More than a year after it was reorganized, the Department of Homeless Services finally has a leader, the city will announce Monday.
Joslyn Carter has been appointed as administrator of the agency, the Daily News has learned.
Carter, who was previously the associate commissioner of family intake for DHS, will report to Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks — who has overseen both DHS and the Human Resources Administration since they were grouped together under him after a 90-day review last April.
“Earlier this year, we announced a new borough-based approach to the shelter system designed to help homeless New Yorkers stay close to their support networks in order to get back on their feet and move out of shelter,” Mayor de Blasio said in a statement. “Joslyn Carter has dedicated her life’s work to helping homeless New Yorkers, and I am confident that her leadership will further strengthen the agency.”
Carter, a licensed clinical social worker, has worked in the field for more than 23 years, according to the city, the last 13 of them at DHS where she most recently oversaw the operation of PATH, the intake site where families apply for shelter. There she oversaw a staff of 300, dealing with more than 35,000 applications a year at an intake center open every day, all day.
Banks said he’d worked with Carter since he embarked on the 90-day review of DHS, which began in late 2015 after the departure of the last DHS commissioner, Gilbert Taylor, and said he’d seen Carter “make a real difference in people’s lives.”
“I know first-hand the management skills that she will bring to this important new role to help transform how we provide shelter and services to homeless New Yorkers,” Banks said in a statement.
Carter said she was excited to put the mayor’s new borough-based plan to work.
“I’m confident that working with my partners on DHS’ strong leadership team and with support from the Department of Social Services, we will improve quality of life for New Yorkers experiencing the challenge of homelessness, including improving how we provide shelter and how we help them transition into permanent housing,” she said.
Homeless service providers lauded the move.
“It’s great that they’ve appointed someone with so much experience at the agency, because I think that’s really going to help guide us all forward,” Catherine Trapani, the executive director at Homeless Services United, said.
Trapani said Banks has been “a really good partner” who made himself completely available — but that it will be good to have the DHS administrator spot filled at last.
“We’ve long wanted this position to be filled, to really have a person that we can work with on some of the policy issues that have been emerging,” she said.
Christine Quinn, CEO of Win, a network of women and family shelters, agreed — and said Carter’s vision of how to approach homelessness matched with Win’s.
“Administrator Carter is somebody who has been in this system for well over a decade and she’s had different positions and really knows them and knows the providers,” Quinn said. “But the thing I’m most excited about is her experience is deeply on the family side.”
