In one of her last acts as public advocate, Letitia James left a lump of coal in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s stocking by listing his public housing authority as the city’s worst landlord. What took her so long?
In her fifth year on the job, and on her way out the door to become state attorney general next month, James finally gave the New York City Housing Authority the treatment it has long deserved in her annual .
She cited NYCHA for having 240,120 open work orders for its 174,000 units. That massively dwarfs the record of the worst private landlord, Eric Silverstein, with 1,449 violations for his 356 units in four buildings.
But the agency’s failings are hardly news at this point. All the way back in 2015, city Comptroller Scott Stringer’s audit that revealed 55,000 backlogged repairs and an average 370 days — more than a year — to fix safety violations.
Even in 2017, after both federal prosecutors and the city Department of Investigation found widespread NYCHA fraud and mismanagement, James failed to play the “worst landlord” card.
At this point, the agency’s failings hardly need spotlighting: It’s at severe risk of a federal takeover if Team de Blasio can’t come up with a credible top-to-bottom reform plan by Jan. 31.
So all James has done is rub salt in the wound and score a headline for herself. Let’s hope she can manage more genuine political courage in her next job.
New York needs an attorney general who’ll expose outrages before it becomes easy.