Shola Olatoye’s long goodbye

Why the chairwoman of the scandal-plagued NYCHA resigned when she did.

The tenure of the city’s most embattled bureaucrat came to merciful end Tuesday, when New York City Housing Authority Chairwoman Shola Olatoye announced she would quit her job after months of turmoil.

Her departure was politically inevitable after scandals involving falsely certified lead paint inspections and faulty boilers that left thousands without heat, her allies conceded.

“She saw an opening where the conversation wasn’t centered around her personally, narrative had shifted to the institution, so maybe that was a good time for her to gracefully bow out,” said National Action Network’s Kirsten Foy, a friend who supported Olatoye’s hiring. “The administration did not want her to leave. The mayor has invested heavily in supporting her.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio hired Olatoye four years ago to right the beleaguered agency that was running a $77 million budget deficit and needed $18 billion to fix its crumbling complexes when she started.

But two errors proved insurmountable and her dismissal was inevitable, political observers say.

First, Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters bore down on NYCHA’s failure to conduct mandatory lead paint inspections in apartments despite assuring federal housing officials the work had been done. The investigations had sprung from a 2016 federal inquiry into lead inspections, and several staffers have resigned in response.

City Council members excoriated Olatoye in a December Council hearing for approving the federal paperwork while she blamed underlings for passing along incorrect information.

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