The New York City Housing Authority stopped inspecting apartments for lead in 2012 but for years continued to claim it was in compliance with federal regulations, putting thousands of families with kids at risk of being poisoned, according to an investigation by the city's Inspector General.  

A report on the investigation found NYCHA executives never performed "basic due diligence checks" to ensure that the forms that certified NYCHA was lead-paint compliant were accurate. Even though forms submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development must be true, under penalty of perjury.

The report says that NYCHA claimed annual apartment inspections were halted in 2012 because the Bloomberg Administration decided to focus their resources on reducing a serious backlog of work orders submitted by tenants who needed general repairs to their apartments. It was during those annual inspections that workers would have searched for lead-paint hazards.  

The city's Department of Investigation Commissioner, Mark Peters, said NYCHA CEO Shola Olatoye knew about the false claims in 2016 and yet a false annual report still went out that year. 

"When you both don't follow the rules and then knowingly file false certifications saying that you are, that's dangerous," Peters said. "Not only because you may have lead in the building but because it makes it impossible for enforcement agencies to know what is going on."

NYCHA said it informed HUD about the issue prior to the annual report going out, during a quarterly oversight meeting at HUD's central office in Washington, D.C. By then, NYCHA had started to fix the problem because of a separate investigation by U.S. Attorneys in the Southern District. That investigation is ongoing.

According to NYCHA, workers visually inspected that year more than 4,200 apartments where a child under 6 lived and where the presence of lead paint had not been ruled out. Inspectors found 2,363 apartment that needed to be repainted, which has been done. There are 50,000 other apartments without children which also needed inspections — it was unclear if NYCHA is currently inspecting those apartments.  

Among other things, Peters called for NYCHA to hire a monitor that would oversee its compliance with safety regulations. In a written statement, NYCHA spokeswoman Jean Weinberg wrote in part , "We owe our residents better and we'll take today's recommendations into careful consideration."