De Blasio’s Pick for NYC Housing Chief Spurs City Hall Protests

(Bloomberg) -- Bill de Blasio’s decision to recruit a Minnesota bureaucrat as new chairman of New York’s problem-plagued housing authority faces criticism as the mayor travels the country running for president.

The latest outcry erupted Friday when about 50 activists gathered on the steps of City Hall denouncing de Blasio for choosing Minneapolis Public Housing Authority Executive Director Gregory Russ without consulting tenants of the largest U.S. public housing agency. In addition to becoming the city’s highest paid employee, at $403,000 a year, Russ intends to return weekly to Minnesota, where his family will continue to reside.

“We are going to fight back against the city taking what is rightfully ours,” said Carmen Quinones, tenants’ association president at the Frederick Douglass Houses on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

The mayor has campaigned for the Democratic nomination on the premise that governing the most populous U.S. city gives him experience worthy of the nation’s highest office. While de Blasio was in the city Friday, he wasn’t at City Hall to answer protesters.

Russ was unavailable for an interview, according to Minneapolis Public Housing Authority spokeswoman Marin Devine. She referred questions to de Blasio spokeswoman Marcy Miranda, who said the mayor chose Russ after a five-month search that had to be extended three times. The high salary offer came only after U.S. officials with NYCHA oversight responsibility insisted upon it, with the federal government paying more than $160,000 a year, she said.

“We picked the right person and everyone agrees with it,” Miranda said. “He’s spent his whole career on housing issues.”

Leaky Roofs

In New York, Russ will face a vast bureaucracy that’s been unable to keep up with leaking roofs, vermin infestation, broken elevators and mold, during a decades-long era of declining federal and state funding for repairs. Loss of heat and hot water in winter has become common, with more than 75 percent of the system’s 400,000 residents experiencing such breakdowns in 2017.

Conditions in the Housing Authority’s 326 developments deteriorated to the point where a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Attorney’s office led to federal oversight by an independent monitor.

The consent decree committed the city to spend $2.2 billion over the next 10 years. The Department of Housing and Urban Development will continue to support the authority with a subsidy of $1.5 billion. It also forced de Blasio to give the Trump administration veto power over his leadership choices, and they approved Russ’s hiring and salary, according to mayoral aides.

Although no elected officials joined the protesters or endorsed their goals, City Councilman Ritchie Torres said in an interview that he doubts Russ has the expertise. The New York system serves 400,000 residents in 176,000 apartments; Minneapolis has 10,500 public housing residents in 6,259 apartments.

“His agency in Minneapolis is an infinitesimal share of what he’d have to deal with at NYCHA,” Torres said. “You can’t leave the housing authority in the hands of someone commuting regularly to Minnesota when his job calls for being on the ground and on-call 24/7.”

--With assistance from Donald Moore.

To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flynn McRoberts at fmcroberts1@bloomberg.net, Stacie Sherman

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