U.S. Department Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Region II Director Lynne Patton examined the chipped paint and plaster about the size of a small rubber ball in the hallway of a second-floor apartment in the New York City Housing Authority’s (NYCHA) Red Hook Houses.
“Underneath is nine-inch asbestos tile. Anytime there is a crack like this asbestos is kicked up as dust. This is disconcerting. More than likely there is lead here,” she said. “This is entirely unacceptable. Little kids will pick at it and obviously the woman with NYCHA will send someone in to patch this. When it is chipping and flaking, turning into dust it’s a problem. As long as we replaster, it will alleviate the problem for now but then NYCHA has to fix it permanently.”
And so it went for Patton yesterday as she toured the 40-acre Red Hook Houses, composed of 30 mainly low-rise residential buildings, 4 non-residential buildings and housing roughly 3,300 residents in 1,411 units.
Patton toured the Red Hook Houses with Assemblymember Felix Ortiz (D-Red Hook, Sunset Park) and tenant leaders to see first-hand numerous cases of chipped paint and plaster, exposed wiring, leaky ceilings and mold damage.
Patton said one of the first basic items she intends to work on is the hiring at least between 500-1,000 caretaker janitors – hopefully with many being NYCHA residents to do out of apartment work such as mopping and cleaning lobbies, hallways, stairwells and elevators.
Patton said in every NYCHA development where she stayed there was a shortage of these janitors. She also vowed to fix the work order system, which has long plagued NYCHA in that when tenants put in work orders to fix their apartment work seldom gets done, and sometimes get labeled fixed when the work is not done.
Patton said she is also making sure money gets spent right to ensure heat this coming winter, and noted that several NYCHA developments has switched from oil heat to natural gas heat, which is both less money and more environmentally friendly.
“A lot of buildings are converting to gas. Now NYCHA had over 3 million gallons of oil that can’t be used. Hopefully, NYCHA can make money by selling this to [public] schools that still use oil heat,” she said.
Since Patton, a former Trump Family employee took the position in June 2017 under HUD Secretary Ben Carson, she has both lived in NYCHA developments and regularly toured several of the developments.
She has also seen a sea of change due to mismanagement of NYCHA under the de Blasio Administration. This includes the resignation of former disgraced NYCHA Chair Shola Olatoye in April of last year, who lied about lead testing at NYCHA that was never done and had oversaw numerous heat outages at NYCHA developments last winter, a court-ordered federal monitor over NYCHA, Bart Schwartz, who appointed earlier this year, and a new NYCHA Chair Gregory Russ, who started this summer.
But on this day, Patton was about touring the Red Hook Houses, seeing its problems and talking to residents.
This isn’t about politics. This is about people. That’s bipartisan no matter who you are and this is something that has been going on for far too long no matter who you are,” she said.
