Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Career homeless services bureaucrat DSS Commissioner quits and runs away from the city's homeless crisis

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NY1

While appearing on “Inside City Hall” on Tuesday night, Gary Jenkins, the city’s Department of Social Services commissioner who oversees the troubled homeless shelter system, announced his resignation.

The commissioner's move comes as the city is grappling with an affordable housing crisis and influx of asylum seekers that has put pressure on the shelter system.

He told his staff earlier in the day of his impending resignation earlier Tuesday.

“I’ve decided to step down from my position as Commissioner for the Department of Social Services and explore other opportunities that have been presented to me," Jenkins said on "Inside City Hall."

Jenkins' final day is March 3 and leaves the embattled department after only serving for a year. Mayor Eric Adams first appointed Jenkins in January of 2022.

His portfolio includes overseeing the Department of Homeless Services and the city’s Human Resources Administration. 

“There’s no discord, there’s no running away. This was something that was already planned," Jenkins said. “I’m just going to take some time off. Decompress and spend some quality time with my family and get back into this in the month of April.” 

Adams recently said that going into his first year in office, the city’s shelter system had about 45,000 New Yorkers in its care. Meanwhile, close to 40,000 migrants have come to New York from the southern border with over 26,000 asylum seekers still in the city’s care. 

In a statement on Tuesday, the mayor thanked the commissioner for his nearly 40-year career in public service including helping an estimated 1,100 unsheltered New Yorkers under the Mayor’s subway safety plan. 

"Commissioner Jenkins also brought his own experience living in a shelter as a child to the job, a unique understanding of the struggles families in shelters face and a steadfast commitment to treating all of our clients with dignity and care. I'm incredibly grateful to Gary for his decades of service and wish him the very best in his next chapter,” added the Mayor. 

While in office, Jenkins faced a series of scandals including leaving the city in August amid the start of the migrant crisis. 

Jenkins also faced scrutiny after firing a spokeswoman over an alleged cover-up of department violations related to migrant families sleeping at an intake shelter in The Bronx. The incident violated the city’s right to shelter law. 

Adams defended Jenkins in both instances, at one point saying that he had the “utmost confidence” in the commissioner. 

Jenkins previously served as first deputy commissioner of HRA where he started his career holding numerous positions.

A few hours later...

NY Post

A migrant tried to commit suicide at the city’s new shelter in Brooklyn on Tuesday, police said.

The 26-year-old man was found suffering from self-inflicted stab wounds inside the recently opened shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal around 2:15 p.m., cops said.

The man used a shaving razor to cut his right forearm in one of the bathrooms of the housing facility, sources said. He was taken to Lutheran in stable condition.

The Cruise Terminal mega-shelter opened in late January and houses up to 1,000 single adult migrant men.

Last week, advocates and migrants who had been housed at Manhattan’s Watson Hotel protested the city’s decision to relocate single men to the Redhook facility to make room at the hotel for migrant families with children.

Dozens of migrants had camped outside the Hell’s Kitchen hotel in protest for two nights following Adams’ announcement, with activists claiming the new Brooklyn shelter would not provide the single men the same services they had been receiving.

And in one of his final actions as DSS Commissioner, Jenkins and Mayor Adams bails out a bankrupt tower hotel to shelter thousands of migrants, since the Brooklyn Terminal isn't working out so well.

NY Post

New York City is converting the world’s tallest Holiday Inn hotel into the Big Apple’s sixth mega-shelter for its surging migrant population, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.

The deal will supply 492 rooms for adult families and single women, Adams said in a statement.

“With more than 44,000 asylum seekers arriving in the last 10 months alone, we have helped provide shelter and support to nearly as many asylum seekers as the number of New Yorkers we already had in our shelter system when we first came into office,” he said.

Terms of the contract weren’t announced, but The Post reported last month that the owner of the 50-story hotel in Manhattan’s Financial District had an agreement in place to charge NYC Health + Hospitals a nightly rate of $190 per room.

At full capacity, that would amount to $93,500 a day, or an estimated $10.5 billion through May 1, 2024.

Details of the pact were contained in court documents tied to bankruptcy proceedings involving the hotel, owned by Chinese developer Jubao Xie, which is saddled with debts that include $11 million in interest on loans.

