President Trump could do his fellow New Yorkers a big favor by blasting out a tweet or two about NYCHA — since that may be the only way to get Mayor Bill de Blasio to get serious about the never-ending scandals at the city’s public housing authority.
On Thursday, the Health Department finally provided the first holistic count of the number of children under 18 living in public housing who’ve tested positive for lead exposure since 2012.
The figure: 1,160 kids, of whom 215 tested positive more than once, for a total of 1,375 — nearly twice the number in past reckonings. And 758 of those children, comprising 820 total positive tests, were under the age of 6.
All this, while the agency failed to perform legally required inspections — and then lied about it to the feds, forcing the city to settle a federal investigation for $2.2 billion and agree to oversight from DC.
Health Commissioner Mary Bassett apologized for the delay in finally revealing just how bad the lead-exposure crisis is and for the “confusion” that the “swirl of numbers” has generated. But the mayor wasn’t by her side: He was busy appearing on “Morning Joe” to tout all the anti-Trump candidates “acting like real Democrats” and laud Cynthia Nixon for her debate performance against Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
De Blasio finally took a lead-paint question on the issue at an afternoon NYPD press conference — but he stuck with his the-real-news-is-actually-good approach.
Meanwhile, the Department of Investigation stepped in to take charge of the growing scandal of on-the-clock staff orgies at NYCHA’s Throggs Neck Houses in the Bronx.
DOI found out about the allegations but then ceded control of the investigation to NYCHA itself. Yet it now turns out that the alleged ringleader is the daughter of a top agency official. Plus, NYCHA didn’t even discipline anyone until that fact was exposed by The Post this week.
Bad enough that Team de Blasio reportedly put NYCHA on the back burner, even as conditions deteriorated to the point where the repair bill tops $31 billion. Worse that the mayor won’t get real in the face of day after day of horrible NYCHA news.
