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Brian Lehrer: Right there on WNYC. It's all about people named Adams and people named Banks in New York City right now, as Eric Adams transitions into his new job as Mayor, Adrian Adams says she has won enough support to be the next city council speaker. She's not the only one claiming that, however, so we'll see, but it could be all about Adams and Adams running the city next year. Tomorrow, we'll have as our first guest, Eric Adams' chosen school's Chancellor, David Banks, for his first interview on the show.

Right now, we have an exit interview with Steven Banks, no relation, who is completing eight years as Mayor de Blasio's Social Services Commissioner in charge of fighting homelessness, among other things. Steven Banks is one of de Blasio's most interesting appointees. I think it's accurate to say that, in that he was a legal aid lawyer-activist before entering government, who had sued the city many times to try to reform homelessness policy. Let's see how it looked from the inside the last eight years. Commissioner Banks, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Steven Banks: Great to be on, Brian, and you and I go back to my years at legal aid, my years in government, and hopefully, my years in a new pathway forward.

Brian Lehrer: We'll talk about that new pathway at the end, which I think is going to be interesting, but just to confirm, no relation to incoming school's Chancellor David Banks, right?

Steven Banks: That is correct. Great respect for him, but no relationship.

Brian Lehrer: Remind folks a little bit of your pre-city government life, what were a few of the cases that you consider most significant from your legal aid days, and policy changes that you helped bring about from the outside?

Steven Banks: I was a Legal Aid lawyer for 33 years, the last 10 years, I was the attorney-in-chief of the organization. During that period of time, I think the Legal Aid Society made tremendous reforms in the city in a whole range of areas involving criminal justice, child welfare, as well as civil legal issues, and social services policies involving homelessness, for example. Honestly, I think, among the most salient accomplishments during my tenure was that we kept the legal aid society from going bankrupt.

As you remember, the organization almost went bankrupt, I became the head of the organization on the verge of bankruptcy, and we were able to save the organization and put it on firm financial footing. I think the criminal defense case caps, which limited the caseloads of criminal defense lawyers, was a tremendous step forward in terms of realizing the promise of Gideon, and the same case cap approach we took to reducing the caseloads for lawyers in Family Court.

I know you're trying to get me to talk about the litigation on behalf of people experiencing homelessness in the city, which was one of the things that I did. I was the counsel to the Coalition Of The Homeless for many years. We litigated a case that established a permanent right to shelter for families with children experiencing homelessness, and I also represented the coalition in litigation forcing a right to shelter for single adults under the Callahan consent decree. I guess I probably would have said when I was appointed, I sued six governors and four mayors on behalf of people who needed the courts to step in and enforce their rights.

Brian Lehrer: That, listeners, is grounding on Stephen Banks before he joined the de Blasio administration. Now, before the pandemic, the number of people experiencing homelessness in New York City living in shelters had jumped from around 53,000 to 63,000 on your watch, according to the stats I've been seeing, and the mayor has said homeless policy was maybe his own biggest failure. He referred to this fail on MSNBC as, "Some absolute early misunderstandings and missteps on my part that I've owned up to." Would you put some meat on those bones, assuming you agree, and describe those missteps and misunderstandings, and also your own role in them or in opposing them?

Steven Banks: Sure, happy to pick up on what the mayor had to say. Remember that I came on the show at the beginning of my tenure. I was appointed the commissioner of the Human Resources Administration. I served in that capacity for several years, and then partway through the mayor's first term, he asked me to conduct a 90-day review of Homeless Services, and among the things that we recommended was that the Department of Homeless Services be re-integrated with HRA under the umbrella of the Department of Social Services. That happened in 2017.

If I have a regret, it's that coming into government at the beginning, I didn't argue that the Department of Homeless Services should have been integrated at the beginning because what we really found, Brian, you've covered this over time, is that from the moment that the Department of Homeless Services was created in late 1993, into 1994, until 2014, homelessness increased in the city by 115%. The coalition of the homeless local 371, DC 37, and I on behalf of Legal Aid Society, we all argued in 1993, 1994, that by breaking out the Department of Homeless Services, it would be separated from the important prevention tools that HRA had.

