NYC Finally Picks New Public Housing Chief

NEW YORK — New York City's beleaguered public housing agency will get a new leader this summer, more than a year after its last permanent chief left.

Mayor Bill de Blasio named Gregory Russ the New York City Housing Authority's next chair on Tuesday after a roughly four-month search process. He will take over the post in mid-August, the mayor's office said.

De Blasio picked Russ from a slate of candidates also approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office, as required by NYCHA's landmark Jan. 31 oversight deal with HUD. The three parties were supposed to agree on a chief by early April but the process got extended.

"In a national search, Greg Russ stands out as someone with the guts to make big changes and the heart to do right by public housing residents," de Blasio, a Democrat, said in a statement. "Greg has shown he can secure residents the repairs they’ve been waiting for and strengthen public housing for the next generation."

Russ is currently the CEO of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, which serves some 26,000 tenants and federal voucher recipients. That's less than 5 percent of the 564,301 New Yorkers who live in NYCHA's buildings and use housing vouchers through the agency.

Russ will be the fourth leader NYCHA has had in less than two years amid a cascade of scandals involving lead paint, heating failures and other problems.

The current interim chair, Kathryn Garcia, took over for Stanley Brezenoff, who was another temporary boss. Brezenoff succeeded Shola Olatoye, who stepped down in April 2018 after more than four years at the helm.

Russ will reportedly have a heftier paycheck than his precedcessors. He'll get a $402,628 salary, with NYCHA paying $240,728 and HUD covering the other $161,900, de Blasio spokesperson Marcy Miranda said.

That's well above Olatoye's previous pay of $231,000 and higher than even de Blasio's salary of $258,750, according to THE CITY, which first reported Russ's selection on Monday.

As the head of the housing agencies in Minneapolis and Cambridge, Massachusetts, Russ has made use of programs that allow private companies to renovate and manage public housing — an approach the de Blasio administration wants to use to fix up some 62,000 apartments.

"Public housing is a calling. I believe in it," Russ said in a statement. "NYCHA and its residents are irreplaceable parts of New York City. My mission is simple: to fix residents’ homes today and to leave NYCHA stronger for the next generation."