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.

Migrant aftershock Delight

Sunnyside Post 

A hotel on Queens Boulevard in Woodside, which for many years had been used as a homeless shelter to accommodate families in need, is now being used exclusively by single unhoused men, according to multiple sources.

The facility, formerly known as the Quality Inn and located at 53-05 Queens Blvd., had been used as a shelter for families dating back to 2016, when the de Blasio administration began housing people at the 72-room location without first notifying the community.

Last year, the Department of Social Services transitioned the shelter to be for single adults only—and then earlier this month it was designated for single men only. The building is now called the Delight Stay Hotel.

Community Board 2 chair Morry Galonoy said the board was notified of the recent change, although after it had gone into effect. Many residents are also aware of the transition prompting mixed opinion on social media.

The Department of Social Services, however, would not confirm or deny whether the facility was being used exclusively for men or by asylum seekers.

But the agency did say that it has seen an increase in need for its services, with it providing shelter for more than 11,000 asylum seekers including many single men.

 "We are … seeing an extraordinary uptick in the number of single adult men seeking asylum and in need of shelter services,” a spokesperson for DSS said in a statement. “As we continue to add emergency capacity to the shelter system, we are also identifying ways in which we can more effectively manage our existing network of shelter sites to address the unprecedented need for shelter services for certain populations while making sure that we are prioritizing stability and continued supports for all clients receiving our services at all times.”

 

Caption the guy who replaced Stephen Banks

Mayor Adams and the Department of Social Services covered up violations at shelters housing migrant families arrivals and fires official who tried to warn them

  

NBC New York

Several sources tell News 4 that staff at the Department of Social Services, including the agency's legal team, were angry after being instructed to hold off on telling City Hall, and not promptly notify the Legal Aid Society, as has been past protocol.

City officials acknowledge there was a delay in disclosing the violations, but they say top officials at the Department of Social Services including the Commissioner were unaware that they are legally obligated not to house families overnight in their intake office. This, despite the fact that a report is sent out each morning at 4am to notify social services managers of any violations.

The chief spokesperson for New York City's Department of Homeless Services was fired Friday after pushing back against alleged lies and omissions by her boss regarding illegal conditions in the city's homeless shelter system, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Email and text messages provided to the News 4 I-Team suggest that the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Julia Savel had resisted efforts by Social Services Commissioner Gary Jenkins to conceal crowded conditions in the city's homeless shelter system from his superiors at City Hall, from the media and from the public.

In one text message dated July 20, Savel indicated to a City Hall spokeswoman that she was planning to inquire about moving to a different agency, saying "Just can't work for a commish who is ok with covering up something illegal."

Staff at the Department of Homeless Services say they learned on July 18 that families with children had been forced to stay overnight in the city's homeless intake office in the Bronx, known as PATH  — a practice that is prohibited under a 2008 court settlement between the City and the Legal Aid Society, which represents people living in shelter.

The text messages imply that Savel gave City Hall a heads up the next day, on July 19. That same day, Mayor Adams announced NYC needed federal funding to help with a surge of 2,800 asylum seekers who had entered the shelter system in recent weeks. But the mayor did not specifically mention any legal violations or families sleeping in the intake office.

Later that week Adams said he did not learn the city had violated its "right to shelter mandate" until July 20.

Several sources tell News 4 that staff at the Department of Social Services, including the agency's legal team, were angry after being instructed to hold off on telling City Hall, and not promptly notify the Legal Aid Society, as has been past protocol.

City officials acknowledge there was a delay in disclosing the violations, but they say top officials at the Department of Social Services including the Commissioner were unaware that they are legally obligated not to house families overnight in their intake office. This, despite the fact that a report is sent out each morning at 4am to notify social services managers of any violations. 

 Suddenly, Stephen Banks doesn't look that bad now.

Landlords publicly shames DSS worker tenant for stiffing them on rent

NY Post 

In a sign of the times, a fed-up Queens landlord posted two giant banners calling out his allegedly deadbeat tenants for owing him $17,000 in back rent.

“MY TENANTS ON THE FIRST FLOOR ARE NOT PAYING RENT” read the bold posters slung above the first-floor rental on 175th Street in Springfield Gardens.

Landlords Calvin and Jean Thompson posted the banners — which can be seen from the Belt Parkway — in the hopes of shaming their tenants into paying up. It was also featured in a TikTok video that got more than 14,000 likes — and supportive comments like, “Not paying your bills is ghetto.”

The Thompsons, who are married, have owned the two-family home since 1989. They began the process of trying to evict Marie and Eugene Lamour and their daughter Kathia in Queens Housing Court last month.

But with nearly 200,000 eviction cases pending in the city after pandemic protections and the state’s eviction moratorium created a historic backlog, the landlords see humiliation as the next best tactic.

“The signs are very embarrassing and shameful for them,” said the Thompsons’ son, Calvin Jr. “That’s the only voice we have at this stage: freedom of speech.”

The signs seem to be working: Kathia Lamour tried to cut one sign down, Calvin Jr. claims.

“When she calls Uber, she won’t do it in front of the house anymore,” he said. “She runs to the end of the block, so they don’t see them.

“It’s uncomfortable that we have to hang these up, but we’re $20,000 uncomfortable, so I think a sign is very minor.”

Problems began in July when the Thompsons raised the rent on the Lamours’ three-bedroom pad from $1,800 a month to $1,900, the first rent hike in nine years, according to Calvin Jr.

The Lamours didn’t want to pay the 5% increase. Kathia, who works for the city Department of Social Services and makes $46,731, according to GovSalaries.com, told The Post she tried to drop off $1,800 in rent instead of the new amount, but the Thompsons refused to take it — so she stopped paying altogether.

