Opinion

Despite everything, NYCHA remains a despicable landlord for public-housing tenants

It never changes: Despite a monumental lead-inspection scandal at the New York City Housing Authority, years of complaints about horrid building conditions and the appointment of a federal monitor, tenants still can’t seem to get things fixed in their apartments.

The Post’s Nolan Hicks and Oumou Fofana found that NYCHA’s citywide maintenance backlog has ballooned to nearly 584,000 repair and maintenance requests in October — up from 461,000 in October 2020. At the Castle Hill Houses in The Bronx, the number topped 11,000 in recent months.

Castle Hill tenants were told COVID was to blame — the agency didn’t have enough repair personnel available. But there’s always an excuse.

In his most recent quarterly report, court-appointed monitor Bart Schwartz cited the Housing Authority’s Operations Division as problematic: “NYCHA must increase its efforts to improve operational performance with the resources it presently has” and adopt “a true service-delivery mentality and culture of integrity among staff.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Bill de Blasio long ago proved himself content to leave the city as the New York’s worst slumlord: Even as NYCHA faces $40 billion in repairs and a $250 million annual-operating-budget shortfall, he gave it just $24 million from the feds’ $5.9 billion in COVID-relief funds this year.

Maybe that will change under Mayor-elect Eric Adams. But tenants shouldn’t have to live in broken-down apartments forever just because they’re run by a government agency.