When she testified to the City Council in March 2015, NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye minimized the danger of lead paint in public housing, claiming only 18 apartments had tested positive for lead paint since 2010.
What she didn’t mention was this: In 2004, NYCHA identified more than 55,000 apartments likely to contain lead paint, including more than 10,000 where children younger than 6 live.
Finding the scope and nature of this problem in the nation’s biggest public housing authority is nearly impossible.
And the question of how the New York City Housing Authority addresses this issue is part of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department.
The department, through Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, is conducting a broad-ranging civil investigation into whether NYCHA has lied to the federal government about the conditions of its apartments.
One area of inquiry is whether NYCHA has accurately reported its detection and abatement of lead paint, according to subpoenas reviewed by the Daily News.
Whether NYCHA is underreporting its lead paint problem may come down to how NYCHA defines the problem. Officials said they don’t count what they call “no-risk” apartments — those that have lead paint but don’t have children and don’t show visible signs of paint chips or paint dust.
In 2004, a new local law required that all landlords determine the extent of lead paint contamination in apartments where children 6 or younger lived.
Of NYCHA’s 178,000 apartments, the agency identified 82,733 presumed to contain lead-based paint based on tests made by the federal Housing and Urban Development Department and NYCHA itself.
That included 68,303 built before 1960, when lead paint was banned in the city, and 14,430 built between 1960 and 1978, when lead paint was banned nationally.
As of this year, abatement had reduced the total number of apartments that still contain lead-based paint to about 55,000. That happens to include 10,229 apartments with a presumed lead risk where children younger than 6 live.
Since 2010, NYCHA has begun abatement in these apartments, but only as tenants move out. So far, some of the units have tested negative for lead paint, but 2,769 tested positive and were cleaned up.
Until mid-May, there was no deliberate targeting of lead paint-tainted apartments with young children.
“NYCHA is abating these apartments at a glacial pace,” said City Councilman Ritchie Torres, (D-Bronx), chairman of the Public Housing Committee.
“Lead paint abatement should be part of the annual inspection. Why would you inspect a pre-1960 or pre-1978 apartment without abating? It defies the imagination.”
In mid-May, after The News raised questions about this, NYCHA officials said they changed protocol to begin targeting apartments that likely contain lead paint — but only the 4,702 with children younger than 6. That effort is set to be finished by June 30.
In an email, NYCHA spokeswoman Jean Weinberg wrote, “Though there is a very low risk of lead poisoning to children living in public housing, NYCHA understands lead safety is a concern for parents.
“NYCHA is inspecting all 4,702 units (less than 3% of all of NYCHA’s apartments) that have children under the age of 6 and the possibility of lead paint in their unit . . . and will abate wherever necessary.”
Tenants living in buildings with lead paint know little about its presence, in part because NYCHA refuses to release specific information about where lead paint exists, citing privacy concerns.
But The News obtained NYCHA’s internal address-specific data reporting all lead paint inspections and abatements performed from Jan. 1, 2013, through March 30, 2015.
During that time, lead paint was detected and abated in 1,604 out of 3,096 inspections at 93 developments across all five boroughs.
Almost always, this testing and abatement took place only after a tenant moved out.
NYCHA is required by HUD to inspect apartments annually, but is not required to proactively test for lead during those inspections unless paint dust or chips are visible during the inspection.
The authority is required to test for lead when a tenant moves out, and the vast majority of the apartments that tested positive and had to be abated happened after moveouts.
But because NYCHA apartments are coveted lodging in a city desperately low on affordable housing, thousands of apartments go untested year after year.
And a tenant who’s lived for years in an apartment with lead paint is not notified of the positive findings after they move out. NYCHA officials point out that HUD doesn’t require such notification.
The data obtained by The News also makes clear that most of NYCHA’s 600,000 tenants apparently don’t know they can simply request a lead paint test at any time.
There are only a handful of such cases — 44 — where lead paint inspection and abatement was triggered by a tenant request.