It's easy to sympathize with Ms. Lamour for standing her ground here, because in her municipal position she's probably very aware of how dangerous the shelters the DSS "runs and monitors" are

DHS ceases using neighboring hotels for sheltering homeless families

 

Redding St. 2017, JQ LLC

 

Queens Chronicle 

The city will be phasing out the use of two Ozone Park hotels to shelter homeless families in the fall, according to the city Department of Homeless Services.

Travelodge by Wyndham Ozone Park located at 137-30 Redding St. is slated to close Sept. 30, and the Ozone Inn & Suites at 137-08 Redding St. will close on Nov. 30.

The DHS will work with approximately 23 households residing at these locations over the coming weeks to connect some to permanent housing and others to alternative shelter placements.

The agency’s use of the two Ozone Park locations goes back to late 2016. They are not Covid-period commercial hotels, which the agency used throughout the pandemic to provide social distancing for its clients, and also began dismantling in July.

The agency maintains that the effort to transition from its use of hotels for homeless shelters is part of a longer-term process of phasing out the stop-gap use of commercial hotels that goes back to previous administrations.

“No one will be displaced and turned out onto the street. This is normal course-of-business work that is part of the plans/commitments we laid out in the Mayor’s Turning the Tide plan several years ago,” wrote a Department of Social Services spokesperson in an email response to questions from the Chronicle.

These hotels have been used as shelters for nearly a half a decade, so why do this now with the Delta Variant spreading?

The city has been funding a homeless services non-profit run by a sexual predator

 

NY Times

 At first, the offer seemed generous. Erica Sklar was in a homeless shelter and needed a more stable place to live. Victor Rivera, who oversaw a network of shelters, including the one where she was staying, said he had a solution: a spare apartment for her at his home in the Bronx.

But after Ms. Sklar moved in, she said, she realized that Mr. Rivera, whose nonprofit organization is one of the largest operators of homeless shelters in New York, had other intentions. In December 2016, he asked to see a leaking ceiling in her bedroom, then turned off the lights, pushed her against a wall and began fondling her, according to Ms. Sklar and two friends in whom she confided.

He demanded she give him oral sex, suggesting he would evict her if she refused, she said. Desperate to hold on to her apartment, she complied.

Ms. Sklar is one of 10 women who said they had endured assault or unwanted sexual attention from Mr. Rivera, The New York Times found. Even as some women have sounded warnings about Mr. Rivera — including two who were given payments by his organization that ensured their silence — his power and influence have only grown during New York’s worst homeless crisis in decades.

His organization, the Bronx Parent Housing Network, has received more than $274 million from the city to run homeless shelters and provide services just since 2017. The pandemic has intensified Mr. Rivera’s importance: As the coronavirus swept through the homeless population, the city gave his group $10 million to provide rooms where infected people could isolate and recover.

 Women reported Mr. Rivera’s behavior to a state agency, a city hotline and, in one instance, the police. But he maintained his perch atop the organization.

One employee of the Bronx Parent Housing Network said that Mr. Rivera, the chief executive, forced her to give him oral sex in 2016 and then fired her, according to police records, interviews and other documents. In 2018, another employee accused Mr. Rivera of groping her and whispering sexual comments in her ear. After both women separately complained to a state human rights agency, the Bronx Parent Housing Network paid them a total of $175,000 in settlements that prohibited them from speaking publicly about their allegations, according to interviews and records reviewed by The Times.

Five of the women were living in Mr. Rivera’s homeless shelters, or had recently left, when Mr. Rivera approached them for sex, they said.

“He’s got a lot of power over a lot of vulnerable girls,” said Ms. Sklar, 49.

City orders investigation into crooked homeless services provider that fooled them for five years

THE CITY

 The city on Wednesday filed a complaint in Manhattan Supreme Court seeking a temporary receiver for one of New York’s largest homeless service providers — an act officials referred to not just as unprecedented, but as a source of pride.

They had diligently built a case alleging fraud against Childrens Community Services — a firm that’s reaped nearly $500 million in recent years — and were now taking action to protect both taxpayers and the homeless, officials said.

“We’re proud that our staff saw something and said something,” said Isaac McGinn, a Department of Social Services spokesperson.

But the city’s own court filings show that warning signs about the firm began to emerge as early as September 2015.

A review of those filings and other documents by THE CITY reveal a nonprofit formed in 2014 by a former hotel executive that quickly expanded into a multi-million dollar operation that provided nearly 2,000 units of housing for the homeless.

But the company kept getting contracts to help with the city’s homeless crisis even as concerns over its operations grew. The suspicions culminated in raids this week by city and federal officials amid the city’s accusations of fraud, bid-rigging and bogus vendor headquarters

 From the fall of 2015 into the following spring, the Department of Social Services received invoices submitted with repeat and duplicate charges, the filings show.

In April 2018, a piece by New York Nonprofit Media told the story of CCS under the headline, “How an obscure nonprofit became one of NYC’s largest contractors.”

The story noted that the founder of Childrens Community Services, Thomas Bransky, was a hotelier with no background in homeless services when he launched the nonprofit in early 2014 — and raised questions about whether the company had a physical administrative office.

A copy of Branksy’s resume THE CITY obtained through a public records request shows his previous titles — all at Chicago hotels — were account manager, sales manager and front desk manager.

A message left at a phone number he submitted in documents to the city wasn’t returned.

In May 2018, city social service officials’ concerns about “CCS’s suspicious subcontracting, invoicing and billing practices” prompted them to notify the city’s Department of Investigation.

This week, DOI and federal prosecutors executed search warrants of addresses linked with the firm and its vendors, the court filings show.

Questions sent to DOI late Wednesday about the length of the investigation weren’t immediately answered.