The leader of the beleaguered New York City Housing Authority for the first time on Tuesday blamed some of her agency’s numerous failings on City Hall.
Shola Olatoye, who fielded questions for more than four hours at a City Council hearing, testified that the authority requested additional resources to address widespread heating problems — and made clear the city’s response was inadequate.
“These have been conversations that we’ve had over the course of the last four years about the resource and investment needs into the Housing Authority,” she said.
“We’ve talked about roofs, we’ve talked about heating and water and distribution issues,” she added. “We’ve talked about a number of things, and there have been choices that have been made, and here we are.”
The number of heating technicians at NYCHA has dropped to 248 in 2017 from 391 in 2013, the last year of the Bloomberg administration. This winter, more than 80 percent of all the authority’s residents — 320,000 of 392,000 people — experienced heating or hot-water outages on at least one day.
Olatoye said that she discussed staffing shortages with City Hall “early last year” and that NYCHA requested more “flexibility” in hiring.
She wouldn’t say how City Hall responded, noting only that her agency brought in temporary workers to address the heating crisis.
Council Speaker Corey Johnson slammed the response as “completely unacceptable.”
“We were not given full answers on how that came to pass,” he said.
Mayor de Blasio later defended his record.
“People in public housing deserve the very best living standard we can give them with the money we have,” he said.
Councilwoman Alicka Ampry Samuel, head of the council’s Public Housing Committee, shot back that if private landlords were in the same situation, they’d be headed to jail.
“Imagine if we found out a private landlord wasn’t providing heat to 80 percent of their residents,” she said.
But de Blasio has steadfastly defended his appointee, claiming she inherited a mess and has made improvements.
NYCHA has been under intense scrutiny since November, when the Department of Investigation revealed it failed to conduct required lead testing. Olatoye subsequently provided false testimony about the tests.
She refused on Tuesday to say if the person responsible for supplying the incorrect information had been disciplined.