Broken Doors Leave NYCHA Buildings Open To Intruders: Review

NEW YORK — Broken and defective doors have left dozens of New York City's public housing complexes wide open to intruders, city auditors say in a new report. More than 1,000 front, rear and side doors across 195 New York City Housing Authority developments were unlockable, broken or tampered with, according to the review City Comptroller Scott Stringer's office released Friday.

Auditors who visited 299 of NYCHA's more than 320 developments across the city found some doors held open with rope, tape or chains, the comptroller's office said. More than half the entrance doors were unsecured at 61 of those complexes, the report found.

Stringer called on NYCHA to repair or replace the damaged doors that his office says leave tenants inside vulnerable and may break city rules.

"All New Yorkers should feel safe in their own homes – but hundreds of broken latches, busted locks, and doors held open by chains and rope leave NYCHA families without that basic sense of security," Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Stringer's auditors found unsecured doors at 65 percent of the complexes they visted across the city between July 10 and Aug. 29, according to the comptroller's office. Doors were found propped open or damaged by broken latches and missing parts, "compromising residents’ security and exposing buildings’ interiors to damaging weather conditions," the report says.

Auditors tested more than 4,500 doors and found nearly a quarter — about 23 percent — of all front doors and 21 percent of all rear or side doors were busted or unlockable, according to the report. And just over half of all front doors — 53 percent — had security cameras by them.

The comptroller's office pointed to four complexes where every front door auditors tested was open: Rangel Houses in Washington Heights, Kings Tower in Central Harlem, Coney Island Houses in Brooklyn and the Betances II 18 & Betances III 18 Houses in the South Bronx.

The state of NYCHA's building doors may violate city rules requiring buildings with eight or more apartments to have self-closing and self-locking doors at entrances, Deputy Comptroller for Audit Marjorie Landa wrote in letters to Stanley Brezenoff, the housing authority's interim chairman.

In addition to repairing and replacing busted doors, Stringer's office recommends that NYCHA regularly inspect all entrance doors, keep their locks working and place working security cameras at all entrances and exits.

The housing authority should also review its maintenance and security procedures and systems so that staff are immediately alerted to door problems and that doors are fixed promptly, the comptroller's office said.

Damage to NYCHA's doors has "a variety of causes, from wear and tear to tampering," housing authority spokeswoman Jasmine Blake said. The agency says broken doors should be reported to its Customer Contact Center at 718-707-7771.

"We will continue to inspect and repair doors urgently, and ask for our residents’ help in vigilantly reporting door damage whenever they see it," Blake said in an email.

The doors are just a small piece of NYCHA's mountain of infrastructural problems. The housing authority has a projected $31.8 billion in repair and replacement needs over the next five years. NYCHA also struggled last winter with widespread heating breakdowns that left thousands of tenants in the cold.

NYCHA is supposed to get a federal monitor as part of a settlement with federal prosecutors related to its failure to inspect apartments for lead paint. The agreement is awaiting approval by a federal judge.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's "Action Plan" for neighborhood safety has since 2014 put more than $140 million toward improving security at the 15 NYCHA complexes with the highest crime rates, an investment that includes new "layered-access control doors" and security cameras, the housing authority said.

(Lead image: Residents stand outside an East Harlem public housing complex in May 2015. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)