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Michael P. Kelly, a Familiar Face, Is Returning to New York City’s Housing Agency

A former general manager of New York City’s public housing authority is returning to the job at a time when the agency faces financial pressures even more dire than when he left.

“I’m coming into this job with my eyes wide open,” said the returning official, Michael P. Kelly, whose appointment to the $205,000-a-year position was announced on Wednesday by Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Mr. Kelly, 61, an architect who has been called on to rescue troubled housing authorities in the past, served as general manager of the New York City Housing Authority from 2009 to 2011 before leaving to oversee the Philadelphia Housing Authority. While there, he was investigated for having an improper relationship with a subordinate, the agency’s acting director of human resources. He was eventually cleared of wrongdoing by the inspector general for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In an interview, Mr. Kelly, who has been married for 26 years and has three grown children, said the issue arose while he was being vetted for the New York job and that “I shared with them that it was a very difficult personal issue that I learned a lot from.”

Speaking after the announcement, Mr. de Blasio called Mr. Kelly’s experience “unparalleled in the nation” and said he deserved “another chance.”

“He made a mistake in Philly,” the mayor said. “There’s no two ways about it. He owned up to it. He was reprimanded for it. There was a full investigation. The investigation proved that there had been no negative outcomes from the mistake he made in terms of how the work was done.”

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Michael P. KellyCredit...NYCHA

Mr. Kelly returns to the nation’s largest public housing agency, known by the acronym Nycha, with more than 178,000 apartments and more than 400,000 residents. Like other public housing authorities around the country, the agency has endured years of shrinking investment from the federal government and a lack of major funding from the state and city governments.

That may change. Mr. de Blasio, who has publicly committed to preserving public housing buildings, has asked the state this year to invest $300 million in the agency, with the city set to provide a matching sum. For now, the authority, the city’s largest landlord of affordable housing, is projecting an operating deficit of $98 million this year and has $16 billion less in funding for capital projects than it needs.

Some affordable housing advocates welcomed Mr. Kelly’s return.

“Kelly is experienced, highly qualified, knows Nycha and the local territory, might be the right person to see that the authority makes fast, effective use of any new capital it is about to receive,” said Victor Bach, a senior housing policy analyst with the Community Service Society of New York, an antipoverty group.

A specialist in improving agencies on HUD’s “troubled” housing list, Mr. Kelly was most recently director of the Department of Housing and Community Development in Washington. He has also led or worked in public housing authorities in San Francisco and New Orleans as well as in Philadelphia and New York.

He said that since he left New York, “I believe the fiscal picture is even worse” at the authority and that “there’s been even more deterioration to the housing stock.”

Residents have long complained about waits for repairs. Mr. Kelly said that while a lack of money was partly to blame for the delays, he would also look to fix organizational flaws.

“It will be about operations and property management and providing the respect and the kind of service tenants in the private sector get,” he said.

He said expected his previous experience in New York to serve him well this time around.

“When I first came, I was a little overwhelmed by the scale of Nycha,” he said. “I no longer have that anxiety.”

Matt Flegenheimer contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: Familiar Face Is Hired to Steer Housing Agency. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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