35 comments:

Kitara said...

Maybe he's packing his bags and moving to the "Great Swamp" of Florida. Good riddance.

Anonymous said...

I saw "NY 1" news, and thought that this may be a legitimate story. Then I saw "NY Post" and I said, Nah!, the usual lies and fabrications from the Murdoch empire.

Anonymous said...

So NYC being a sanctuary city was just marketing speak, like Apple being an environmentally friendly, green company?

Anonymous said...

The solution to the problem is to drop the regulations that prevent people from building housing and charging what they want. It's really as simple as supply and demand. The supply is artificially limited and price controlled, so the supply is much lower than the demand. This is the case in every big Dem0rAt city with exorbitant housing prices.

Anonymous said...

@Kitara said... You sound recognized ignorant and very indoctrinated on most issues. Nothing is so intolerant as the supposedly “tolerant” Left. Why dislike or disagree with Florida ?

Anonymous said...

@Kitara said... You sound recognized ignorant and very indoctrinated on most issues. Nothing is so intolerant as the supposedly “tolerant” Left. Why dislike or disagree with Florida ?

Anonymous said...

@Kitara said... You sound recognized ignorant and very indoctrinated on most issues. Nothing is so intolerant as the supposedly “tolerant” Left. Why dislike or disagree with Florida ?

Anonymous said...

Isn't he married to the Jenkins who heads up HRA Medicaid/ MLTC, Managed Care?
Lets talk about nepotism in HRA THat's welfare.

Anonymous said...

Seems like a giant group effort to sweep this under the rug "Nothing to see here! Don't ya look at this!" Wonder why ?

Anonymous said...

The homeless hospital prison complex wants to throw (no-bail and after-release) prisoners and mentally in into the "community" using homeless shelters, with their favorite "non-profit" contractors benefiting. But psychiatry says people have to be removed from their environment for at least six weeks in order to break old habits. Keeping them in their "community" does the opposite. If you want to break them off drugs, mental illness, and crime, you have to move them far away (like upstate) away from those who reinforce their bad habits. Here, we have drug dealers evicted from their shelter who then go in front of the former shelter and hang out after the police release them.

About a third of homeless have had misfortunes like fire, domestic disputes, medical expences and capricious landlords and make the best of the liferaft they are offered and move on. But a sizeable portion of the malingerers are drug addicts if not drug dealers and often take drugs to embolden their crimes Many were just released from long prison sentences. The prisons and mental hospitals use shelters as a buffer just like rehab
facilities because they are cheaper per bed. The worst homeless refuse to go to shelters.

Meanwhile folks who need like 6wks in psych ward only get two thanks to insurance and then get bused to shelters. Homeless eat from soup kitchens and shelters so use EBT Food stamps mostly for drugs. A welfare worker was asked by client for new benefit card because gave it to dealer. Addicts crawl bathroom floors in search of spilled drugs, but they
inadvertantly smoke crap instead of crack.

While homeowners slave under oppressive heating and water utility bills, apartment dwellers don't pay, hence leave the hot shower water, heat, stove and windows open all day. This sadistic vandalism is called "Projects Mentality" and persists into the homeless shelters, where showers run all day to conceal drug smoke but also bring legionella, mildew (hence asma) and structural defects (vents fall off from softened sheetrock), especially into the ventilation system. Shelters have cameras everywhere but bathrooms, allowing them to become drug use and dealing dens. Stores have cameras in their dressing rooms, and while some states ban bathcams, exceptions are possible. Cold showers are the best emergency mental health treatment, as mental hospitals mandate cold showers, why not shelters.


Anonymous said...

All Blue no matter who has consequences !
The choice has never been clearer: Constitution or Dem0rAts.

Anonymous said...

We have FDR's 1937 federal income tax returns....

Anonymous said...

LOCK HIM UP!

Anonymous said...

The corporate greed never ends.

Anonymous said...

Some anon above seems to have a great familiarity with mental hospital s.

Kitara said...

@“ Why dislike or disagree with Florida ?”
To answer your question.
1. It has the dumbest people in USA. By default, that makes it the dumbest region on the planet.
2.
The governor is a dictator who ran torture chambers on Guantanamo.
3. It’s a swamp.
4. Disney
5. It has the dumbest people in the planet.


