Since Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office, his handling of homelessness in New York City has come under sharp scrutiny.
At least 20 New Yorkers died during the brutal cold snap that began just before and continued after the snowstorm in late January. Some of those who died were homeless; a number of others had drug or alcohol addictions that contributed to their deaths.
After the grueling cold ended, the mayor said he would restart clearing homeless encampments, sparking an outcry from advocates for homeless people who had cheered his critiques of police-led encampment sweeps.
Shortly before, the head of the Department of Social Services, the agency that oversees homeless outreach and the distribution of public benefits, resigned after being told by the Mamdani administration that she would not be retained. It is common for new mayors to replace commissioners after taking office.
Mr. Mamdani was searching for a replacement who demonstrated the ability to help shape and execute his vision for serving homeless New Yorkers and finding them housing, a city official familiar with his thinking said. On Wednesday, the mayor will announce his choice: Erin Dalton, who runs the Department of Human Services for Allegheny County in Pennsylvania.
Ms. Dalton oversaw deep reforms in the social services department in Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh. She deployed mental health professionals to answer 911 calls, a strategy that mirrors Mr. Mamdani’s intent in creating create a Department of Community Safety.
Ms. Dalton also oversaw the building of a network of winter shelters during cold snaps in Allegheny County, responding to the type of weather crisis that recently turned deadly in New York. She reduced the number of homeless encampments in Pittsburgh’s riverfront and downtown neighborhoods, after tents spread around these areas following the pandemic, she said in an article she wrote last September in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The Mamdani administration said it identified Ms. Dalton as someone who has been effective at reducing street homelessness without leaning on police involvement. “Erin Dalton has spent decades making government work better for those who need it most — expanding housing access, strengthening social services and protecting our most vulnerable neighbors,” Mr. Mamdani said in a statement.
Ms. Dalton’s predecessor, Molly Wasow Park, had fallen out of favor with Mamdani officials, who believed that she had not adequately addressed the needs of an economically unstable population.
In her article in The Post-Gazette, Ms. Dalton wrote about the success Pittsburgh’s social service leaders had in dismantling encampments without putting people in jail, at a time when other cities have been issuing summonses or arresting people for sleeping outdoors. Pittsburgh’s riverfront and downtown area went from having nearly 150 tents to a handful over a yearlong period.
“It didn’t happen by threatening people with jail or treating them like criminals,” Ms. Dalton wrote, adding that outreach teams identified 250 people staying there, and more than 80 percent of them worked with the teams to create plans for shelter or housing. “The rest either relocated on their own or already had found a place,” she wrote.
During his campaign, Mr. Mamdani repeatedly emphasized his belief that the best way to help homeless people, including those who are mentally ill, is by increasing the city’s housing stock — strengthening rental assistance, building more affordable housing and funding eviction prevention programs.
Almost immediately after he took office, this sweeping long-term vision gave way to more immediate pressures as the bitter cold killed New Yorkers, even as City Hall worked quickly to expand the number of shelter beds, open warming centers in hospitals, schools and other buildings and send warming buses around the city.
“Building housing is a long-term solution to ending homelessness, but it does not address the immediate crisis of homelessness nor people sleeping on the street right now,” said Jeremy Saunders, head of VOCAL-NY, a homeless advocacy group, adding that he hopes to see the mayor do more to coordinate the efforts of homeless outreach groups and city agencies.
“It starts from City Hall making a decision that they’re going to bring together all the agencies, all the housing and service providers involved with this, into a coordinated response, and that hasn’t happened,” he added. “The mayor hasn’t brought all these entities together.”
Several homeless advocates pointed to New York City’s success in combating homelessness among veterans under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration as a model that Mr. Mamdani could replicate. David Giffen, head of the Coalition for the Homeless, noted there are some 5,000 vacant housing units offering on-site social services that could be used to house some of the estimated 2,000 people with serious mental illness living on the street.
Ms. Dalton, 51, who has also previously worked at the National Institute of Justice, Bloomberg Associates and the Obama Foundation, has put an emphasis on data in her social services work.
Sara Innamorato, the Allegheny County executive, praised her “data-driven” solutions and track record of work to “house our neighbors, support people with substance-use disorder and reimagine public safety and mental health response.”
Emma Goldberg is a Times reporter who writes about political subcultures and the way we live now.
The post Mamdani’s New Social Services Chief Worked to Reduce Street Homelessness appeared first on New York Times.
