This HUD Official Just Found a Very Convenient Excuse to Delay Moving From Trump Plaza to Public Housing

The former Trump family event planner claims her plan had been to move in Monday.

A NYCHA resident uses buckets to catch leaking water.Seth Wenig/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Lynne Patton, the Department of Housing and Urban Development official who was once a Trump family event planner, earned headlines and snark when she announced in November that she was going to move into public housing administered by the New York City Housing Authority. Patton, HUD’s regional administrator who oversees New York and New Jersey, said the goal was to bring attention to the plight of the 400,000 New Yorkers living in public housing.

Patton was scheduled to leave her cushy home at Trump Plaza and move into an NYCHA building sometime in January. On Monday, however, she conveniently announced that January 7 was originally move-in day, but because of the partial government shutdown, she’d have to stay put. The shutdown, which began over President Donald Trump’s demand for funding for the border wall, is on its 16th day, and has left a slew of agencies shuttered and 800,000 federal employees furloughed or working without pay.

NYCHA has been languishing for decades. Residents are consistently without heat and running water, and many of the 2,400 buildings are in a constant state of disrepair. Currently, NYCHA needs $31.8 billion over five years to make all the necessary repairs.

“It was not okay for me to preside over the largest housing crisis in the nation from the warmth and comfort of my own safe and sanitary apartment while NYCHA residents continue to suffer the most inhumane conditions,” Patton told the Washington Post in November. Patton largely placed the blame on housing authority officials who she said were inept and indifferent to the residents’ suffering.

Meanwhile, the federal government has drastically cut funding for NYCHA over the past two decades. Since 2001, Washington has cut the housing authority’s operating and capital funding budget by $2.7 billion. Trump initially tried to cut $1.92 billion from the housing authority’s capital fund, but ultimately signed off on a bill that increases capital funding last year.

Like many housing agencies across the country, NYCHA could be in serious trouble if the shutdown continues for as long as Trump and others have suggested. “We have enough cash flow to get us a few weeks,” New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio said in December. “But if it goes a month or more, we’re going to have some very tough choices to make.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate