Shola Olatoye NYCHA Chairwoman, Step Down, Frustrated Tenant and Advocates calls.

Frustrated tenants and advocates rallied outside City Hall Thursday, calling for NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye to step down.

 

 

A coalition of churches and housing advocates, Metro IAF, says NYCHA's failures to repair decrepit apartments have worsened under Mayor de Blasio, despite his pledge to get NYCHA under control.

"We had great hope for Mayor de Blasio, but so far he has not lived up to his promise to turn public housing around," the Rev. Ed Mason declared to a crowd of 100 hoisting signs such as "Hey Bill! Come Take A Shower In My Moldy Bathroom."

 

This was all a familiar refrain for Linden Houses tenant Dorinda Pannell.

One of her neighbors' walls recently collapsed because of a busted pipe that was showering water between several apartments.

"It sounded like a mini-Niagara Falls," she said.

NYCHA sent a plasterer instead of a plumber to seal up the wall with the leak behind it, until she stepped in and got them to do the job right.

"If they had checked the leak from the beginning, the wall wouldn't have collapsed," she said.