a governmental statement; and seeming distance from affordable housing advocates who once strongly backed Atlantic Yards, slated to include 2,250 below-market apartments.
Unmentioned: the grateful tenant was hardly representative of a building with 148 of 297 units aimed at middle-income households paying, for example, $2,680 for a one-bedroom apartment or $3,223 for a two-bedroom unit.
(New York Daily News)
