The test run spanning June and July on the service road at Second Avenue between East 33rd and 30th streets was a positive addition to the neigborhood where I have lived since 1985.

People in this area are starved for a nice place to sit in open air that is not private property. The trees offered cool shade, and everyone was polite and largely well-meaning as they enjoyed this lovely place for two summer months. The Doe Fund kept the area spotlessly clean and pleasant. I enjoyed seeing them come into Starbucks each morning and evening after their work duties; they were very polite and courteous to all.

As you know, this area fronts the Kips Bay Towers complex, and I understand there was considerable resistance from some of the real estate professionals who deal in those properties, but in fact, I should think that this lovely pedestrian plaza compliments any potential financial value over which these people might be concerned.

I recall one Kips Bay Towers resident was quoted in Our Town as saying, “We’re against it! Who will sit there but homeless people. It’s very sad.” With lovely fresh breezes coming off the ocean via the East River and the lovely shade trees, this is the best-kept summer secret!

Please bring it back immediately—not a year from now or never.

—Virginia Hooper

Every summer, a string of events hit the city that provide, depending on your perspective, either a fun-filled, leisurely day of shopping, eating and entertainment or a hellish, traffic-jamming, noise-making, government-sanctioned takeover of public places. To many, they are just street fairs. Some love them, many enjoy them, and some scratch their heads with wonder at how such things are allowed so often.

There are different types of street fairs permitted by the city: multi-block and single-block. (Block parties, which require only the closing of one block and don’t involve the sale of any goods or services, are categorized separately but must get similar city approvals.) The multi-block events are the big ones that take place on the avenues and span anywhere from a couple blocks up to, on the Upper West Side, 15 blocks. They’re all run for the benefit of nonprofit organizations, from churches to schools to charity groups, and they all have to go through an approval process that lets the community board and local residents weigh in first.

“The street fairs on side streets tend to be to benefit an organization, and one of the requirements, not surprisingly, is that the organization is actually on the street,” said Mark Diller, chair of Community Board 7. “You usually hear a bit of grumbling about parking and amplified sound because people’s homes are right there.”

Diller said that overall, the board doesn’t hear too many complaints about street fairs; some people don’t like them when they happen right in front of their building, but the city doesn’t usually allow the same side street to be closed more than once a year.

While the approval process on the Upper West Side is relatively calm and uncontroversial, Upper East Side community board members have recently been grappling with resident complaints about the sheer number of street fairs and whether ones specifically held for private institutions, like a street closure for a private school’s graduation celebration, should be approved at all.

At Community Board 8’s March meeting, several board members spoke out against specific street closures for relatively small events, based on how the sponsoring organization behaved in the community and how it ran its event. Some opposed allowing Marymount Manhattan College to have a four-hour block party, but supported churches and other schools hosting similar events. One church event drew support from some who pointed out that the church is committed to social service in the community and vitriol from others who called their event “horrible” and “outrageous.” The board disapproved a block party hosted by Lenox Hill Hospital because it’s a private event and not open to the public, as well as two applications from the Central Park Precinct Community Council for two separate block parties because they normally have their meetings on the West Side.

“Let them have their street fairs in Board 7 where they chose to have their meetings,” said David Rosenstein, a sentiment echoed by many members. The board is considering amending their criteria for street fair and block party applications to address the differences between public and private events, as well as tightening the requirements for community involvement.

On the West Side, City Council Member Gale Brewer said that she hears from some people who are vehemently opposed to fairs taking over their streets, but that she also has a unique viewpoint gained by attending every major fair in her district and seeing firsthand how residents interact with the events. She brings a table, sets it up with pamphlets on city and local issues, and spends the day chatting with people who come by. “It’s a lot of work, but I’ve never missed one,” Brewer said.

While some residents have complained that the street fairs cater to visitors at their expense, turning their streets into tourist attractions, Brewer said that the proof is in the depleted stacks of flyers at the end of the day.

“Tourists are not interested in tenant information; I can see that it’s local people,” she said.

The biggest complaints tend to be over traffic—streets are rerouted and curbside parking becomes even tighter than usual when several avenue blocks are closed—and the fear that street vendors are siphoning business from the brick-and-mortar stores that sit just behind the temporary booths. Recently, however, some of the major street fair production companies—like Mort and Ray Productions, which puts on many of the Upper West Side’s major festivals—have been making efforts to accommodate merchants by offering them prime spaces outside of their own stores at discounted rates and agreeing not to place a vendor selling dresses outside of a women’s clothing boutique or a cupcake truck outside of a bakery.

