NYCHA Wasted Millions Fixing Roofs Covered By Warranties: Audit

NEW YORK — The New York City Housing Authority has wasted millions of dollars on roof repairs that should have been done for free under warranty while botching crucial inspections, a new audit says.

The beleaguered public housing authority invoked warranties to get repairs done in just nine of 709 times that leaky or damaged roofs needed fixing from 2009 to 2017, according to the audit City Comptroller Scott Stringer's office released Friday.

That meant NYCHA was routinely paying for repairs on its own when outside vendors should have done them at no additional cost, the audit says. In one case, auditors found the housing authority spent nearly $3.7 million to replace eight roofs at a Staten Island complex just 10 years into their lifespan without trying to have the work covered by warranties.

The findings so enraged Stringer that he demanded Mayor Bill de Blasio fire the NYCHA officials responsible for the blunders.

"I think he should call in every major overpaid executive that has allowed this to fester for years and years with no acountability," Stringer said at a news conference outside the Ingersoll Houses in Brooklyn. "He should take this audit, dump it on the desk and say, 'Enough is enough.'"

The audit is just the latest sign of trouble for the nation's largest public housing agency as it's being overseen by an independent monitor under a sweeping deal with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But NYCHA says it is already on top of the problems Stringer identified.

"The Comptroller’s audit and recommendations are consistent with what the Authority has been aware of and addressing through new systems we are already implementing," NYCHA spokesperson Chester Soria said in a statement.

Spokespeople for de Blasio did not immediately comment on Stringer's call for heads to roll at NYCHA.

Warranties could help NYCHA mitigate the hefty costs of maintaining its aging buildings' roofs, Stringer's office says. The housing authority spent about $452 million from 2000 to 2010 to install more than 700 new roofs that should still be covered by 20-year warranties, according to the office.

But NYCHA's shoddy inspection, maintenance and repair practices put it at risk of voiding those warranties, the audit contends.

Auditors found ponding water, cracks, soft spots and other nasty conditions on 88 percent of the 35 roofs they inspected, the comptroller's office said. Photos included in the audit show algae growth atop a Roosevelt Houses II building in Bed-Stuy, a sagging roof at the East Village's Wald Houses and a pool of water at the Williamsburg Houses.

NYCHA's own workers should have found and fixed those problems, but more than a quarter of the relevant monthly inspection reports were missing and only two of those that existed detailed problems with the roofs, according to Stringer's office.

In cases when NYCHA did make repairs, the authority didn't make sure properly trained staffers were doing the work, which could put warranties in jeopardy, the audit found.

But missing records may have made it difficult to use the warranties anyway. Ten of the 13 complexes that auditors inspected didn't even have copies of the roof warranty and all of them lacked the full set of documents to meet warranty requirements, Stringer's office said.

"The records at NYCHA didn't ... reflect that the maintenance, the inspections were done as they were supposed to have been done," Deputy Comptroller for Audit Marjorie Landa said.

Stringer isn't the only official to spot NYCHA's warrantly blunders. Federal monitor Bart M. Schwartz alluded to the problem in his inaugural quarterly report published Monday, saying the housing authority needs to make better use of its internal management system.

"Unfortunately, we have found that NYCHA has not been keeping track of the majority of its warranties and does not have a full understanding of whether they are still in effect or valid based on the warranty terms," Schwartz's report says.

The housing authority agreed with most of the 27 recommendations the comptroller's office put forward. In a letter to Landa, NYCHA General Manager Vito Mustaciuolo said some initiatives related to project management and document storage were already underway. The authority's management "was aware of some gaps in oversight," he said.

"NYCHA is committed to providing safe, clean, and connected communities for everyone who lives in public housing," Mustaciuolo wrote.