Back in January 2007, David Munoz and his mother, Isabel, requested repairs to loose and broken floor tiles in their Queens, N.Y., public housing apartment.
Eventually, New York City Housing Authority came to the Woodside Houses to replace the tiles, but didn’t finish the job. Some remain unrepaired this week — more than six years after Munoz first sought help.
“When I came here, I noticed it takes a long time to do repairs,” Munoz, 29, said. “That’s crazy that we still have an open ticket.”
His dilemma is not unique. Woodside has five other unresolved floor repair requests that date to 2007 — the oldest NYCHA repairs in the city. In fact, new NYCHA data shows more than 3,800 repair requests that are at least four years old. They include repairs to 728 floors, 125 kitchen cabinets, 113 showers, 81 air conditioners, 75 front doors, 30 electrical outlets and 12 toilets.
This shameful record was uncovered by Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who two weeks ago got a list of all of NYCHA’s outstanding repair requests as of Feb. 15 — 369,000 in all.
The data show that on average, authority tenants wait more than nine months for repairs. Bronx residents have it the worst, waiting 299 days on average, compared with Manhattan (287), Brooklyn (276), Queens (262) and Staten Island (203).
“If a private landlord neglected tenants like this, the city would throw the book at them,” de Blasio said.
In January, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYCHA Chairman John Rhea announced a new effort to get rid of what was then a backlog of 420,000 requests by 2014. By July 1, NYCHA claimed the backlog was down to 220,000.
But de Blasio questions those numbers, noting that according to NYCHA’s own data, even if authority employees worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they would have had to make 141 repairs every hour in the first two weeks of the authority’s campaign to realize their claims.
In May, The News reported that in the month Bloomberg announced the crackdown, internal records showed a huge spike in the number of repair requests that were canceled without repairs having been made.
NYCHA spokeswoman Sheila Stainback defended the way the agency addresses old repair requests, saying the authority looks “at the oldest work orders in key areas on a regular basis, at least weekly at the senior levels in the agency and more frequently at lower levels.”
She said since NYCHA began reducing the backlog, it began “looking at the oldest work orders overall.” The first priority is repairs that have “the potential to impact health, safety and security,” followed by “items that impact the overall usability” of an apartment, followed by problems “that impact resident satisfaction” and finally “cosmetic issues,” Stainback said.
Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, which represents 8,000 NYCHA workers who do some of these repairs, blamed the delay on Rhea, who implemented a computerized repair request system that Floyd said has slowed down response times considerably.
“John Rhea’s been here for four years and there’s three years of delay. Do the math,” Floyd said.
But as NYCHA plays catch-up, the data show dozens of delayed requests raise health and safety issues for tenants who sometimes live in potentially dangerous conditions.
Electrical outlet repairs requested four years ago this month are still unresolved at 24 developments across the city, from the Amsterdam Houses in Manhattan to the St. Mary’s Park Houses in the Bronx, records show.
A smoke detector replacement was requested at Melrose in the Bronx in 2010. Asbestos removal was requested at the Riis Houses in Manhattan in 2011.
Tenants at Smith Houses in Manhattan asked for fire sprinkler repairs in 2011.
All of these requests are listed as unresolved — a circumstance tenants say could have dangerous consequences.
At the Baruch Houses on the lower East Side — which had 5,743 backed-up repairs as of February — there is an open request for electrical outlet repairs dated July 7, 2009.
Some developments have been hit harder than others, with thousands of outstanding requests. The Grant Houses in Harlem fared the worst, with an incredible 6,203 unfinished repairs as of February. That’s more than one for each of the 4,542 tenants. At Grant, records show unresolved requests for a sink repair and a new window at 1315 Amsterdam Ave. that date to July 1, 2009.
Some developments have an alarmingly high number of old repair requests. Melrose Houses in the Bronx has the most — 232 date to 2009, with 10 more that date to 2008.
But tenants at the Woodside Houses still hold the record for the oldest unresolved repair requests in the city.
Last week, retired postal worker Dallas Ratliff, 72, chuckled when told of the six-year-old repair tickets there
“I’m not surprised,” said the 35-year resident of the development, shaking his head with both recognition and resignation. “It’s ridiculous. It really is.”
gsmith@nydailynews.com
