That presents a problem for Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who declared the tap water at Riis Houses safe to drink in 2022, following another water contamination scare.

Decades of neglect and mismanagement within the massive housing system have turned New York City into one of the nation’s largest slumlords — with many of the nearly half-million residents living in crumbling buildings, with broken boilers, faulty elevators and lead paint. The circumstances have saddled Adams and his predecessors with a crisis that appears all but unsolvable for future mayors.

Public housing residents throughout the city have been raising concerns about unsafe living conditions — including possible water contamination — for years. The situation grew so dire, a judge appointed a federal monitor in 2019. The housing authority’s handling of resident complaints since then poses a new political and managerial challenge for Adams.

The mayor is still awaiting the findings of a city Department of Investigation probe into that 2022 incident, prompted by Riis Houses residents complaining of cloudy and foul-smelling water. Initial tests were positive for unsafe levels of arsenic, but city officials blamed the findings on a lab error and said retesting found little to no trace of arsenic.

Barbara Brancaccio, executive vice president and chief communications officer for NYCHA, said the housing authority stands by its 2022 test results showing there was never any arsenic in the water at Riis Houses.

“The process has been investigated and put through rigorous evaluation, with robust public transparency, and there is no arsenic in the water,” she said in a statement.

Some of the housing authority’s toughest critics remain skeptical.

“NYCHA’s track record on health and safety has historically been cause for concern—a consequence of local mismanagement and federal disinvestment,” Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat who grew up in public housing, said in a statement when presented with POLITICO’s findings. “It is in the nature of all institutions to cover up rather than come clean, and NYCHA is no exception to the rule of self-preservation.”

Torres told POLITICO the housing authority “has an obligation to thoroughly test the water at Riis Houses and ensure that there is no arsenic endangering the health and safety of its residents.”

City Hall spokesperson William Fowler said hundreds of water samples, including from inside apartments and rooftop water tanks, have “conclusively shown no water quality concerns at Riis Houses” and noted that arsenic cannot be tasted, seen or smelled in water.

“Let’s be abundantly clear: there is no arsenic, nor has there ever been any arsenic in the city’s water supply, including the water provided at Riis Houses,” Fowler said in a statement.

Hill and her neighbors said they have tried to avoid drinking the water ever since the testing fiasco and now want NYCHA to revisit the issue.

Hill’s doctors have similarly raised alarm.

“It is critical that the water in her building be tested immediately for arsenic and that appropriate measures be taken to avoid any further exposure for residents of the building,” a doctor at NYU Langone Medical Center’s emergency department wrote in a March 1 note provided to Hill and reviewed by POLITICO.

Hill, who developed sores on the soles of her feet and tingling and numbness in her fingers, said she sent NYCHA the note in March. But no one ever tested her water and instead, an agency official sent her a memo from 2022 stating that “unsafe levels of arsenic are not, and were never, present in the water supply at Jacob Riis Houses.”

In April, she filed suit in housing court demanding that the housing authority test her apartment’s water, and a judge has since ordered an inspection.

An investigation by the former federal monitor appointed to oversee NYCHA, Bart Schwartz, faulted a broken water pump and an inattentive, inexperienced superintendent for the debacle at Riis Houses, where about 4,000 people live. But the investigation does not appear to have broached the fundamental question of what was or was not in the dirty water that spurred residents’ complaints.

Schwartz, through a spokesperson, declined an interview request.

The saga at Riis Houses prompted NYCHA to establish an office of water quality, which is responsible for identifying and addressing possible contaminants. Brancaccio said the city Department of Environmental Protection, out of an abundance of caution, tested the water supply from a nearby city water main in the first week of April and did not detect arsenic.

Nevertheless, residents and elected officials are voicing a familiar concern — that conditions at the housing authority are deteriorating to the point of causing physical harm to residents. Former mayors Mike Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio were similarly unable to fix problems at the housing authority, despite increasing funding, hiring a nationally renowned housing leader and tapping into an Obama-era program to partner with private developers.

Adams inherited an agreement signed by de Blasio that requires the city to spend $2.2 billion over a decade to fix living conditions for some 361,000 residents of the housing authority’s 335 developments.

That deal stemmed from a Justice Department investigation in 2018 that found NYCHA endangered tenants by covering up its failures to address lead paint and other hazards. The scandal put a national spotlight on public housing tenants’ living conditions and prompted former President Donald Trump’s administration to install a federal monitor to oversee the housing authority’s compliance with required reforms. A new monitor started in February, after Schwartz’s five-year contract expired.

The water testing in 2022 failed to persuade Hill and other Riis Houses tenants that the foul-smelling, brown water they said still sometimes spouts from their faucets is safe. Hill showed POLITICO videos of cloudy water tainted with brown flecks coming from her sink and faucets.

“Everyone is afraid to use the water,” Daphne Williams, the Riis Houses’ tenant association president, said in an interview. “We’re looking at the particles in the water. We’re looking at the color of the water.”

Hill and three of her neighbors told POLITICO they believe the water is to blame for their deteriorating health in recent months. All four described similar symptoms: a burning itch, digestive problems, joint pain and hair loss, among other issues.

“I don’t think they’ve been straight up with us,” Mildred Gonzalez, one of Hill’s next-door neighbors, said in an interview.

All four said they refuse to drink their tap water — when, they said, they can afford to buy bottled water — but avoiding it entirely is impossible.

Gonzalez, who is 61, said her eyes turn red and she develops rashes after showering. Sabrina Dingle, a lifelong Riis Houses resident, said her skin burns and itches after she showers. Her hair started falling out around the same time as Hill’s.

“It felt like my hair was on fire,” Dingle said.

Carlos Viner said he recently gave his dog tap water instead of bottled water and it prompted a bout of diarrhea. Dingle said the same happened to her dog on a recent day when she could not afford to buy bottled water.

Health and public housing officials have been quick to invoke other possibilities.

A letter to Hill from the state Department of Health said arsenic levels similar to hers “have been associated with eating fish and other seafood containing arsenic,” which is “much less harmful than other forms of arsenic.” Hill said allergies prevent her from eating either. Nor does she smoke tobacco, another common source of arsenic exposure.

Meanwhile, a number of other potentially hazardous contaminants lurk close to home.

At the complex one afternoon in April, as residents trickled in wheeling carts of bottled water, gusts of wind carried the smell of sewage.

Hill recently moved back into her apartment after several weeks in a hotel room booked by NYCHA, which had been conducting abatement work for asbestos found in her floor tiles, testing records show. She normally leaves the windows open to dilute the persistent smell of mold and mildew, she said, but lately the outdoor air is even worse, blowing dustlike particles onto her window sills.

The Riis Houses site was previously home to a manufactured gas plant, causing underground contamination that will soon undergo a cleanup plan overseen by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Department officials say a separate, ongoing cleanup project related to Hurricane Sandy is not impacting drinking water quality.

The residents who spoke to POLITICO said NYCHA should retest the water in their apartments and bring in medical professionals to evaluate everyone in the complex. Hill said the situation calls for Adams to return to Riis Houses, where in 2022 he was filmed drinking the water from one resident’s kitchen sink.

“He needs to come back and see what’s happening,” Hill said, “because this is real.”