{"id":66102,"date":"2020-09-14T00:56:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T21:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/de-blasio-downplayed-dire-extent-of-nycha-lead-poisoning-issue-records-reveal\/"},"modified":"2020-09-14T00:56:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-13T21:56:00","slug":"de-blasio-downplayed-dire-extent-of-nycha-lead-poisoning-issue-records-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/de-blasio-downplayed-dire-extent-of-nycha-lead-poisoning-issue-records-reveal\/","title":{"rendered":"#De Blasio downplayed dire extent of NYCHA lead poisoning issue, records reveal"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#De Blasio downplayed dire extent of NYCHA lead poisoning issue, records reveal<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Newly surfaced documents reveal damning details about the scale and scope of what NYCHA knew of its serious lead issues in housing units with kids \u2014 all while Mayor Bill de Blasio downplayed the health crisis.<\/p>\n

Local Health Department inspectors found lead in 222 NYCHA apartments across 93 developments \u2014 more than a quarter of all complexes citywide \u2014 between 2010 and 2018, according to records that City Hall only produced after The Post sued it under the state\u2019s Freedom of Information Law.<\/p>\n

Experts have said there is a high likelihood of finding lead in other apartments in a building where it has already been discovered.<\/p>\n

Yet NYCHA was able to avoid making any repairs to 158 of the 222 lead-tainted apartments thanks to app<\/a>eals to the city DOH, the documents show.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe evidence confirms what we\u2019ve long suspected \u2014 that the de Blasio administration, the Health Department and the Housing Authority all systematically misled the public about the true extent of lead poisoning in public housing,\u201d city Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-The Bronx), who grew up in NYCHA housing and chairs the body\u2019s oversight committee, told The Post.<\/p>\n

Torres said he will now demand hearings to ensure NYCHA is complying with lead-removal requirements set out in the previous deal it struck with federal prosecutors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stakes are a matter of life and death \u2014 if a child is exposed to lead, the consequences will haunt the child for the rest of their lives,\u201d Torres said. \u201cWe cannot take for granted that NYCHA is now following the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lead exposure \u2014 which is often linked to peeling paint \u2014 can cause lasting brain damage and delay mental development. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that any amount of lead can be dangerous to young children.<\/p>\n

Among the 93 NYCHA developments where inspectors found lead after a child\u2019s poisoning is the sprawling Jacob Riis Houses complex on Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side.<\/p>\n

The city Health Department found lead in as many as five apartments in 2018. NYCHA contested every one of the resulting clean-up orders, and DOH officials OK\u2019d the appeals \u2014 allowing the housing agency to skip remedia<\/a>l action.<\/p>\n

In 2019, the case count grew when Yanira Alameda\u2019s 7-year-old autistic son, Jordan Morales, tested positive for more than three times the allowable levels of lead in his blood.<\/p>\n

Inspectors found 10 lead hot spots in the family\u2019s apartment that Alameda believes \u201cmost definitely\u201d helped make her son sicker.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/img>
A warning sign in the NYCHA Red Hook East.<\/span>Stephen Yang<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen a couple of recent changes in Jordan,\u201d the 39-year old mom and hotel receptionist recently told The Post. \u201cHis appetite is gone, his attention span is mostly gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boy also \u201chas been having extreme tantrums,\u2019\u2019 his mom said.<\/p>\n

NYCHA claims it fixed the lead in the family\u2019s apartment in September 2019, but the scandal-rocked agency has yet to produce the paperwork to prove the repairs were made properly despite Alameda\u2019s repeated requests.
<\/br>
\nAlameda intends to sue over the lead.<\/p>\n

As previously reported, a bombshell 2017 city Department of Investigation probe had blasted NYCHA for falsely certifying to the feds that it was keeping up with mandated lead inspections.<\/p>\n

Yet days later, de Blasio was still publicly downplaying the crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to recognize, as troubling as this story is, that when you dig into the facts, thank God there is less here than appears,\u2019\u2019 the mayor said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank God there has not been harm done to any child because of the mistakes that were made.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

