You really can't tell me with a straight face Bill that you con't find someone else from NYC for this gig.
Really...what happen to that world class talent pool that you use as your hook to get companies to land here.
I can see it now.
We (Mr and Mrs. Taxpayer) paying 400K to a guy that leaves at 2pm on Fridays...
Why ?
1
@David Yeah and how could someone from Minnesota know anything?
The most important thing a mayor does is appoint people. Despite Gavin Newsome's teflon style, his appointments when SF mayor demonstrated real ability. That's enough to propel him farther. The media hate de Blasio, who is so much less regal than Bloomberg. But he'll be remembered in the long run for the quality of appointments.
@Brian Like Richard Carranza?
1
Mr Russ is a good fit for this job and will bring decades of experience making and keeping affordable housing affordable and functional. It will not be easy.It will take time. It will take creative but widely used approaches to finance which housing authorities are using all over the country to great success - including Cambridge MA -which was in dire straits before he took over.
I wish him the best of luck.
2
@Jen Pin
And since NYCHA residents all leave for the Hamptons every weekend, and for the islands during winter Mr Russ' absence for at least two days week won't really limit his effectiveness. If you want a big, difficult job done well, why not hire someone whose experience is a tiny fraction of the size of the project, and who will teat it as a part-time job. AND! pay him more than any other city employee. This can't possibly fail, could it?
It would be ridiculous to think that he and his family could live anywhere in New York, and that at $400k his children could find an acceptable school
4
This guy has a clause in his new contract with the city that requires them to pay for a first class flight back to Minnesota every two weeks. So much for his job loyalty and work ethic. Where does NYC come up with these stiffs?
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@paul Thankfully, he didn’t get a private jet. Maybe a Gulfstream G500?
2
When Public Housing first came in to being, it was a noble endeavor.
It was also a partnership with the tenants and management. Those who signed a lease to live in Public Housing had a responsibility to maintain their apartments, that is keep them clean and in a livable condition as well as taking turns keeping the hallways and staircases clean. No littering. No hanging in hallways.
Management had the right to enter the apartments with notice, to inspect the apartment upkeep by the Tenant.
In addition, the Managers had to inspect the grounds and make sure that the Janitorial staff was doing its job, that the landscaping was being taken care of and the general upkeep of lights, utilities and trash systems were maintained.
And for decades the properties were maintained.
Somewhere along the way Managers did not do their job, Janitors did not do their jobs and pretty soon the residents starting giving up as well.
There is no reason that good management and good tenants can't work together to improve the living conditions in Public Housing.
But first there has to be political will on the part of the Leaders of towns, cities and States to make sure that Public Housing works for the residents. Having Ben Carson at the helm of HUD is not a good idea. He does not care.
The fact that there is much money to be made by outside entities in a non-transparent way is a major problem. Use that money towards improving the quality of life and working conditions of the people involved.
5
Let him move here and live in a housing project.
LET HIM MOVE HERE AND LIVE IN A HOUSING PROJECT.
LET HIM MOVE HERE AND LIVE IN A HOUSING PROJECT! (God forbid!!)
Then, things will get done. Keep a janitor in every building, and a porter. Check regularly to make sure they are not being bribed to look away. Make sure there is heat and hot water, the elevators and washer/dryers work, the grounds are not dirty, there are playgrounds in good order. Make sure apartments are painted every three years, including repairing the walls and replacing broken cabinets. PAY all of these repair and maintenance people well.
Find a supervisor to work for half of what this man is being paid but make sure he lives in an apartment in a project. Create a committee of residents from each Housing Project who will meet WITH THE MAYOR every two months with a report.
So much ado about what will, again, be nothing. Doesn't have to be that way. I grew up in a Federal housing project that was clean, well-managed, well run, and had all of the above because the people in the town CARED.
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@Jeanie LoVetri. They couldn’t find someone to do this job for almost half a million dollars and your solution is to ask them to relocate to a crumbling building? Did you read three paragraphs of this article?
Heading up NYCHA is like being the mayor of a medium sized American city but with zero glory and more responsibility (since all his constituents are depending on him for their housing needs). I’m actually amazed Russ is willing to do this. With the settlement agreement in place it’s likely he will have little authority to make the necessary sweeping changes to the system. He’s almost doomed to fail from the beginning.
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All the wrong things, paying him too much money, letting him commute ? and paying for that too. No one has learned any lessons here. To be fair, if he were really dedicated to fixing the housing issues, he'd move. If his kids not changing schools is more important, then he should have passed on the job. This is a great waste of time and money.
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@Jean louis LONNE
You would think this city/state would learn from the LIRR workers making close to 400K
Please stop braking the backs of the taxpayers
I think we have to be very careful with Mr. Russ. His solution/s seem to be to privatize. That would be a very serious mistake for those living in NYSCHA and all other residents of NYC and the surrounding area. The fact of the outlandish salary increase is a major red flag to me. His travel to return "home" will be paid for by the residents of NYC?! Be very watchful.
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As a New Yorker who believes in the promise of public house, I wish Mr. Russ the best of luck. But, if he were working for me (wait...isn't he? After all my tax dollars pay his salary!), I would require him to not only live in NYC full-time but to regularly spend the night in the NYCHA complex of his choice.
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Tubular housing now being built in Hong Kong may be suitable for NYC homeless single adults and low income single adults.
The proposed Hong Kong larger tubular 52 square meter units may be suitable for NYC homeless couples with no children and low income couples with no children.
5
This individual has no clue what he is undertaking. One year and $400,000 plus perks and nothing will have changed and he will go back to Minnesota.
Will he get the Unions to renegotiate their contracts? Will he get the boilers, roofs, elevators repaired?
