Erin Dalton takes the helm of DSS as the city faces near-record shelter populations and deadly cold
An Out-of-State Hire for New York’s Most Complex Human Services Job
On February 25, 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that Erin Dalton, a veteran social services administrator from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania — the county that includes Pittsburgh — would become commissioner of New York City’s Department of Social Services. The appointment came at one of the most difficult moments in recent memory for the agency: the city’s shelter population stands at approximately 90,000 people on any given night, a brutal winter has killed at least 19 New Yorkers on the streets — 15 of them from hypothermia — and the Mamdani administration is under pressure from both homeless rights advocates and critics on the right over its evolving approach to encampment policy.
Dalton replaces Molly Wasow Park, a holdover from the Eric Adams administration, who tendered her resignation earlier this month after being informed she would not be retained. Wasow Park said at a City Council hearing that her departure was unrelated to the winter deaths, though the timing inevitably drew scrutiny. The department she oversaw is enormous: DSS includes both the Department of Homeless Services and the Human Resources Administration, employs more than 14,000 people, and is responsible for approximately $19 billion in planned spending in fiscal year 2027. It administers cash assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, and the nation’s largest municipal rental assistance program, serving more than three million low-income New Yorkers.
Why Dalton? What Pittsburgh Did Right
Mamdani’s rationale for the appointment was rooted in Dalton’s specific track record. In Allegheny County, she spent more than 18 years in the human services department, becoming director in 2021. During that time, her office built a coordinated winter shelter network that reduced the number of people living outdoors by nearly 98 percent. She redesigned the county’s mobile crisis response system, deploying behavioral health professionals to respond to 911 calls — a model that mirrors Mamdani’s own proposed Department of Community Safety, which would route clinicians rather than police to mental health-related emergency calls. Under Dalton’s tenure, violent crime in the county dropped by nearly 20 percent and incarceration rates fell by nearly 10 percent.
She also addressed homeless encampments along Pittsburgh’s riverfronts and downtown areas after the pandemic saw a dramatic expansion of tent communities. She did so without arresting or jailing anyone as a condition of clearing a site. Writing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last September, Dalton described her approach: outreach workers contacted 250 homeless individuals over a sustained period; more than 80 percent moved into shelter or housing; the rest relocated on their own or had already found a place. Her explicit critique of using arrests as a tool of homelessness policy aligns closely with Mamdani’s stated philosophy.
The Context She Is Walking Into
Dalton’s appointment comes as the Mamdani administration is navigating a significant reversal on encampment policy. During his first days in office, Mamdani suspended the practice of clearing encampments — sometimes called “sweeps” — that had been a centerpiece of the Adams administration’s approach. He framed the pause as a commitment to dignity for homeless New Yorkers. But as the deadly winter freeze claimed lives, including those of people found in makeshift outdoor shelters, the mayor reversed course and resumed sweeps, specifying that the Department of Homeless Services — not the NYPD — would direct the operations. The shift prompted backlash from homeless rights advocates, including VOCAL-NY, who argued the city’s long-term focus must remain on housing, not enforcement.
Into this tension, Dalton arrives with a specific credential: she has shown that it is possible to reduce visible street homelessness without relying on police coercion, and without abandoning the people being displaced. Whether she can replicate that in a city of eight million, with a shelter system vastly larger than anything in Allegheny County’s experience, is the central question her tenure will answer.
Scale Is the Challenge
The scale difference between Pittsburgh and New York is significant and should be stated clearly. Allegheny County serves approximately 200,000 residents through its human services department — fewer than half the number of New Yorkers who receive cash assistance alone through HRA. The shelter system Dalton will oversee houses 90,000 people a night under New York City’s unique right-to-shelter mandate, which has been in place since 1981 and requires the city to provide a bed to any person who requests one. That mandate has no parallel in Pennsylvania law.
Former DSS Commissioner Wasow Park offered her successor a clear-eyed assessment at her final City Council hearing: look upstream. Address the social safety net gaps that leave people on the street in the first place, not just the immediate need for beds. Advocates including the Coalition for the Homeless have pointed to approximately 5,000 vacant housing units with on-site social services that could be immediately deployed for people with serious mental illness currently living outdoors. Jeremy Saunders of VOCAL-NY put the challenge plainly: building housing is the long-term solution, but it does not address the people who need help tonight.
Dalton also arrives with a controversy in her background. During her time in Allegheny County, her department implemented an artificial intelligence algorithm for child welfare risk assessment that was criticized for disproportionately flagging Black children for follow-up investigations. The algorithm drew national attention and academic scrutiny. How she will address algorithmic bias concerns if similar data-driven tools are proposed for New York’s social services systems is a question advocates are already raising.
For data on New York City’s shelter population and right-to-shelter law, see the Coalition for the Homeless. For background on Allegheny County’s human services model, see the Allegheny County DHS. For the city’s official DSS information, visit NYC Department of Social Services. For national research on homelessness and housing policy, see National Alliance to End Homelessness.
