Longtime do-gooder stepping down from role serving homeless, will join Staten Island charter school

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The decades-long face of Staten Island’s homeless services will step down from her leadership role later this year, the Advance/SILive.com learned Tuesday.

The Rev. Dr. Terry Troia will end her time as executive director and CEO of Project Hospitality later this year to become its president emeritus, and to step into a new administrative role with the West Brighton-based New World Preparatory Charter School.

“Although I will no longer be leading the organization, I will still dedicate myself to speaking about and supporting the lifesaving work and mission of Project Hospitality, and the lives of the hungry and homeless people Project Hospitality serves, in the public spaces of our island and city where their voices need to be heard,” Troia wrote in an email to the Advance/SILive.com. “I have lived and breathed the mission of Project Hospitality every day, at home and at work, for nearly a half century. I am eternally grateful to God for allowing me to serve the poorest people and families among us through the work of Project Hospitality.”

Spokespersons for the Port-Richmond-based Project Hospitality did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication Tuesday about who will step into Rev. Troia’s leadership role.

Rev. Troia joined Project Hospitality as a volunteer in 1984, just two years after its founding when it was a tiny organization with one $10,000 contract, and mostly served the Island’s hungry and homeless through a soup kitchen and food pantry at a pair of North Shore churches.

In her leadership role, Rev. Troia has overseen the organization’s transformation into a $50 million behemoth with more than 400 staff, over 1,000 volunteers, and several shelter sites around the borough.

Though neighbors to some of the organization’s shelters and service centers have long been a source of quality of life complaints, Project Hospitality has been one of the few homeless services providers on the Island for decades baring public scrutiny for work few want to do.

Rev. Troia has also been a staunch advocate for the Island’s poor, minority and immigrant communities, particularly during the city’s 2023 migrant crisis.

The reverend wrote in her Tuesday email that she would be stepping down in six months, and starting her role with New World Preparatory Charter School in August for the upcoming school year.

Project Hospitality co-founded the school 15 years ago with El Centro Del Inmigrante, and the school’s main campus is in Port Richmond.

“I have been intimately involved in the work of New World Prep since its beginning, have served as co-founder of the school and founding member of the New World Prep Board of Directors,” Rev. Troia wrote Tuesday. “My 42 years at Project Hospitality have been the very best years of my life. I came as a volunteer in 1984, and helped build a network of faith based shelters in churches and synagogues across this Island that provided safety, warmth and a place to call home for so many homeless Staten Islanders.”