After years of complaints from residents of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) problems such as lead poisoning in children, the city has agreed to provide $1.2 billion in capital funding over the course of five years and $200 million every year thereafter to improve conditions in public housing.

Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA) filed a legal complaint against the administration that houses a population of 400,000 after mismanagement of services led employees lying on inspection reports.

According to the Berman, among the inadequacies of New York’s public housing were rat and roach infestations, elevator outages, and mold in apartments. During the winter of this year, 320,000 residents, which make up 80 percent of the public housing population, had no heat. The problems were enabled in part by NYCHA staff who were provided with a list of “Quick Fix Tips” to improve its Public Housing Assessment System inspection scores.

For Councilman Ritchie Torres of District 15, the former chair of the Council’s public committee and longstanding advocate for fixing public housing, the finding “exposes systemic falsehood and failure at the highest levels of the de Blasio Administration and the New York City Housing Authority.”

“New Yorkers have every right to feel betrayed by a government that not only lied to them but also put their health and safety at risk,” said Torres in a statement. “As a product of public housing, I surely do.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio defended his administration, telling reporters, “The federal government disinvested progressively over years but the City and the State government often turned their backs on public housing as well.”