NEW YORK — One chairman resigned in 2008 a few months after a 5-year-old boy fell 10 stories to his death trying to escape a stalled elevator in a Brooklyn housing project.

Another chairman resigned in 2013 after reports of mismanagement and increased neglect in New York City’s public housing complexes. In 2017, a chairwoman stepped down amid a lead paint scandal.

Leading the New York City Housing Authority, the nation’s largest public housing system, can be a grueling, reputation-tarnishing position. The assignment couples intense public scrutiny with the pressure of managing an underfunded and scandal-prone bureaucracy, known as NYCHA, which provides housing to more than 400,000 low-income residents.

So why would Gregory Russ want the job?

“This issue is a bellwether issue,” said Russ, a career public housing official who currently presides over Minneapolis’ public housing system of 11,000 residents. “NYCHA’s issues actually are not just important for New York City, but they’re important nationally.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced June 18 that the city had tapped Russ as NYCHA’s new chairman, following 14 months without a permanent leader and after an exhaustive nationwide search, which included a salary increase to entice reluctant candidates.

Russ, who begins in August, will be paid $402,000 a year, making him the city’s highest-earning official. He will fly back and forth between New York City and Minneapolis, where his family will stay so that his two youngest children are able to stay in their schools.

Before even touching ground in New York, Russ’ pay and long commute have already drawn criticism from residents and city officials who said the position requires that someone move permanently to the city.

A Massive Undertaking

New York’s behemoth public housing stock is larger than the next 11 largest housing authorities combined. Its 176,000 apartments across 325 complexes need more than $32 billion to replace roofs, boilers and entire piping systems.

Buildings have crumbled as a result of drastic funding cuts and mismanagement, resulting in massive heat outages and damning reports of unlivable conditions.

But NYCHA may be entering a new era.

It is now subject to beefed-up oversight: A powerful independent monitor has been tasked with scrutinizing the agency’s every move, holding the agency to a strict timetable as it races to clean up mold, remove lead paint and fix elevators.

Russ will step in as the first NYCHA chair in recent memory with a background in public housing.

He has shuffled between the public housing authorities of Chicago, Philadelphia and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since early 2017, he has lived in Minneapolis, where the population is almost equal to the number of New Yorkers living in public housing.

“Public housing is a lifesaving opportunity for these residents, in most cases,” Russ said. “I’ve seen it over and over in every city I’ve worked in.”

He will earn more than the mayor and governor and almost double the salary of the agency’s previous permanent chairwoman, Shola Olatoye.

“Here’s the thing: I’m being compensated in part because of the difficulty of this job and the uniqueness of the circumstances of the settlement agreement,” Russ said, referring to the agreement the city struck with the federal government to appoint a monitor.

Russ stood out in Cambridge and Minneapolis for harnessing an Obama-era federal program that allowed housing authorities that were struggling financially to partner with private entities to manage buildings and finance repairs.

New York City, following the lead of other cities, is tapping into similar programs to effectively privatize the day-to-day management of one-third of its housing stock. The city will retain oversight and ownership of the land, while private operators renovate apartments and residents continue to pay subsidized rents.

The conversions have already sparked some protests among activists and skeptical residents.

Joseph Shuldiner, who worked with Russ when the federal government took over the Chicago Housing Authority in 1995 and made Shuldiner its receiver, said that while Russ was “a solid choice,” his unfamiliarity with the city could prove an early hurdle.

“He’s not from New York City, and it’s a huge organization that has done things for a long time in certain ways,” said Shuldiner, a former general manager at NYCHA who is now the director of the public housing system in Yonkers, New York. “He needs to rebuild not only the infrastructure of the buildings, but the infrastructure of the organization.”

Working Under Scrutiny

Russ will have to contend with the new federally appointed monitor, Bart Schwartz, a former federal prosecutor who has spent the last three months quietly settling into his job but recently clashed with the agency’s interim chairwoman over lead paint issues.

Schwartz started in February after government investigations revealed that NYCHA failed to properly inspect for lead paint, then lied about it.

In a scathing five-page letter in May, Schwartz accused the interim chairwoman, Kathryn Garcia, of misleading the public about the agency’s efforts to remove lead paint from buildings.

Garcia, who will retake her duties as the city’s sanitation commissioner when Russ starts, fired back with her own missive, refuting his claims. In a follow-up memo, NYCHA acknowledged some shortcomings in fully complying with lead paint regulations, blaming poor coordination and lack of staff.

Schwartz has involved his investigations and compliance firm, Guidepost Solutions, and he has recruited other former prosecutors to join his team.

Schwartz’s background is not in housing. He ran the criminal division of the Southern District of New York when Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. attorney in the 1980s. He later made a career of correcting wrongdoing as a monitor at troubled corporations, including General Motors, Deutsche Bank and BP, the oil and gas company.

The city is required to pay for his salary and expenses. Politico reported that the monitor has already accumulated a $3 million bill.

Schwartz has also hired an influential lobbyist, Keith Wright, to broker meetings with elected officials, according to two people familiar with the matter. The city must also pay up to $3 million for two consulting firms that were recently hired to study NYCHA.

“The cost of the monitorship is largely shrouded in secrecy,” said Councilman Ritchie Torres, who grew up in public housing.

Schwartz has not spoken with reporters since his appointment and declined to be interviewed for this story.

In a statement, Schwartz said he had spoken with Russ and looked forward to collaborating with him.

Gaining the Trust of Residents

What remains unclear is how the changes at the top will trickle down.

Both Russ and Schwartz will have to face wary residents who may be suspicious of government officials and the landlord that has repeatedly failed them.

Many are upset they had no say in the selection of the chairman or the monitor, said Daniel Barber, a resident and chairman of a citywide council of tenant associations in public housing.

“Residents are your eyes and ears, your first line of defense,” Barber said. “Sit down with them and really make a comprehensive plan to preserve public housing.”

The city first reached out to Russ in February to gauge interest, city officials said. Russ initially asked the city to take him off the short list because of family considerations. Other qualified candidates also said they were not interested.

In May, federal officials suggested increasing the compensation package to attract candidates and cover relocation costs, city officials said.

Russ was approached again. This time he was interested: He traveled to New York on Mother’s Day and met with de Blasio.

Russ said he was eager to begin building his team. His first order of business? Talk to residents.

“NYCHA has a lease with each one of these families, and that lease obligates us to provide quality housing,” Russ said. “That’s our contract with the family. When you’re not doing that, that’s a problem.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.