![]() ![]() She was hired in 2009 on the recommendation of Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s then-personal lawyer who pleaded guilty in August to arranging illegal hush money payments during Trump’s presidential campaign. Patton is comfortable around the multimillionaire set, thanks to her former occupation as a personal aide to the Trump family. ![]() ![]() “If helping Lara pick out a wedding dress makes me a wedding planner,” she said, “then I guess every woman in America is a wedding planner!” Tuesday night, on the sofa, after falling asleep watching “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” She sat in the same Patterson Houses apartment living room where she had spent the previous two nights. She was eager to correct the record as she sat down with City & State right after the tour. That does not mean, despite what you may have read, that she is a wedding planner. “Not only is this the United States of America, but this is the greatest city in the world.” “I’m disgusted … it’s very emotional,” she said, holding back tears near the sink while the camera clicked. A photographer stopped her on the way out, urging her back into the bathroom to pose under the peeling paint. And it has put Patton back in the spotlight, which she loves.Īfter Maldonado’s soggy walls were sufficiently scrutinized, Patton headed toward the door while thanking her host. It’s earned her both high-profile praise andcriticism. Her stays have put public pressure on the housing authority to fix myriad issues, particularly in theapartments and complexes that Patton visits. It has put a human face to the federal agency, which is exerting growing influence over NYCHA, including the appointment of a federal monitor agreed to as part of a major legal settlement in January. It’s a bold plan, and one without precedent among HUD appointees. She, the well-compensated, upper-class Trump family personal-aide-turned-administrator, plans to spend a month’s worth of weeknights in NYCHA apartments, crashing on an air mattress on her hosts’ floors in order to get an up-close and personal look at life in the housing projects her agency oversees. That effort, getting long-delayed capital repairs finally completed, is the most straightforward goal of Patton’s experiment in radical empathy. ![]() “Do you have your work order number?” Patton asked, promising to pass it along to NYCHA management and get the problem, which has plagued Maldonado since 2017, resolved once and for all. Photographers jostled for position as Patton looked at a wall in Maldonado’s bathroom, paint peeling and plaster soggy. But in apartment 2E, the home of Judith Maldonado, leaking water was the day’s main attraction. The reporters – plus the hundreds of people who have watched it on Facebook Live – were on a tour of the Patterson Houses, a typical cluster of South Bronx high-rises beset by problems typical of the New York City Housing Authority: mold, leaks, poor heating, lead paint, rats. In the middle of the pack was a HUD aide holding an iPhone aloft to livestream the whole thing on Patton’s HUD Facebook page. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s regional administrator for New York and New Jersey, strode into the apartment, leading a dozen reporters, TV cameras and photographers through the door. “Hi there!” she said as a woman opened the door to her. One of President Donald Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers stood in front of the door to apartment 2E. ![]()
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