I hate to be in the role of Cassandra, but what we predicted happened did happen, which was that creating a separate agency actually resulted in an increase in homelessness. It goes back to something I said to you when I first was appointed and was on your show. At the beginning of HRA, we did a study and we showed that there was an association between HRA case closings and people applying for shelter.

At the time that DHS was created, I and others said, "You know what, if you have one commissioner who is making determinations about paying people rent arrears to keep them in their homes, and the other commissioner has to shelter them, there's going to be a disconnect between public policy," and there was. It wasn't really until 2017, which was significantly through the administration, that the mayor and I together put out a turn in the tide plan to really reform the city's approach to homelessness over the prior 40 years, which is essentially the city managing to compliance with a court order, rather than actually reforming services.

The plan's really got four elements to it. We can go through the metrics, and you can see the progress that's been made, and the things that still need to be done in the coming administration. If you were devising a plan, you and I would both say preventing homelessness in the first place is critical. We implemented a right to counsel. The HRA doubled the amount of money paid in rent arrears, and lo and behold, evictions came down pre-pandemic 41%.

We said housing is what causes homelessness, it's the state of not having a roof over your head. The Department of Social Services created a range of housing programs, which now benefited 180,000 people, and that's what's really driven down the census. You're right that in January 2014, the census was 53,000, at the time of the turn of the tide plan, it has risen to 60,000, and that's the point where we integrated the Department of Homeless Services and HRA under one umbrella.

You could see a set at the time in 2017 this census might continue to rise until our investments in prevention and permanent housing begin to take hold, and you could see it before this pandemic. Obviously, during the pandemic, it's not simply a question of an eviction moratorium, we had to continue to move people out of shelter into permanent housing, which is what we did in the Department of Social Services programs. For example, the family shelter system is down by 26,000 people now from where it was, but we do have record numbers of single adult people who are experiencing homelessness in our system.

That's really as a result of a whole range of social factors. You and I have talked over the years about deinstitutionalization from psychiatric hospitals on the state level driving homelessness in the city, we now see history repeating itself with decarceration. With people being released, it's an appropriate policy, but you got to do more than have people released from state prison and have them being dumped into city shelters.

Brian Lehrer: Let's pick up on that last point because it's so important. What's the administration doing in its last month to accommodate those people being decarcerated, released from prison, and what do you think the Adams administration needs to do on that score?

Steven Banks: Two great points. The first point relates to what the shelter system looks like now, at the time of turning the tide in 2017, we said we would shrink the footprint of the shelter system by 45%. I know everybody reported on all the shelters we were going to open, but the other part of the story is we've closed more than 300 substandard shelters inside of a smaller number of borough-based shelters to give people an opportunity to be housed near the anchors of their lives, like schools, jobs, health care, houses of worship, and support networks.

I think the most important thing that we can do to deal with the increasing decarceration, in the absence of the state providing for real reentry services, is to make sure we have enough shelter in winter, which is why you see although the census is decreased dramatically, particularly on the family side, or driven by the family side, we have a pipeline of shelter ready for the winter to make sure that people don't end up on the streets, but I think ultimately, policy lies in the relationship between the governor and the mayor.

I have confidence that the Mayor Adams understands public safety issues and will be situated to be able to work with the governor who wants to be a partner with the mayor, to do something about what we have seen, which is people coming literally right out of state prison, to our shelters. I have great hope that between the new governor and the incoming mayor, that there'll be a different partnership than we've had for most of my tenure.

Brian Lehrer: To circle back to something you said a few minutes ago, and listeners, if you're just joining us, my guest is the out-going New York City Social Services Commissioner, Steven Banks. His job, as we've been discussing, was first called Human Resources Administration Commissioner. Then for de Blasio's second term, they merged that with the Department of Homeless Services into what's called the Department of Social Services. I think one of the things that probably has not gotten enough credit for you and the mayor is one of the things that you mentioned, which is the right to counsel for tenants facing eviction. An important reform, I think, going forward.

