New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has appointed Lisa Scott-McKenzie, a longtime employee of the city\u2019s public hospital system, to serve as commissioner of the Department for the Aging, tapping her to oversee the city\u2019s efforts to support the city\u2019s oldest residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scott-McKenzie most recently served as chief operating officer at New York City Health + Hospitals\/Woodhull where she oversaw construction projects and led a bevy of divisions across the North Brooklyn hospital including facilities management, emergency management, social work services, community affairs and hospital police. She has worked at the New York City Health + Hospitals system for four decades, starting her career in 1986 as a stenographic secretarial associate in radiology, according to a biography shared by the Mamdani administration. Scott-McKenzie also has extensive experience as a certified emergency manager, serving as an incident commander for Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and the 2003 Northeastern Blackout.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u2019s the latest Black official Mamdani has tapped for his cabinet after facing backlash<\/a> for not appointing a single Black deputy mayor. News of Scott-McKenzie\u2019s appointment was shared exclusively with City & State ahead of a planned Tuesday announcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n She\u2019ll replace longtime agency leader Lorraine Cort\u00e9s-V\u00e1zquez at the helm of DFTA. Once the secretary of state of New York, Cort\u00e9s-V\u00e1zquez was appointed aging commissioner by former Mayor Bill de Blasio and stayed on for the entirety of the Adams administration. The agency partners with a number of community-based organizations to provide services to older New Yorkers \u2013 in large part to ensure they are able to continue living in their homes and have a sound quality of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI have known Dr. Scott-McKenzie for almost two decades and worked alongside her at H+H\/Woodhull where I witnessed first hand how she treated those most vulnerable among us,\u201d City Council Health Committee Chair Lynn Schulman said in a statement. \u201cShe is smart, warm and kind.\u00a0 I know our city\u2019s older adults (of which I am one) will be in good hands under her leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott-McKenzie, who has a doctorate of health administration from Capella University, is joining the Mamdani administration at a pivotal time for aging New Yorkers. The city\u2019s population of older adults is growing fast and becoming increasingly diverse. Projections show that by 2030, the number of New Yorkers aged 60 and older will make up between 19 and 25% of each borough\u2019s population, underscoring the need to ensure there are strong systems in place to support them, such as caregivers.<\/p>\n Remaining in an increasingly expensive city is a big problem for the older New Yorkers. Over 61% of New Yorkers 65 and over are rent-burdened, meaning they spent over 30% of their income on rent, according to a recent report from the comptroller\u2019s office.<\/a> This is a population that\u2019s heavily impacted by the city\u2019s affordability crisis. About 18% of older adults live<\/a> below 100% of the Federal Poverty Line, and 26% receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program benefits. Federal funding cuts have only <\/a>heightened challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has appointed Lisa Scott-McKenzie, a longtime employee of the city\u2019s public hospital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,55451,55452,63,134,136,135,82],"class_list":["post-128594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-department-for-aging","tag-new-york-city-hall","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}