The New York City Housing Authority was six months late in implementing stricter federal guidelines that mandate inspections of apartments where kids under 6 are found with high lead levels of blood — yet more rule-breaking by the beleaguered agency that potentially left kids in harm’s way.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s tougher regulation was announced on Jan 13, 2017, and local housing authorities were given until July 13, 2017 to comply.
But NYCHA didn’t implement the rule until January 2018, officials admit.
The new rule lowered the threshold of lead levels in the blood of children under age 6 — to 5 micrograms per deciliter — that triggers mandated inspections of apartments for lead hazards.
The city’s Department of Health had previously only inspected NYCHA apartments when children under 6 registered blood lead levels at 10 micrograms or higher.
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been recommending the lower threshold since 2012, and HUD adopted those recommendations in the face of increasing evidence that no elevated lead levels in the blood are safe for young kids.
“This important change to HUD’s Lead Safe Housing Rule will allow for a faster response when a young child.. is exposed to lead-based paint hazards in their HUD-assisted homes, a key component of a primary prevention strategy,” HUD said in a January 2017 press release.
City officials told The Post they were six months late in implementing the new mandate because it took time for NYCHA and the Health Department to formalize how the new inspections would work — even though NYCHA’s protocols for inspecting lead hazards have been under a microscope for more than two years.
The Manhattan US Attorney’s office recently concluded a two-year probe that found widespread failures at NYCHA to follow the rules meant to protect kids from lead hazards, and years of deception intended to keep those failings from federal officials and from the public.
A June 2018 settlement established a federal monitor for NYCHA and committed the city to spend $2.2 billion in capital funding at public housing developments.
The six-month lapse in implementing HUD’s new rule was also kept from the public.
NYCHA didn’t announce its move to a lower threshold until June 30, 2018. There was no mention of the 6-month implementation delay, nor that the move was mandated by HUD.
The announcement came at the same time as city health officials revealed that at least 820 cases of blood lead levels between 5 and 9 micrograms were identified at NYCHA apartments with young kids from 2012 to 2016.
Officials say that there have been 40 cases of blood lead levels at 5 micrograms or above reported at NYCHA apartments between July 2017 and June 2018.
They said when they implemented the new HUD rule in January, they retroactively inspected apartments where elevated blood lead levels were confirmed between July and December 2017.
But that still could have left kids living in apartments with lead hazards for many months longer than they would have if the city had implemented the new rule on time, as required.
Asked this week why the city had chosen not to publicize its compliance with the new HUD rules in January, Mayor de Blasio disagreed that it was a conscious decision.
“I don’t agree with that statement,” he said Tuesday during an unrelated press conference in The Bronx. ���We have been constantly communicating as we learn things, as we refine strategies, and we’re going to keep doing it.”
Just hours later, his spokesman Eric Phillips tweeted, “NYCHA should have told the public in January, for sure.”