Audit Report on the New York City Housing Authority’s Repairs of Day Care Centers Located in NYCHA Buildings

Introduction

The New York City (City) Housing Authority’s (NYCHA’s) mission is to provide safe, affordable housing and facilitating access to social and community services in an effort to increase opportunities for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. NYCHA residents have access within its developments to a network of over 400 community centers, senior centers, health care centers, and day/childcare centers. This audit focused on the day care and childcare centers (childcare centers or centers) located in NYCHA buildings.

Each childcare center is operated by a not-for-profit corporation which is responsible for overseeing the operations of the centers. In turn, childcare centers have contracts with city agencies that serve as their primary funding source. Prior to July 1, 2019, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) was the primary funding source for the majority of the childcare centers. As of July 1, 2019, that role was assumed by the Department of Education (DOE).

Pursuant to NYCHA policy, it enters into leases with the not-for-profit corporations that sponsor the individual childcare centers for the centers’ use of NYCHA’s space. The leases should define the rights and responsibilities of each party, including who is responsible for making repairs. In connection with the repairs that NYCHA is responsible for making, the childcare centers are required to submit repair requests to NYCHA’s customer contact center, where NYCHA staff document all requests received in Maximo, NYCHA’s asset management computer system.

According to documentation obtained from NYCHA, 104 childcare centers were located within NYCHA facilities as of September 2019. As of November 2020, NYCHA remains responsible for the overall repair of the buildings housing 90 of these childcare centers.

Audit Findings and Conclusions

The audit found that NYCHA management does not have adequate controls over repairs performed at the childcare centers in its buildings. Among other things, NYCHA: 1) does not ensure that it documents the responsibilities of each party for making repairs; 2) does not have a uniform procedure in place to notify the childcare centers of repair requests made to it that it determines are not the responsibility of the agency; and 3) is not able to readily track the status and resolution of repairs that require the creation of multiple work orders.

Overall, the combination of NYCHA’s failure to consistently clarify the parties’ respective responsibilities for making repairs, and of NYCHA’s lack of a formal process for notifying the operators when it is not making a requested repair because it deems the repair to be a center’s responsibility, increases the likelihood that repairs will not be made or will not be made timely. Accordingly, the weaknesses identified by this audit, if not corrected, increase the risk that the children being cared for in childcare centers located in NYCHA buildings will not be provided with a safe and healthy environment.

Audit Recommendations

To address the issues raised by this audit, we make eight recommendations, including the following:

• NYCHA should enter into written leases with all of the childcare centers that operate out of NYCHA buildings and clearly set forth the responsibilities of each party, including responsibilities for repairs.
• NYCHA should establish a formal procedure for promptly informing childcare center officials of a determination that a repair request falls outside of NYCHA’s responsibility.
• NYCHA should document its communications with the childcare centers that a repair request was closed by NYCHA without a repair being made because the repair is the responsibility of the childcare center and not NYCHA.
• NYCHA should develop a formal process to independently verify that work orders were closed out properly and that work was completed as reported.
• NYCHA should create a mechanism for it to efficiently track repair requests placed by childcare centers from the receipt of a repair request to its final disposition so that the agency can efficiently and effectively determine the number of complaints open at any one time and the total time it takes to resolve such complaints.

Agency Response

In its response, NYCHA generally agreed with the audit’s eight recommendations.