HUD official trapped in elevator during New York City public housing visit

February 18, 2019 11:00 pm • Last Updated: February 19, 2019 10:41 pm

By By KAREN MATTHEWS

Regional Housing and Urban Development Administrator Lynne Patton, left, and NYCHA Tenant Association President and resident host Carmen Quinones, look at trash bins used to catch a water leak, in the Douglass Houses in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019. Patton is spending the next four weeks living in four different New York City Housing Authority buildings to get an up-close look at the city's troubled public housing developments by living there. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal housing official's monthlong tour of New York City public housing complexes hit a speed bump when she got stuck in an elevator Tuesday.

Lynne Patton and 10 other people including reporters and photographers were trapped in an elevator at the Frederick Douglass Houses in Manhattan for about 10 minutes when someone accidentally hit the alarm switch. The group had to be freed by firefighters.

"Thank you, New York's Bravest! Sadly, NYCHA residents — elderly & disabled — endure this type of debilitating systematic failure on a regular basis," Patton later posted on Facebook, using the acronym for the New York City Housing Authority.

Patton, the New York-New Jersey regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is spending four weeks living in four different NYCHA complexes.

She spent last week at the Patterson Houses in the Bronx, where she joined an aerobics class and used an obscenity to describe the dilapidated state of some apartments.

Regional Housing and Urban Development Administrator Lynne Patton, right, accompanied by New York State Sen. Brian Benjamin, use stairs after being trapped in a stalled elevator in the Douglass Houses, in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019. Patton is spending the next four weeks living in four different New York City Housing Authority buildings to get an up-close look at the city's troubled public housing developments by living there. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Regional Housing and Urban Development Administrator Lynne Patton, center, accompanied by U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, left, and NYCHA Tenant Association President and resident host Carmen Quinones, see water leakage and damage in an apartment in the Douglass Houses in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019. Patton is spending the next four weeks living in four different New York City Housing Authority buildings to get an up-close look at the city's troubled public housing developments by living there. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Regional Housing and Urban Development Administrator Lynne Patton, left, talks with 10-year-old Wynter Domeneck and sees the cardboard-patched wall behind her toilet, in the Douglass Houses in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019. Patton is spending the next four weeks living in four different New York City Housing Authority buildings to get an up-close look at the city's troubled public housing developments by living there. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

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