New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer’s recent report that identified 1,130 vacant and city-owned lots is shocking, but all too familiar. Every empty lot represents a missed opportunity for the city to build more desperately needed affordable housing. What’s more, building on vacant sites means that no residents need to be displaced in the process, nor is there a need for the kind of complicated and controversial trade-offs that have mired Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposed housing plan in a heated debate with housing advocates and community boards.

Housing advocates want the Vatican to freeze out Mayor de Blasio at a climate change conference in Rome Tuesday. They say Hizzoner’s invitation to deliver the keynote address should be pulled because of his environmental record at home. De Blasio is set to fly to Italy Monday night and give a speech, titled “Modern Slavery and Climate Change,” at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences Tuesday.

Mayor de Blasio has made the creation of higher density apartments in East New York the centerpiece of his housing agenda. Oddly, his administration never bothered to ask us for our thoughts on its plans to build on the work we’ve been succesfully doing there for 30 years.

When the head of the New York City Housing Authority met with residents at a chapel in Brownsville on Tuesday night, there were questions about failing radiators, missing kitchen sinks, moldy walls, broken doors, pigeon excrement and more. These were all part of a more general question: A year into his administration, to what extent is Mayor de Blasio accountable for the continuing maintenance woes at NYCHA, which has been shortchanged by all levels of government for at least a decade?