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Judge to Appoint Monitor for Mold Repairs in New York Public Housing

A maintenance company entered a public housing complex in November 2012, shortly after Hurricane Sandy had exacerbated mold in more than 300 housing projects.Credit...Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

A federal judge, frustrated by the slow pace of New York’s efforts to curb mold in public housing, will appoint a special master to ensure the city complies with an agreement to address the problem faster and more aggressively.

In a strongly worded decision issued on Tuesday, Judge William H. Pauley III of United States District Court in Manhattan said that the New York City Housing Authority had been out of compliance with the settlement’s requirements “from the day it was entered into court.”

“Nycha’s justifications for its failure to comply are inadequate, and the attitude of Nycha officials appears to be one of indifference,” the judge wrote, using an acronym for the agency.

He said the situation “jeopardizes the health and public welfare of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.”

Mold among more than 300 housing projects was exacerbated after Hurricane Sandy three years ago, but tenants had long complained that maintenance workers commonly scraped and painted over mold instead of identifying leaks and other sources of moisture. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice filed a class-action lawsuit against the city in 2013 on behalf of public housing residents suffering from asthma.

The Bloomberg administration quickly settled, striking an agreement under which the Housing Authority committed to completing repairs within seven to 15 days following a work order. The agency was also required to address the underlying causes of mold by fixing leaks, insulating pipes and tackling other sources of moisture.

Judge Pauley, however, found that housing officials instead had tried to reinterpret the consent decree, which he approved, that established the new mold abatement policy. They have extended the time it takes to address conditions “to weeks or even months,” he said, and after repairs have been completed recurrence of mold was as high as 41 percent.

Housing officials said that they were reviewing the court’s decision but added that the city has committed $300 million over three years for roof repairs, which would help deal with the root cause of mold and excessive moisture.

The Housing Authority has been struggling with deteriorating conditions in aging buildings and the lack of money to address maintenance needs and major capital jobs because of deep cuts in federal funding.

But Albert Huang, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s director of environmental justice in New York, noted: “How much money have they wasted going in and doing superficial repairs over and over again?”

“This is a big turning point,” he added of the judge’s decision to appoint a monitor. “There’s no more Nycha playing games.”

Also on Tuesday, the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, released an audit that concluded is the Housing Authority was ill equipped to handle emergencies like Hurricane Sandy in the future. Mr. Stringer, a Democrat, said the agency lacked a communication plan to disseminate emergency information to employees and residents quickly and had inaccurate or incomplete information about the number and location of emergency generators and of tenants with disabilities who would require assistance.

But housing officials accused the comptroller of “cherry-picking data and shifting timelines to paint an outdated picture.”

“Over the past 18 months,” they said in a statement, “Nycha has worked to fundamentally change the way we approach emergency preparedness.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 28 of the New York edition with the headline: City Agency on Housing Faces Monitor Over Mold. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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