NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — A recent New York City investigation has revealed fraud in public housing when it comes to lead removal in apartments and buildings.
Protocol already in place for any time lead is removed from any New York public housing complex mandates that a person from the Environmental Protection Agency needs to supervise the job.
“There are key points where they are required to be physically present on the site: when the job is being set up and when the job is being cleaned up – which are two of the most important points in any lead abatement job,” said New York City Department of Investigation Commissioner Margaret Garnett.
Garnett says that for every job from 2013 to 2018 – which number into the thousands – there was none of that oversight and NYCHA lied about it.
“What's most concerning about them is what it reveals about the culture, I think among a certain rank of supervisors, more broadly at NYCHA, about following the rules and about their responsibilities to NYCHA residence,” Garnett said.
A whistleblower told to DOI about the lack of supervision after he was pressured by a manager at NYCHA’s lead unit to sign paperwork saying that there was an EPA supervisor on site when there was none.
That manager has been suspended without pay but, there will be no criminal charges.
Garnett says NYCHA now needs to take a look at every aspect of its operation and “take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that people who are responsible for key areas of NYCHA operations are, in fact, doing their jobs and doing them appropriately.”
The DOI has made several recommendations to make sure these jobs are done right in the future.
Garnett says they have also “made recommendations for re-testing and re-inspecting a number of apartments that were affected by this conduct.”
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