It can take forever to get something repaired at NYCHA — unless there’s an official visiting, residents told The Post Wednesday.
“When somebody’s coming here that’s considered important they will ramp up [maintenance],” said Gilbert Cruz, 53, who lives at the Frederick Douglass Houses in Manhattan, where HUD regional administrator Lynne Patton lived for a week last month.
“When somebody important is going to come, or when HUD comes out here, especially on the funding cycle, they’ll go they’ll paint the benches, they’ll fix all the garbage containers, they’ll do whatever they have to do to make it OK.”
He added: “Once they leave one month later, everything’s back to normal. Garbage gets piled up. Buildings don’t get cleaned adequately.”
The repairs included long-needed fixes to the busted front door on the building where Patton was staying and new mailboxes, residents said.
“We got a locked door,” said a resident who gave her name only as Jessica.
But the complex’s longstanding problems were unchanged.
A FedEx worker, Joevan Peguero, 29, got stuck in an elevator while a Post reporter was there Wednesday and had to be rescued by the Fire Department. He said it was the second time he was stranded.
“This is the worst. Asbestos, mold, the whole nine yards,” said one longtime resident of the complex, who didn’t want to be identified. “I used to work with [the Department of Housing Preservation and Development] so I know. This is the worst.”
The story was similar at the Patterson Houses in the South Bronx, the first complex that Patton lived in for a week during her month-long NYCHA tour.
“They tried to make it look clean in here like the floors and stuff but now if you look at it it’s disgusting. Horrible,” said 21-year-old Tiffany C., who grew up in the complex.
“The [apartment] she was staying in it started leaking again. They didn’t even fix it right, the ceiling, it started leaking again.”
NYCHA officials insisted they didn’t order staff to blitz complexes with repairs before Patton’s arrival.
“Staff were not instructed to do any additional work beyond their normal responsibilities at any of the sites where Lynne Patton has been staying,” one told The Post.
But Patton, who is wrapping up her month-long public housing live-in this week, said she expected the repair blitzes.
“Every time I go to a NYCHA property, they always manage to get the trash picked up on time,” Patton told The Post. “NYCHA has claimed they haven’t done anything differently, but ask the residents.”