I hear you when you say that contributed to the decline in evictions even before the pandemic, but we have now had the pandemic-related eviction moratorium, and that expires next month. I'm curious what you expect in terms of new evictions leading to more homelessness in or out of shelters, and what the best way to avoid worst-case scenarios from that might be.

Steven Banks: I think what we did has created the foundation for the incoming administration to be able to address the significant crisis that's looming there as you say, the expiration of the moratorium. One is by providing lawyers to people, we're leveling the playing field. It's the right thing to do from a policy point of view, but we're talking about human beings, and you and I have talked about before. You go in and you don't have a lawyer, and the deck is stacked against you. We're finding that, with lawyers, tenants are now winning 85% of their cases.

Therefore, I have confidence that going forward, the lawyers will be able to stave off the kinds of evictions that we saw pre-right to counsel when the eviction moratorium expires. I would also emphasize that when I came in as HRA Commissioner, we re-evaluated the provision of rent arrears to people. It's an entitlement program, it's not a matter of charity from the Department of Social Services.

By looking at rent arrears as an entitlement, we doubled the amount of money with $125 million the city spent in the year before I came in and now we're spending about $250 million pre-pandemic. I think that that is the old adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." In a word, I think building on the right to counsel and the payment of rent arrears will be important steps forward to keep people in their homes.

The governor signed an important piece of legislation on Friday, which was to increase the level of the state rent supplement called SEPS up to the HUD standard, and we had this crazy situation where HUD says, "This is the amount of money you need to pay for rent in the city," and the state was saying, "Well, we'll give a rental allowance that's less than that."

As I said, when she signed it, my first month in office in 2014, I requested the state increase the amount of the state SEPS rental allowance to the HUD levels. Now, in my last month, the state's finally doing it. Better late than never, and it's just in the nick of time for the expiration of the moratorium. I think that will really help to keep people in their homes, but again, it shows what you can do when you have a state partner, which we didn't have for the eight years.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio, a few more minutes with outgoing Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks, and we'll talk after that about Mayor-elect Eric Adams' surprise pick for Police Commissioner. He introduced her this morning, but Commissioner Banks, one of your proudest accomplishments, I think, is reforming 40 years of benefits policy, making it less punitive, I think you would say, what benefits specifically, and what did you change?

Steven Banks: I think that the metric that you look at is the numbers of clients requesting fair hearings, challenging being cut off of public benefits, and we cut that number in half. We did that by taking an approach that people who need benefits should get them. We transformed the way that you get benefits. You and I, remember, you go to an office, you wait for hours, your children are screaming. It's just a terrible situation. We put public benefits online so that you could apply online, you could have a telephone interview. We did that relatively early on for SNAP food stamps, that federal benefit.

If you went into one of our SNAP centers, pre-pandemic, it was not the kind of center that you and I remember at HRA because the waiting room was relatively empty, and because people could apply online, people could use the telephone, and for those that had technology challenges, they could come into the office and be served relatively quickly. We asked for years for the Cuomo administration to grant us the same right to do that for cash assistance, to not require people to wait in the waiting rooms in order to get the benefits, to allow people to apply online and apply by telephone. Right when the pandemic hit, we were finally granted a waiver to do that.

We pivoted literally within a couple of days and created a way for people to remain safe in their homes and apply for cash assistance by phone and online, but we've gotten signature waivers that enable people who can't use technology to apply by telephone and a staff member takes that application. Then we got a state law pass that made our cash assistance access permanent. In a word, we took away the barriers for getting food stamps and cash assistance. There are more barriers that clients experience that are part of federal and state law, and we are committed to continue to work on those, and I think that the Adams administration is also committed to taking down more barriers.

I think that's the basics. We also got a state law passed that enabled us to reduce the number of people who are subject to sanctions. You remember people would be required to do certain things and their benefits would be cut off, and they'd get a durational sanction for a determinate sentence of getting no benefits, and we got permission to be able to give people back their benefits if their cases were sanctioned. Then, of course, we undid the WEP program. I know you did lots of shows back in the day on the program, the work experience program, which required people to work off their benefits, but didn't really provide people with a career pathway.

