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

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.

The New Bad Days are about to get badder

 

 NY Post

More than 1,500 NYPD officers have either resigned or retired so far this year – on pace to be the biggest exodus of officers since the statistics have been available, The Post has learned.

Some 524 cops have resigned and 1,072 have retired as of May 31, NYPD pension stats obtained by The Post show.

The 1,596 total is a 38% spike from the same period in 2021, when 1,159 cops called it a career, and a staggering 46% climb from 2020, when 1,092 left the force by the same date.

Anti-cop hostility, bail reform, and rising crime have fed into frustration among the NYPD rank and file, according to one NYPD officer who recently fled for greener pastures at a Long Island police department after 6 1/2 years with the New York’s Finest. 

 The city is out of control — especially since bail reform,” according to the former Queens cop, who asked to be identified only as “Joe.” The mantra now is “get out while you still can.”

Joe’s patrol gig “got worse and worse” over time, he said.

“The last few years so many people had been leaving and manpower was so low that you’d go to work and you’d answer 25 to 30 jobs a day and you’re burnt out by the end of the day,” he said, adding, “there was no time for law enforcement” because it would be “radio run, radio run, radio run all day long.”

Even when he made an arrest, “they were back in the precinct picking up their property the same day.”

 

Tish calls it quits

 

 Queens Crap

New York Attorney General Letitia James has suspended her campaign for governor and is running for re-election.

The news was broke via Twitter with Capitol reporters getting the news that her campaign was being ‘suspended’.

.@ZackFinkNews with the scoop that @TishJames is no longer running for Governor. In the last Siena Poll Tish got 18% and Hochul got 36%. @GloriaPazmino reporting Tish will run for re-election.

— Susan Arbetter (@sarbetter) December 9, 2021

James shed some light on the decision, which took most of New York’s political scene by surprise on Thursday.

“I Have come to the conclusion that I must continue my work as attorney general. There are a number of important investigations and cases that are underway, and I intend to finish the job. I am running for re-election to complete the work New Yorkers elected me to do,” the statement from her gubernatorial campaign said.

The decision appears to have come after some internal reflection by the Democratic Party, which sees a challenging year on the horizon if there are hotly contested primaries.

 

NEW: @TishJames is suspending her campaign for Governor.

— Zack Fink (@ZackFinkNews) December 9, 2021

*Jay Jacobs is also calling on New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Rep. Tom Suozzi to drop their primary challenges to Gov. Hochul as well.

— Nick Reisman (@NickReisman) December 9, 2021

Mr. Lancman Goes To Albany

 

Queens Eagle

Term-limited Queens Councilmember Rory Lancman is leaving the legislative body Tuesday to take a job in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration. Lancman’s departure will trigger a special election to fill his District 24 seat.

Lancman will serve as the state’s first Special Counsel for Ratepayer Protection, a role in which he will represent the interests of residential and commercial customers of utility companies and some telecom providers. The role was created as part of Cuomo’s efforts to hold utilities, including electric companies, accountable for poor service and outages.

“Utility companies do not have a God-given right to operate in New York, and when they abuse and bully consumers they must be held accountable,” Cuomo said in a statement.

Lancman said he was eager to take on the job, particularly in light of recent power outages in Queens.

“Every time there’s a storm it seems power goes out and thats not acceptable,” he told the Eagle Friday.

Lancman said he was not angling for a new job but was approached by the governor. He will start out Wednesday at the commission’s headquarters in Albany, before working in state offices in Manhattan and Plainview, on Long Island.

“We all know that being a councilmember has an expiration date, and while I was in no rush to leave before my term ended, the idea of a ‘next thing’ is on the mind of every term-limited councilmember,” he said. “I was attracted to the idea of doing very meaningful work.”

Lancman shot down speculation that the job was a quid pro quo in exchange for dropping out of the Queens District Attorney’s race a few days before the June 2019 Democratic Primary. Cuomo had backed Lancman’s opponent Melinda Katz in that race and Lancman’s exit likely helped Katz secured the votes for a close victory.

“People shouldn’t have their minds filled with conspiracy theories,” he said. “When I dropped out there were no offers or anything. It was the right thing to do and the realpolitik thing to do.”

It was actually the real apparatchik thing to do.

Bail reform law has caused an exodus of prosecutors

NY Post

At least 40 employees in Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s office have quit since the start of the year, The Post has learned — and insiders are blaming increased workloads tied to reforms that require them to provide evidence to defendants within 15 days of their arraignments.