In April 2018, Hizzoner continued his denials there was a major problem afoot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would urge you to look at the facts more,\u2019\u2019 he told reporters at a press conference atop the Queensbridge Houses. \u201cEnough is being done because every apartment that we know of has been not only inspected but remediated, and then that will happen every single year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two months later, federal prosecutors picked up with the DOI left off and alleged in a damning lawsuit that city officials had repeatedly understated the scope of the lead crisis at NYCHA.<\/p>\n

The feds accused NYCHA of undertaking a systematic coverup of crumbling conditions in public housing \u2014 a pattern now laid bare in the records obtained by The Post.<\/p>\n

According to the documents, city Health Department inspectors ordered the clean-up of 10 apartments in The Bronx\u2019s Patterson Houses over the eight-year period, the highest number for any public-housing development.<\/p>\n

The Van Dyke Houses in Brooklyn\u2019s Brownsville neighborhood were slapped with orders to clean up eight apartments after a child tested positive for dangerous levels of lead.<\/p>\n

The Bronx\u2019s Edenwald Houses and Harlem\u2019s Lincoln Houses each received six clean-up orders after a case of lead poisoning.<\/p>\n

Experts say the numbers suggest this is only the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

\"Peeling<\/img>
Peeling paint in an apartment at the Patterson Houses in the Bronx.<\/span>Richard Harbus <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOne poisoning could be a random event,\u201d said Matt Chachere, a lawyer with the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation who helped draft the city\u2019s current lead laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut multiple poisonings in multiple apartments in a complex can only be indicative that there is a problem with the maintenance and monitoring practices of the management of that complex.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAny of those should have triggered a wholesale testing and inspection of the apartments with children in those complexes,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA competent landlord does not allow children to become poisoned and potentially brain-damaged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each clean-up mandate was triggered by a blood test that showed a child living in the home was poisoned by the toxic substance.<\/p>\n

The mandates \u2014 officially known as a city DOH Commissioner\u2019s Order to Abate \u2014 directed NYCHA to repair or replace peeling lead paint or other lead-contaminated items found by the Health Department.<\/p>\n

The number of DOH clean-up orders for lead in NYCHA housing currently stands at 293.<\/p>\n

NYCHA filed contestations \u2014 a little-known bureaucratic process \u2014 to challenge the Health Department\u2019s findings in 211 of the 222 apartments discovered with problems between 2010 and 2018, according to the records.<\/p>\n

Health Department officials ended up overruling their own inspectors and allowed the cash-strapped NYCHA to avoid making any repairs in the overwhelming majority.<\/p>\n

Public-health advocates have assailed the DOH\u2019s decision to accept the contestations, calling it an abdication of responsibility.<\/p>\n

A 2019 investigation by The Post revealed that 34 apartments were so badly contaminated that the Health Department should have automatically blocked NYCHA\u2019s contestation \u2014 and its failure to do so left lead-poisoned kids in unrepaired units.<\/p>\n

At the time, De Blasio promised to fix what he called a \u201cnever-again situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

City Hall spokeswoman Avery Cohen, responding to a request for comment about the newly surfaced documents, told The Post in an e-mail, \u201cThe only acceptable number of children exposed to lead in New York City is zero.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur efforts are working: Under this administration, the number of children with elevated lead blood levels in public and private housing is at historic lows, with a 54 percent overall decline since the Mayor took office,\u2019\u2019 Cohen added.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Sam Raskin and Aaron Feis<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

\n

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“#De Blasio downplayed dire extent of NYCHA lead poisoning issue, records reveal” Newly surfaced documents reveal damning details about the scale and scope of what NYCHA knew of its serious lead issues in housing units with kids \u2014 all while Mayor Bill de Blasio downplayed the health crisis. Local Health Department inspectors found lead in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[68775,68776],"class_list":["post-66102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-de-blasio-downplayed-dire-extent-of-nycha-lead-poisoning-issue","tag-records-reveal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}