When Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York City last month, he and senior aides quickly found fault with the operations of a key city agency, the Department of Social Services, which is responsible for homeless outreach and the distribution of public benefits.<\/p>\n
Now, the commissioner of that department, Molly Wasow Park, has submitted her resignation, acknowledging on Monday that it did not appear that she would be retained by the new administration.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mamdani\u2019s team was already reconsidering the direction and leadership of the department even before 18 New Yorkers died<\/a> after exposure to the elements during a recent period of extreme cold. Outreach to people sleeping on city streets<\/a> is under the purview of the social services agency.<\/p>\n Ms. Park said in an interview on Monday that she had wanted to stay in her role, but that it \u201cdid not feel like it was going to materialize,\u201d and she had decided her resignation would be \u201cthe right thing for everybody.\u201d She said the past few weeks had been \u201cimmensely challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the final evaluation happens, I\u2019m sure there\u2019s going to be instances where we find instances where we could have done something different,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like in an awful lot of cases, we did what we needed to.\u201d<\/p>\n She said she was working with City Hall to determine when her last day would be. Her departure was first reported<\/a> by the news site Gothamist.<\/p>\n According to two people familiar with the circumstances of her departure, Ms. Park decided to resign after being told she would not be retained.<\/p>\n One of those people and a third person, also granted anonymity to freely discuss a personnel matter, said the first deputy mayor, Dean Fuleihan, had concerns with Ms. Park\u2019s stewardship over an agency that he and the mayor felt was not adequately addressing the needs of an economically unstable population.<\/p>\n \u201cWe appreciate Commissioner Park\u2019s years of service to the city and the mayor looks forward to working with her through this transitional period,\u201d Mr. Mamdani\u2019s spokeswoman, Dora Pekec, said in a statement, adding that City Hall would name a new commissioner \u201cin the coming weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Ms. Park will testify before the City Council about the weather-related deaths, the first of which occurred on Jan. 24. Since then, the city has been scrambling to bring people who are homeless to safety and warmth indoors<\/a>.<\/p>\n The city said it had made more than 1,400 placements into shelters or other indoor sites, and had involuntarily removed some 34 people from the streets.<\/p>\n Ms. Park, a city government veteran who was appointed social services commissioner by former Mayor Eric Adams in 2023, said the difficulties over the past two weeks had not played a role in her decision to resign. She said she had not felt any pressure from City Hall to leave.<\/p>\n The cold snap was not Ms. Park\u2019s first crisis. When she became commissioner, the city was struggling to find shelter space<\/a> for thousands of migrants arriving every week, while also contending with lingering social and economic disruption from the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n