Staring down the barrel of a hard deadline to get pages from police officers’ memo books, surveillance footage, phone records and other materials over to defense attorneys, prosecutors are routinely clocking 11 and 12-hour days to avoid losing their cases altogether, multiple sources told The Post.

“Morale is terrible,” one Brooklyn prosecutor said. “People are feeling overworked and underappreciated.”

Sources said that the grind since the reform took effect is so brutal, supervisors have had to order assistant DAs to stop working and go home for the sake of their sanity.

“People are kind of talking about it openly saying ‘I don’t know, should I ride this out?’” one Brooklyn prosecutor told The Post.

Another prosecutor said that the number of their colleagues dusting up their resumes is unlike anything they’ve seen in past years — and that some are blaming their tense new working conditions under discovery reform.
“Almost everyone I know is looking for another job,” the prosecutor said.

Andy Byford quit his job with the MTA

Business Insider


Andy Byford, a globally renowned transit expert hired in 2017 to help reinvigorate New York CIty's aging subway system, has resigned.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency responsible for city subways, buses, and commuter rails, confirmed his departure in a statement. 

"Andy Byford will be departing New York City Transit after a successful two years of service and we thank him for his work," Pat Foye MTA chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "Andy was instrumental in moving the system forward, enacting the successful Subway Action Plan and securing record capital funding with the Governor and the Legislature, and we wish him well in his next chapter."

Before New York, Byford previously worked in London, Toronto, and Australia. His arrival in New York largely signaled a seismic shift for the aging subway system following decades of underinvestment.

During his tenure as transit chief, New Yorkers were treated to improvements in subway communication as well as several high-profile projects designed to speed up commutes and replace aging parts of track, signals, and more.

Byford also became a popular figure among New York transit aficionados, earning the nickname 
"Train Daddy" after an anonymous resident began posting stickers of Byford's face superimposed on a subway car with the text "Train Daddy loves you very much." A photo of the sticker quickly spread on Twitter, and the moniker became widely used across social media. The MTA seemingly embraced the term for its subway chief, with Byford himself joking about the title.

 I don't have time to write about what I saw coming two years ago, so enjoy my prophecy from Impunity City for now.

 Andy Byford may have just realized he is in way over his head and out of his league in his well-paid state service leadership position (yeah it’s redundant, I’m writing about the MTA again so fuck off).
 
President Byford is trying really hard though. He did come up with that budget study assessing that it would take $37 billion dollars to overhaul the mega-shitshow mass transit system, despite having no current idea or plan how to pay for it. I mean, he is not a bad bloke, he kind of resembles a mixture of Moby and Thom Yorke and he is a big fan of legendary new wave band The Smiths, so big that he thought it was prudent to mention and discuss fave tracks by them during a live social media style town hall with frustrated commuters complaining about consistent shitty service a while back (my personal fave by the way, is the WLIR extended remix of “This Charming Man”), but at least he has been apparently honest and straightforward.

It didn't take long for Mr. Byford to realize that the worst fucking transit system in the universe couldn't be fixed with that moron tyrant Governor Cuomo up his ass.

Just walk away, Train Daddy

Jimmy Van Bramer campaigns to spend more time with his family

 

NY Post

 Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer announced Tuesday that he is ending his campaign for Queens borough president, citing family reasons.

“Family circumstances have been weighing on me for some time, causing me to reconsider the timing and feasibility of this campaign,” the Queens Democrat said in a statement.

“Prioritizing my responsibilities as a son and brother is where my attention needs to be right now. 

While this is a difficult decision, this is the right one for me and my family at this time.”
A special election will be held March 24 after former Borough President Melinda Katz was elected Queens district attorney.

Van Bramer helped lead the controversial fight against Amazon building a new headquarters in Long Island City — a deal that was ultimately scuttled due to the backlash.
 
The Queens pol had previously complained about getting threatening texts over his opposition, but told The Post that his decision to pull out of the race “has nothing to do with anything other than my mom and our family.”

Van Bramer was a front-runner and had already scored some key endorsements, including Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and actor-turned-progressive darling Cynthia Nixon.
 
Others still vying for the beep job include fellow term-limited Councilmen Donovan Richards and Costa Constantinides, and former Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley. The Queens Democratic Party is backing Richards.

Van Bramer as of last week had raised $463,701 for his campaign and had $203,185 on hand. His fundraising efforts have exceeded both Richards’ and Constantinides’, but slightly trailed those of Crowley, the cousin of longtime Queens power broker and former Rep. Joe Crowley.

If Jimmy was so weighted with these thoughts for "some time", why did he show up and passionately pleaded for voter support at that ridiculous two mic forum last week?