Halsey Confirmed As New Social Services Chief

The Board of Alders officially approved local charter school founder Eliza Halsey to lead the city’s social services department — while passing new mechanisms to enforce elevator maintenance and salons’ health code compliance.

The final vote confirming Halsey’s appointment to city government took place at a Thursday evening full Board of Alders meeting in the Aldermanic Chamber of City Hall.

Mayor Justin Elicker appointed Halsey to replace Mehul Dalal as the city’s Community Services Administrator, overseeing a third of city departments including the Department of Community Resilience (focused on homelessness, mental health, and re-entry), the Health Department, the Youth and Recreation Department, the Department of Elderly Services, and most recently, the New Haven Free Public Library.

In an interview with the board’s Aldermanic Affairs Committee last month, Halsey said her priorities in the new role include expanding investments in childcare and senior services. 

She said she aims to take a regional approach to addressing the housing and homelessness crises; she praised the city’s plans to open a non-congregate homeless shelter on Foxon Boulevard with private rooms available for the ​“real acknowledgement to the trauma that the unhoused experience in the way that facility is being built.” 

And that she hopes to broaden the city’s Youth Connect program, which provides wraparound resources to teens at risk of being affected by violence.

Halsey has spent her career working in various local education nonprofits, including the after-school program LEAP, the career training organization Public Allies Connecticut, and the family childcare advocacy organization All Our Kin (where she served as the executive director). 

Most recently, Halsey founded and served as executive director of Elm City Montessori, New Haven’s only locally-authorized charter school, which has been able to autonomously budget over $4 million of New Haven Public Schools funding to serve its students since it opened in 2014.

Urging his colleagues to approve Halsey’s appointment, Quinnipiac Meadows Alder Gerald Antunes said on Thursday, ​“Ms. Halsey spoke passionately about her life serving New Haven residents” to the Aldermanic Affairs Committee.

Nearly every alder present voted to confirm Halsey’s appointment, with one abstention from Ward 14’s Sarah Miller. 

Alders also unanimously approved two long-awaited pieces of legislation on Thursday.

One was an ordinance amendment creating a way for the city’s Health Department to conduct state-mandated annual inspections of salons, including hair and nail salons, piercing and tattoo parlors, and other beauty-related businesses.

Another was an ordinance amendment that charges the Livable City Initiative (LCI), the city’s anti-blight agency, with enforcing a two-day deadline for landlords to fix broken elevators that serve as a lifeline for tenants with mobility-related disabilities that prevent them from being able to take the stairs.

The new law allows the city to fine landlords in violation of this timeline up to $250 per day. Previously, the city had a limited ability to pressure landlords to comply with local rules around working elevators.

“We crafted an ordinance to better protect our residents,” said Morris Cove Alder Sal DeCola, who worked with colleagues and local disability advocates for years to better enforce elevator access in residential buildings. 

Ellen Cupo, the chair of the alders’ Legislation Committee, stressed that broken elevators can ​“prevent residents with disabilities from performing daily, essential activities,” including life-saving tasks such as ​“going to the doctor” and ​“picking up medications.”