Mayor Bill de Blasio yesterday announced the creation of a new New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) bureaucratic oversight agency – the Executive Compliance Department – and also appointed Edna Wells Handy as its first Acting Chief Compliance Officer.
Both Handy and the new department comes in the wake of the City’s Department of Investigation finding that the authority lied about performing lead paint inspections. The report specifically named NYCHA Head Shola Olatoye as having lied about lead poisoning inspections in approximately 55,000 potentially dangerous apartments.
Olatoye is accused by investigators of submitting false paperwork on the inspections and putting thousands of kids at risk by blowing off mandatory inspections.
“We take our job to keep the residents of public housing safe extremely seriously. Edna will be a voice for residents and an aggressive agent for protecting them,” said de Blasio.
Handy, who currently serves as counsel to the NYPD Commissioner. will lead the department and be responsible for oversight of NYCHA’s regulatory compliance including compliance training for NYCHA’s employees and the accuracy of external reporting by NYCHA.
Handy will be expected to respond to employee and resident complaints regarding compliance issues and will report directly to the NYCHA Olatoye. Handy will begin full-time in December.
“I grew up in New York City’s public housing and I am ready to serve as NYCHA’s first Chief Compliance Officer. This is about holding the agency accountable to laws at every level of government and, most importantly, to the 400,000 New Yorkers who call NYCHA home,” said Handy.
Earlier in the day, State Senators Jesse Hamilton (Central Brooklyn) and Diane Savino (D-Coney Island,Staten Island) alongside Assembly member Walter T. Mosley (D-Clinton Hill, Fort Greene) and dozens of other State and City elected officials called for the creation of an independent monitor to oversee the authority.
“The time is now to finally act on our legislation to protect the over 400,000 NYCHA residents across the City. It is outrageous that there seems to be an endless flow of blunders that put our constituents well-being and lives at risk. An independent monitor to oversee the mismanagement will be a step in the right direction,” said Savino.
An independent monitor would have the power to review and would have oversight of any NYCHA project, including requiring corrective actions to remedy issues identified in projects. The monitor would also be required to prepare an annual report on the office’s activities, including any corrective actions it ordered.
“Like every New Yorker, every NYCHA resident deserves safe housing. Every child growing up in NYCHA housing deserves to be free from hazardous lead that can negatively impact their growth and development. Every parent raising a family in NYCHA housing deserves to know that their apartment is not poisoning them. With this report and the legislation we advance, we mandate meaningful transparency and independent oversight to give families in NYCHA housing the assurances they need,” said Hamilton.
The State Senate Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), of which both Savino and Hamilton are members, proposed an independent monitor as part of their Changing New York Agenda in January 2017. It passed the Senate twice this year, both as part of the IDC’s one house budget proposal in March and as a standalone bill in June, however it failed to pass in the Assembly.
“NYCHA is our last bastion of affordable housing and needs the best level of oversight and protection in light of most recent reports of the city’s inability to properly govern itself at the highest level of transparency and accountability. Now is the time for the state to take a more active role by creating ongoing oversight in an effort to monitor NYCHA and how it conducts its business,” said Mosley.