Anonymous said...

Ben Crump's office has been notified.

Anonymous said...

Biden supporters....

Anonymous said...

@ Kitara said... Can you give us some actual context to back those claims up ? Brainwashed Sheeple are a big part of the problem facing our Freedoms !

Anonymous said...

You get what you vote for .

Anonymous said...

As long as NYS Clown governor and Mayor Swagger continue to provide room and board to these illegal aliens, they will continue to come and stay in NYC and NYS at the expense of the taxpayers. This situation can't continue forever. There is a day of reckoning and it won't be pretty.

Anonymous said...

It’s nice to see consequences to the actions of the Dem Libturds and the Sheeple who voted for them !

Anonymous said...

Adams is recklessly plunging our city into an ever growing, endless financial hole. The desperate illegal aliens will keep on coming every day, because they have no other alternative back home, in their empoverished lives, and Adams has made NYC so attractive to them. "Irmão, I'm in luxury hotel in Times Square! Can you believeit?! They taking me to a doctor! The kids are eating well and going to a beautiful school! Get your kids and start your journey here before Trump gets re-elected!"

Anonymous said...

@ Kitara How much MAGA merch have you purchased ?

Anonymous said...

Weak leaders cause big troubles.


Anonymous said...

Dumbest people in the planet are stuck in Dem cities living with crime and the libs !

Anonymous said...

There is no mistake the attack on the middle class is deliberate !

Anonymous said...

@ Anonymous Kitara said...Florida’s success story !

The news perspective is that Florida’s population surge is noteworthy since the influx of young professionals is changing the perception of the Sunshine State from a locale primarily for retirees to an in-demand hub for tech and finance” is exactly right “Jobs flying south.

Florida’s state university and higher education system has been ranked No. 1 in the nation for six consecutive years, accelerating access to talent for our employers and providing jobs for the new residents joining us each year. Florida has also passed New York to become the nation’s third-most-populous state, and we lead the nation in attracting those earning over $200,000.

This is not by chance. Florida has an engaged business community and, thanks to the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis and state legislative leaders, the support necessary to maintain a climate for economic growth that is second to none. They continue to welcome more of our friends from New York — just be sure to leave your coats at home.

Eric Silagy, Chair, The Florida Council of 100

Tampa, Fla.

Anonymous said...

What happened to draining the swamp?

Anonymous said...

Poor Eric no one wants his illegals & he hasn't got the guts to call out Joey or the Clown.

Anonymous said...

Rule of thumb: If a Democrat or their associates accuse someone of a very specific crime they are just projecting their own guilt.

Anonymous said...

I think the Dems are just exhausted from having to defend a demented and lying fool.

Anonymous said...

I think the Dems are just exhausted from having to defend a demented and lying fool.

Disgruntled Citizen said...

Gary Jenkins is trying to hide because he’s under investigation on not one but multiple fronts. His wife, Randa Henry- Jenkins, got a push up the ladder when Gary became Commissioner of HRA & Homeless Services. He succeeded Stephen Banks who had done both jobs after yet another incompetent brother, AA hire, Gilbert Taylor, was forced to resign as the Commissioner of Homeless Services. Randa is the director of Managed Long Term Care Medicaid division at HRA in Brooklyn.She also got a $50,000 per year raise. This is in violation of the Civil Service code- states you cannot supervise a family member. Randa is now pulling in over $180,000 salary- it’s all public record & you can find it easily on the internet.
The stench of pot would waft from Henry- Jenkins office & the rent a security guards in the Atlantic Avenue building are all related to her. Someone could start looking into Gary’s role in that, too. Randa Henry- Jenkins created a hostile working environment for many not of her demographic. Nepotism and corruption is the name of the game at HRA. She was taking kick backs from the managed care plans. Jenkins and her underlings routinely violated the Civil Service Code. Randa was smoking pot and was stoned all day. Guess she had to cos Gary plays for the other team.

Anonymous said...

FJB said...
Now the NORTHERN border is a mess, too.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/17/now-the-northern-border-is-a-mess-too/