Trump Housing Official Trapped In NYCHA Elevator Rescued By FDNY

Lynne Patton at the Republican National Convention in 2016

A Trump housing official's stay at an Upper West Side NYCHA building got off to a fittingly rocky start on Tuesday, when she found herself trapped inside a broken elevator surrounded by a gaggle of reporters.

Lynne Patton, the regional administrator at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was touring the Frederick Douglass Houses earlier this morning when the building's elevator got stuck, according to PIX11 reporter Monica Morales, who was also inside. A spokesperson for the FDNY confirmed that they received a call about the incident at 11:40 a.m., and had freed everyone trapped inside by noon.

Patton, a close associate of the Trump family and former party planner appointed to the HUD leadership role in 2017, has vowed to spend the month living in four different NYCHA apartments. She stayed at the Patterson Houses in the Bronx last week, and moved into the 18-building Frederick Douglass complex on Monday night—reportedly prompting a frantic effort by NYCHA staff to polish the buildings' floors and remove excess trash ahead of her arrival.

"We went to a ton of shithole apartments, as my boss would say," Patton said of the Patterson Houses, echoing Trump's comments about immigrants from Haiti and Africa. "We went to a ton of them. They are horrible."

Patton intends to bring the findings from her month-long residency to HUD Secretary Ben Carson and a federal monitor, which was given some authority over NYCHA in a deal announced last month. The new agreement stipulates that the city spend $2.2 billion over the next decade on repairs at the crumbling public housing apartments, but does not include additional federal funding.

While Mayor Bill de Blasio has praised the deal, longtime public servant and interim NYCHA chairman Stanley Brezenoff refused to sign the paperwork, calling it a "receiver in anything but name." City Hall subsequently announced Brezenoff's exit. A search for his replacement—which HUD now gets to sign off on—is currently underway.

Meanwhile, a recent Real Deal investigation into the chronically broken elevators at NYCHA buildings found that there have been 73 injuries inside elevators since 2013, a rate that is five times higher than other city buildings. A spokesperson for NYCHA said on Tuesday that "staff are continuing to work on the elevator to put it back in service."