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Gilbert Taylor, New York City Homelessness Chief, Quits Post
Mayor Bill de Blasio, still struggling to manage near-record levels of homelessness, announced on Tuesday that his homeless-services chief was stepping down in another shake-up of the administration’s antipoverty efforts.
The departure of the commissioner, Gilbert Taylor, is the latest fallout from the homelessness crisis, which has become a consuming political problem for Mr. de Blasio as he tries to address deepening inequality in New York City.
Since Mr. de Blasio took office, the number of people in shelters overseen by the Department of Homeless Services has jumped to more than 57,000 from about 53,000, peaking at 59,068.
As public attention to the problem began to mount over the summer, City Hall began taking a more visible role in addressing the issue, even as the mayor sought, initially, to play down any sense of crisis.
But in September, he announced the resignation of Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, the deputy mayor who had overseen Mr. Taylor’s agency and several other social services departments.
Just as he praised Ms. Barrios-Paoli, the mayor on Tuesday lauded the efforts of Mr. Taylor, who had been appointed to head the Department of Homeless Services after serving in the Bloomberg administration as a top official at the city’s Administration for Children’s Services.
But in the news conference called to explain Mr. Taylor’s departure, the mayor made clear that he was not satisfied with his administration’s efforts to deal with homelessness.
“After we tried a number of changes and reforms, we didn’t feel we were getting as much seamlessness and as much streamlining as we needed,” he said. “We thought it was time to step back and look at the structures that are 20 years old.”
The Department of Homeless Services was created 22 years ago to better focus attention and resources. But in recent months, the Human Resources Administration had been playing a bigger role in the city’s homelessness efforts, leaving Mr. Taylor and his agency increasingly isolated.
The head of the Human Resources Administration, Steven Banks, will now work with the first deputy mayor, Anthony E. Shorris, to oversee a reorganization of the homeless services agency.
Asked at the news conference if Mr. Taylor had been encouraged to resign, the mayor said Mr. Taylor had expressed “a desire to seek other opportunities.”
In a statement, Mr. Taylor, 45, said he was proud of the initiatives he led, including the expansion of street and subway outreach. He said that he would advise City Hall on the reorganization and that he was committed to a smooth transition.
The mayor has been under pressure on many fronts to step up his administration’s efforts and has said his administration’s programs have kept more than 20,000 families from slipping into homelessness.
But the shelter numbers have remained high, and earlier this month the issue became the latest fodder for criticism from his fellow Democrat, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who publicly questioned the city’s handling of the crisis, even as the mayor has called for more state resources to combat homelessness.
Until his appointment in January 2014, Mr. Taylor had not headed an agency, but Mr. de Blasio’s transition team saw potential in tapping the longtime public servant who had spent his career working on behalf of at-risk youths and families.
In a recent interview, Mr. Taylor recalled meeting with Mr. de Blasio about taking the job. “It was about hearts and minds, the importance of the work,” he said.
Around the time Mr. de Blasio took office, The New York Times published a series of articles about Dasani Coates, an 11-year-old girl, and her family living in squalid conditions in the city’s shelter system. Children and families remain the bulk of the city’s homeless population and the largest group living in the city’s shelters, and Mr. Taylor’s expertise in dealing with such families was part of his appeal.
But the most visible part of the problem is on the streets — mostly single adults and people, some homeless, some not — who panhandle in very public places, mostly in Manhattan.
Mr. Taylor faced one challenge after another, including removing children from the Brooklyn shelter where Dasani and her family had stayed and an inquiry by the city’s Investigation Department into shelter conditions. “It was very, very intense,” he said of his early months as commissioner.
Advocates for homeless people and leaders in the union that represents shelter workers described Mr. Taylor as a skilled manager who visited shelters in the early morning so he could see how children were getting to school and at night so he could review overnight intakes. They said he had inherited the crisis, which began escalating in 2011 after the state cut funding for rental assistance programs.
Some advocates, however, said he was an inexperienced leader who had difficulty supervising staff and navigating the political landscape.
After the three-term tenure of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a political independent, shelter and housing providers appeared to be looking for institutional knowledge. They found that in Mr. Banks, formerly a top attorney with the Legal Aid Society who spent more than three decades fighting the city on homelessness.
The Department of Homeless Services was created in 1993 after the administration of Mayor David N. Dinkins faced significant legal actions from the Legal Aid Society, spearheaded by Mr. Banks.
Mr. de Blasio said he was seeking a replacement for Mr. Taylor, but he did not rule out the possibility that the Department of Homeless Services could be absorbed by Human Resources Administration.
In some respects, that has already been happening. Some rental assistance programs and provider contracts once overseen by the Department of Homeless Services have moved to the other agency, which has created its own homeless unit. The shift hampered Mr. Taylor, said Vela Sutton, a leader of the Social Service Employees Union Local 371.
On Tuesday, Ms. Sutton said she was disappointed but not surprised to see Mr. Taylor step down. “I believe they are looking for a scapegoat and he’s the perfect one,” she said.
Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.
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