NYCHA’s outgoing watchdog, Bart Schwartz, on the difficult work ahead

When the federal government selected Bart M. Schwartz to oversee New York City’s troubled public housing system, home to more than 360,000 residents, he knew it would be a difficult job. After all, the agency had been caught lying about chief inspections, suffered several other scandals and was routinely criticized for mismanagement.

Since starting in 2019, he has dealt with leaking sewage raining down from a ceiling and hundreds of encounters with frustrated tenants. He helped expose a massive bribery and corruption scheme that broke a record for the Justice Department.

And yet he remains optimistic that change is possible for the New York City Housing Authority. On Wednesday, Mr. Schwartz, 77, said released its final report on NYCHA’s progress in meeting the terms of a federal settlement in which the agency agreed to improve its approach to persistent problems facing residents.

Some successes over the past five years include a 40 percent drop in heat complaints, a 50 percent drop in mold cases and a rapid increase in lead abatement, which occurred at 700 apartments in all of 2019 and averaged 400 per month . month now.

In an interview, Mr. Schwartz talked about some of the highs and lows of his tenure, saying there was still more work to do. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Suppose all the problems in the NYCHA buildings are resolved. Why would that be beneficial for the city?

The people who live there deserve to live in a safe, clean environment. Especially, you know, in the richest country, the richest city. We should be able to do better.

How did you know this would be a tough job?

I’ll give you an example. Very early on, our field researchers were in the Bronx, and they went into the laundry room in one of the buildings and there was sewage pouring out of a pipe in the ceiling. A maintenance worker did his best with a mop.

Our field researcher asked, “How long has this been going on?” He said, ‘Four weeks.’ The researcher asked, “Why isn’t it fixed?” The answer was: “Well, I reported it and we are waiting for the carpenters.”

“Why are you waiting for the carpenters to fix the pipe ceiling?” “Well, they’re going to build scaffolding so we can reach the ceiling.”

It was a Saturday evening. I called the Chief Operating Officer. I told him the story and they got a ladder there and they fixed it.

Do you think having more authority would have made solving these problems easier?

A very important part of being a successful monitor is that the entity being monitored learns how to do it themselves. If I took over and made all the daily decisions, they would always be leaning on something and someone. And when you leave, it returns to the old ways.

Dozens of NYCHA employees have recently been arrested and charged with taking bribes to award low-level, no-bid contracts known as “micro-purchases.”

The micro-purchase was a known problem. It was clear that there had been abuse.

I was hoping to find some examples of this because I felt that we could have the most direct impact on residents if we could get the inspections and work done fairly. So when we collected this information, we immediately turned it over to the Southern District Criminal Division and to the Department of Investigation. And they ran with it.

It took a little longer, but it became a bigger project. If they had taken two people in handcuffs in the first month, that would have been very helpful to me. But I understand why they did it.

Why did such a big problem persist for so long?

Because they focused on numbers and not values. The report came in that the plumber was there and had carried out three drains. But did they get it right? Did anyone care what he did?

Will the arrests solve the problem?

You can’t say that every ten years we will have a roundup of corrupt employees. That is not a solution. They need to build on this.

You say NYCHA needs to do a lot more work on its “values-based compliance.” What is that and why?

There are basically two types of compliance.

There is the regulation, which consists strictly of numbers, the law, which reaches the limit without going over it.

Then there is value-based compliance. What’s best? What is the right thing? What are you trying to achieve?

You can’t have a rule for everything. But if you have values, it’s like a safety net. People will think about being more conscientious, having more respect for residents, not assuming failure is acceptable, and trying to do their jobs better.

How satisfied are you?

I’m happy with the progress we’ve made because we’ve impacted operations, and the numbers show that. But more than that, we started to influence the culture. When I got there, failure was always an alternative.