(Editorial Observer)

The teaser came in a midevening tweet.

Lynne Patton, the Trump family event planner whom the president named regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, had a surprise for Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Oh, and for the 400,000 people who live in New York City’s public housing, too.

“Thrilled to announce that @SecretaryCarson is coming to NYC tomorrow to make a huge & historic announcement that will be great news for the residents of @NYCHA!” Patton wrote on Twitter on Wednesday night. “However, whether or not this announcement will be great news for the @NYCMayor remains to be seen ... ”

That would be Ben Carson, HUD secretary, who once said that public housing should not be “a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me.’” And NYCHA is the New York City Housing Authority, the public housing system plagued with broken furnaces and elevators, mold, vermin, lead paint and about $32 billion in needed repairs over the next five years.

In New York, Patton’s tweet set off a small panic, as officials, reporters and public housing residents scrambled to find out just what the Trump administration had in mind for a system crippled by decades of neglect and underfunding from Washington and mismanagement by its city-appointed leadership.

Was HUD going to take over NYCHA? Was the president planning to level the Queensbridge Houses and replace them with a gleaming tower of Trump condos?

Patton wasn’t saying. “Maybe. Maybe not,” she tweeted to a journalist who said it sounded like HUD might take over the city housing authority.

In other words, New York, stay tuned!

The City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, who grew up in public housing, may have put it best. “Playing coy,” Johnson said, when so many residents are “living in horrific conditions — is disgusting,” he tweeted. “This isn’t a ratings ploy. This is real life. Enough with the games.”

On Thursday, Carson came to New York City for the big reveal about a new agreement with the city, NYCHA and the federal prosecutors who had threatened a lawsuit over the dismal living conditions and a lead-paint scandal.

The new agreement gives HUD somewhat more powers than a deal that a federal judge rejected last year.

The judge said that the earlier deal did not create strict enough standards to ensure problems would be solved, and that HUD had failed in its duty to conduct proper oversight of the agency.

The new plan calls for HUD and federal prosecutors, rather than the judge, to appoint a monitor at the housing authority. It requires the mayor to choose a new head of the authority from a list of candidates preapproved by federal officials, rather than on his own. And the agreement includes deadlines for resolution to problems, although it gives the agency 20 years to resolve all lead paint problems.

Shoulder to shoulder with the mayor at a news conference Thursday in lower Manhattan, Carson talked about turning public housing into “safe and clean and nurturing environments to give people an opportunity to move up the ladder,” and said he was “very excited” about the agreement.

It’s no wonder. Under the deal, the federal government commits nothing new, while the city recommits to spend over $2 billion on repairs over the next 10 years. The city is being forced to pay for the federal monitor, too. This, after the federal government starved public housing of funds for decades, leaving cities like New York without the ability to build new units or make basic repairs.

In his nearly two years in office, Carson has done little but stand by as the Trump administration proposed devastating cuts to his agency, which Congress, fortunately, blocked.

At every level of government, public housing is seen as somebody else’s problem. While the mayor and the HUD secretary put on a good show of resolve, neither has done much to earn the confidence of NYCHA residents. De Blasio has done and spent more than his predecessors, and has said repairs have been quicker. But the city’s public housing has a long way to go.

Patton has discussed showing solidarity with residents by temporarily moving into a New York City public housing unit. Thursday, when roughly 10,000 residents were left without heat on a bitterly cold January day after the authority’s boilers had failed again, would have been a good day to try it.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.