Kathleen Carlson, a spokeswoman for the Administration for Children Services, said the agency was "looking into our history, if any, at this address."
Howard Marder, a spokesman for the housing authority, which oversees public housing, said officials there are trying to determine when the apartment was last inspected and how a tiger managed to escape detection. He said authority records indicate that one complaint was received about the smell of urine coming from the apartment.
Public housing residents are permitted to have only one pet, and it must weigh no more than 18kg, Marder said. It was unclear exactly who was supposed to be living in the Yates' apartment, he added. He said records indicate Martha Yates moved out in January, but neighbors said she was still living in the apartment as recently as June.
The tiger, along with a 1.5m-long alligator-like reptile called a cayman, that was also found in the apartment, were taken to a New York animal shelter.
No one at the Drew-Hamilton Houses who knew Yates was sure on Sunday exactly how Yates came to have a tiger cub. But he was well known there as an outsized character who, above all else, loved animals.
"Every time I have ever seen him, he was talking about his exotic animals," said Wanda Tompkins, 26, whose family has lived in the apartment directly below Yates' for the past five years. "He was nice, but he was a bit strange."
Tompkins' mother, Valerie, said that she had long known that a strange assortment of beasts lived upstairs. It was not a problem until this summer, when she tried to raise her windows and found the sills soaked with urine and an animal stench invading her apartment.
"I complained to housing, but they never responded," Valerie Tompkins said. She had never seen the tiger, but her daughter Janaya had. Janaya, 11, was a friend of one of Yates' foster children, a girl named Dana, Janaya said.
"She asked me if I wanted to see the tiger," Janaya said. She told Dana, yes, she did want to see it, and Dana led her to one of the apartment's bedrooms. The tiger was lying inside a cage. Janaya said she was too terrified to pet it. "It was scary," she said.
Raven Eaton, who works at the nearby Associated Supermarket, said Yates would come in to the store every afternoon to buy several bags of raw chicken.
"He said they were for his animals," Eaton said. He never said what kind of animals he had. "He was as normal as someone like Antoine could be."
Whatever his motives, city officials said that it was both unsafe and cruel to keep a tiger in an apartment. A police officer who answered the telephone in Yates' room at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia said Yates did not wish to be interviewed.
Yates' brother, Aaron, 24, said Antoine Yates loved and cared for his animals and never wanted to hurt them.
"His love for animals started when we were babies," he said. "He would nurse animals off the street. He got that from my mother."
"He was straight up," he added. "He raised a healthy tiger. They should find him a job with animals."
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