Views of the NYC Housing Authority Cassidy-Lafayette Houses in New Brighton on Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022. (Staten Island Advance/Jason Paderon)Jason Paderon

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- More than half of the entrance doors to New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residential buildings -- including some on Staten Island -- are left open or have broken door locks, according to a recent audit.

The City Comptroller’s Office Audit Bureau released a report on Wednesday detailing unsecure residential building entrances observed during a review of building entry door security at 262 NYCHA developments between Aug. 30 and Sept. 8, 2022.

According to the report, 36.8% of residential building entrance doors were open and 40.1% of entrance door locks were broken. In addition, 37.5% of rear or side doors were found open, and 28.5% of rear or side door locks were broken.

The Audit Bureau emphasized the safety risk that unsecure entrances pose:

“Exterior doors that are not securely locked enable intruders and unauthorized person to gain access to buildings and potentially put residents and authorized guests at risk.”

ENTRANCES MUCH LESS SECURE THAN FOUR YEARS AGO

The Comptrollers’ Audit Bureau noted that their findings showed a significantly higher rate of unsecure entrances than when the office conducted the same review in 2018.

With the 2018 report, the Audit Bureau provided NYCHA the following recommendations to improve the conditions:

Comptroller Brad Lander sent the report in a letter to NYCHA Interim CEO Lisa Bova-Hiatt in which he referenced the previous recommendations concluding, “based on the results of our current review, it appears that NYCHA did not implement all of the above-listed recommendations.”

According to the report, the overall percentage of residential building entrance doors which were open and/or had broken door locks increased from 23.5% in 2018 to a staggering 57.9% in 2022.

The issue was observed in all five boroughs, including Staten Island where the percentage of unsecured entrance doors increased by 34.9% between 2018 and 2022, which is close to the citywide’s 34.4% increase.

Some developments on the Island had particularly alarming rates such as Cassidy-Lafayette Houses, which are exclusively senior living, where 100% of entrance door locks were broken in the 2022 review. The development also had a 75% increase in entrances that were not secured from 2018 to 2022, according to the report.

RESIDENTS EXPLAIN PROPPED OPEN DOORS

In the report, the Audit Bureau staff say that NYCHA residents anecdotally explained that doors are propped open because “intercoms, locks, keys, and door release buttons do not work and because residents lose their keys and replacement keys are expensive.”

“In one instance, a NYCHA resident informed us that the building’s intercoms have been broken for 10 years. In other instances, NYCHA residents and employees informed us that NYCHA had repaired doors and intercoms; however, they were soon broken again,” the Audit Bureau staff said.

They also reported observing opens doors where the automatic door-closer mechanisms did not work – specifically not automatically self-closing or securely latching onto the door frames.

In his letter to Bova-Hiatt, Lander pointed out that the unsecure entrances are not only a safety issue, the conditions may be in violation of city law.

His office provided the following new recommendations:

A spokesperson for NYCHA provided the following statement in response to the report:

“NYCHA takes the safety and security of residents very seriously and will work to repair all of the broken doors and building locks identified in this report.”

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