We replaced that with education and training programs. People can now attend college as a permissible activity, for a period of time. Essentially, we said to ourselves, people who're on cash assistance need help getting a career pathway out of poverty, not simply experiencing punitive public assistance policies that make it hard to get the benefit. Obviously, more work to be done in terms of taking down some of the state and federal required barriers, but we've created that foundation, which technology has made it more possible for people to have a more humane experience in getting those benefits. More to be done, but again, a foundation there for further progress.

Brian Lehrer: Also outreach, I see the advertising on the subways, even advertising on the radio, for SNAP or Food Stamp cash assistance for people who are eligible, but you know what? We're getting a phone call of pushback from somebody on the application process having gone online and maybe a downside of that. Devon in the Bronx, you're on WNYC with Commissioner Banks. Hi, Devon.

Devon: Yes. How you doing? You said a lot of things that did help a lot of people, but that was if you're computer savvy. A lot of these things forced us people to go online instead of doing it in person. I was one of those people that was in this program and I was trying to get into one of the cooking training programs, and they made it very hard for me. I thought that they was going to be able to help me get into these programs and manipulate the computer, but they didn't, they was like, "You got to do this research on your own. You got to do that on your own. You got to do this," and it made it very hard for people that was not computer savvy. That program helped a lot of people that was born with a computer or a phone in their hand, but all of us that was born with rotary dialing, that didn't help us at all. That really hurt us.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get an answer because we're almost out of time. Commissioner Banks, you hear that very specific roadblock that he feels he felt.

Steven Banks: Absolutely. Devon, I'm very sorry for your problem, and Brian, if we can get information to follow up with him, but I think he really put his finger on two issues that are frustrations for me. One is tens of thousands of people have benefited from the reforms that we put in place, but on any day of the week, any hour of the day, this hour is no different, there are people that have not yet felt the full benefit of our reforms, so I leave knowing that we made tremendous systemic reforms, but I also leave knowing that the reforms haven't been felt by everybody yet.

It's one of the reasons Brian said you can apply online, you can use the telephone, but you can also come into one of our offices. I think what he's criticizing is whether or not our employment programs are getting him the help that he needs, and I'm hearing what he's saying. Of course, we've had our employment program suspended for most of this last period of time because of the pandemic as opposed to being able to give the kind of in-person help that we previously gave.

If he's caught up in that, we'll figure out a way to have individualized help for him, but that's the most important thing I would say of all the reforms, Brian, we've tried to take a not one size fits all approach and to meet people where they are. If he's in a situation where we haven't lived up to what our goals are, we will certainly work with him to make sure that he doesn't experience our services as one size fits all approach.

Brian Lehrer: I think he was talking about his needs in the past, but Devon, I know you hung up. If you want to call back, we will take your contact information off the air if you want us to put you in contact with the social services commissioner's office, so you can call us back, you know the number, 212-433-WNYC. Last question, you're leaving government head the pro bono practice at the high-end law firm, Paul Weiss, should we expect to find you in your old role soon, suing the mayor of New York rather than working for him?

Steven Banks: Look, I've always believed that we should try to avoid litigation whenever possible, and most of what lawyers do is transactional, advising clients, trying to help them through, but I think as I've found in my public service career at legal aid, and even in government, sometimes court litigation is what is needed to vindicate people's rights. Paul Weiss has a rich history of pro bono work.

I worked with them on the stop and frisk litigation involving vertical patrols in the housing authority when I was head of the legal aid society, and they helped right a tremendous wrong there, and so in going to the firm, I look forward to building upon all the great work that they've done, but ultimately, I'm returning to the practice of law because I see the benefit for clients. We've now got a right to counsel. We've got a right to shelter. Maybe the next frontier is a right to housing.

Brian Lehrer: Social services commissioner until December 31st, the whole eight years of the de Blasio administration, serving first as human resources administration commissioner, then the merged department of that and Department of Homeless Services in the Social Services department, so eight years in government back to the private sector with a very gently worded threat of future lawsuits, Steven Banks. Thank you very much. Good luck out there. I have a feeling this won't be the last time we talk.

Steven Banks: I hope so. Thank you for all your insights over the years, and I look forward to continuing to come on the show if you allow me to.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks again. Look forward to it.

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