For nearly two decades, 80-year-old Lucila Roman has lived at the Corsi Houses, a public housing complex for seniors in East Harlem.

But for the last four weeks she has been scared to leave her apartment.

The front door to the building doesn’t lock and tenants say homeless individuals are basically living in the building’s staircase and hallways.

“I don’t dare open the door at times cause I am not sure if somebody is going to be in the staircase waiting to push their way in,” she explained.

NY1 got a tour of the stairwells in the building and the smell of urine and defecation is potent and nauseating.

Tenants say they often find needles and other drug paraphernalia around the building. 

“A door downstairs that recently got locked because when it was open, people would use it as a drug location. There were needles and syringes on the floor,” said Justice Banks, another resident of the Corsi Houses.

While NY1 walked through the complex, a group of individuals ran out of the building and moved to the parking lot.

Tenants say non-residents regularly sleep in the stairwell.

Tenants at another nearby NYCHA building a few blocks away, UPACA Site 6, have the same problem.

That building's front door has been broken for the last three months, giving non-residents a chance to come and go as they please.

Tenant association president Maria Pecheco said she has reported the door problem to NYCHA numerous times.

“They tell me it is very old. Well replace the whole thing, change the door, put in a new door," Pechecho said.

The front doors at Gaylord White Houses roughly a dozen blocks south don’t lock or close either.

A notice is posted to remind residents to shut the door behind them, but tenants say homeless individuals are still gaining entry and even robbing residents.

“It has actually gotten so badly out of hand that we had a push in, in one of the floors. The other residents are afraid they thing they are going to be next,” explained William Betancourt, a Gaylord White Houses resident.

Decades of neglect and underfunding for the nation’s largest public housing system has left many of the 400,000 residents living in difficult conditions. Under Mayor de Blasio, heating issues persisted and it was revealed children had been exposed to lead paint for decades. Additional funding did increase and the former mayor worked to improve maintenance timelines.

NYCHA says it has repaired the Corsi Houses front door twice already this year, but will have to repair it a third time.

“We are committed to working with NYPD and resident leaders to increase safety protocols at this development," NYCHA said in a statement.