Will the living conditions improve with timely repairs to apartments with leak damage etc?
Everyone knows the problems the NYCHA faces but one person isn’t going to fix it.
13
Last summer, Minneapolis along Hiawatha avenue had tent city. Over the course of the summer into the late fall about 100 tents appeared. Solution? Get the people out and put up a chain link fence.
7
There is nothing fair or equitable about NYC public housing, rent stabilization or affordable units in new buildings. No one promised that life would be fair but isn't that the whole premise of why we have government subsidized housing? If you demand that I subsidized these units, then we should have a conversation of who gets to live in them and for how long. As far as the choice of the new commissioner, tens of thousands of New Yorkers would volunteer to do the job for less money or even for free but we are not in the right social class. The mayor wants a professional bureaucrat. If we fixed the system, you couldn't harvest money.
19
Yikes. Please hire someone who understands New York City, has experience with New York politics, maybe even someone who - gasp - lives in New York. I raise my eyebrow a little bit that he's coming in after managing a completely different and not very analogous system, but when I see that he's not even going to bother to move to New York, I completely lose confidence in the city's ability to take this problem seriously.
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@QTCatch10 Did you expect something different from out illustrious Mayor? Say, something like the wildly successful DOE pick?
7
If the guy has never been fired for mismanagement, lying, or corruption, he's got a leg up on the previous office holders.
God's speed.
21
Well, at least he's getting a fat paycheck, good for him. As for what he can actually accomplish, I doubt much. The most obvious way to get some new money would be to trim the bloated bureaucracy, but the unions won't let him. Hopefully there isn't any new state funding, since it will be totally wasted somehow. Maybe if we wait long enough a building will collapse and everyone will realize that the government has no business running housing and the whole thing will be dissolved.
Also, the suggestion that he talk to the residents is pointless. We know what they want: a nice apartment in the most expensive city in the country, paid for by the taxpayers. They will advocate that more money will be spent, but they will have no idea where that should come from, unless they advocate raising city taxes that they don't pay.
22
@KM The public has actually a very strong case for managing housing and property in general. By owning land and properties in the NYC area the public sector has been able to manage the physical growth of the city: as the city grew this land could be used for public infrastructure, such as railroad stations. There is little debate that this management worked out very well.
It is important that the public can manage such issues in the long-term and maintain an expertise in property management, rather than trying to play catch-up by buying incredibly expensive land in growing areas and playing amateur-hour while dealing with private actors to have anything built.
If the public was able to play like a private actor to provide efficiently a large amount of market-price housing (as well as transport infrastructures to support the growth), which the private sector is currently not doing, the city would become much more livable. The private sector would not plan strategies (such as land hoarding) relying on ever-increasing property prices. And that is worth paying some taxpayer money.
For sure, it involves being able to fire people and renew whole teams when they have failed. It involves hiring competent managers even if they are more expensive than incompetent ones. It does not involve necessarily owning whole buildings that cost a lot and do not provide much to their inhabitants.
4
@KM No, what they want is an apartment hat has heat and running water and working toilets and is not overrun by rats and bedbugs and cockroaches and where their kids won't get shot. Please don't buy into this trope that public housing residents are just lounging around hoping taxpayers give them a life of luxury. If you've ever been inside a NYC housing project--I have--you'd know that pouring money into repairs won't make them "nice," but it might provide the residents with a little dignity.
11
@Bob Robert The reality is that there will always be demand for housing in the city. The city can only build a certain number of units. No matter how these units are allocated, only a small fraction of the number of people that want them will get them. This means the city is picking winners, arbitrarily giving a small number of people a huge subsidy while ignoring the rest. That is fundamentally unfair, which is why no one who lives outside of a NYCHA apartment supports the program.
As for the city maintaining expertise? It's been a total disaster for the same reason that every other department is a disaster: the unions have politically captured the city government, and it will never operate efficiently until that is changed. The government has no place setting rents or building housing units.
5
I do not understand why the city does not blow up the buildings are start over. They are generally functionally obsolete considering they need $181,000 in repairs per apartment. They should just destroy and rebuild them all. It should not cost more than $181,000 per unit to rebuild the apartments. Using a rough $150 a foot to rebuild a house and apartments are cheaper per foot the average size apartment would be 1200 square feet. That is not bad for NYC especially considering there is another article about roommates paying market rate and having to share a 360 square foot apartment.
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@Chris I like this idea!
6
@Chris Even better: rebuild whole buildings, and sell or rent the new apartments at market price. Then use the proceeds to rent or buy apartments from the private sector on behalf of the public housing tenants. Build as tall as you can to maximize profit and therefore public resources, while also depressing the market prices by increasing supply.
There are so many advantages:
1) You don’t have all the public housing tenants in the same place, dragging each other (and the neighborhood) down. Much better to spread out the recipients through the city.
2) The maintenance of the purchased/rented apartments is done by the housing associations, therefore contracted out at no effort and with lower chances of over- or underpaying.
3) You match the quality of housing to the actual needs of the recipients, saving resources (ie taxpayer’s money). Offering apartments worth $4,000 a month to a former homeless person does not make sense: that person would be much better off with a say $2,000 apartment and a $1,000 stipend (or a $1,000 training/jobseeker/rehab program), yet it would still cost less to the taxpayer.
4) Increase supply with much less concern for neighborhoods. Neighbors will worry about a 20-storey public housing building being built next door, so the city could settle for say a 10-storey one instead. If the building is market-price (meaning luxury for newbuilt), they will worry much less about 20 stories of millionaires moving to their neighborhood.
9
@Chris Multifamily buildings do not cost $150 a foot to build or renovate in NYC. It's more like $375/foot.