“We take great care to make sure that no one is selling a similar product to merchants,” said Andrew Albert, executive director of the West Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, which produces the Amsterdam Avenue and Columbus Avenue festivals. “We’ve got a very sophisticated computer program that we paid a lot of money for that ensures that doesn’t happen. We also walk the avenue and speak to the merchants and tell them about the fairs.”

He said he’s heard from some small business owners who were delighted to find that street fair foot traffic morphed into regular customers.

“There’s Gazala’s at 78th Street, a Middle Eastern place,” Albert said. “After people sampled their food at the fair, people came back for months afterward. It’s a great way to promote the business.”

Albert stressed that the Chamber of Commerce picks up the entire tab, on top of a fee it pays to the city, to keep the streets clean and safe during and after their events, which is a requirement of all street fairs.

“Everyone thinks there’s tremendous money in it, but there’s really a lot of expenses too,” Albert said. “We hire the Doe Fund to help clean the street afterward; we actually leave the street cleaner than when we found it.” They also employ extra security to supplement the police officers the city sends out, and charge each vendor a sanitation deposit that they only get back if they leave their space spotless.

“People really do vote with their feet,” Albert said. “It’s a day when the street is free of traffic and people are just free to walk and schmooze with our neighbors.”

Upper West Side’s 2012 Street Fairs

24th Annual Broadway Spring Festival, May 6, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 93rd and 96th streets

On a Wing: Family Festival, May 19, 12 – 3 p.m., Belvedere Castle, Central Park; Mid-park about 79th Street

Ninth Avenue International Food Festival, May 19-20, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., 9th Avenue between West 42nd and 57th streets

Amsterdam Avenue Festival, May 20, 12 – 5 p.m., Amsterdam Avenue between West 77th and 90th streets

25th Annual Livable West Side Festival, May 27, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 82nd and 86th streets

35th Annual Plantathon and Crafts Fair, June 10, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 73rd and 82nd streets

Summer on the Hudson: 10th Annual West Side County Fair, Sept. 9, 1–6 p.m., West 71st Street Basketball Courts

19th Annual Upper Broadway Autumn Festival, Sept. 15, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 110th and 116th streets

Columbus Avenue Festival, Sept. 23, 12 – 5 p.m., Columbus Avenue between West 66th and 86th streets

24th Annual Upper Broadway Harvest Festival, Sept. 30, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 103rd and 106th streets

20th Annual Upper Broadway Fall Festival, Oct. 6, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 110th and 116th streets

21st Annual Broadway Fall Festival, Oct. 14, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Broadway between West 86th Street and 90th streets

Robert Hess seems to have always been helping people, whether it’s managing special needs housing in Philadelphia, running a thrift store for Disabled American Veterans in Baltimore—his hometown—or his most recent gig, New York City’s commissioner of homeless services. The Long Island City resident recently stepped down from that role to assume the newly created position of vice president of replication for the Doe Fund, a non-profit that serves homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals. There he’ll work to expand across the country the “Ready, Willing & Able” program, which helps clients get back on their feet through employment and other support services.

Hess sat down on a rainy Monday to talk about his goals at the Doe Fund, the city’s approach to homelessness and the departure of senior staffers in the Bloomberg administration.

Hess says that serving as homeless services commissioner was the biggest honor he’s had in his life. Photos by Andrew Schwartz

Q: What’s the biggest misconception about tackling homelessness in New York City?
A: The biggest misconception in New York City, or anywhere in this country, is [ignoring] that homelessness starts with economics. People that lack economic resources end up becoming homeless. About 10 percent of the American population, I think, are substance abusers. They live in their own homes, they have insurance, they go dry out, they do whatever they do—but they’re able to maintain a life because they have economic resources. People that lack economic resources, insurance and then become economically poor become homeless.

Q: You’re going to be rolling out the Doe Fund in cities across the country. Tell me what your big goals are.
A: What we want to do is figure out what cities make the most sense to expand into, develop sort of a time schedule to do that and put the funding together and then go make it happen, in a systematic, structured, appropriate way. And then measure our results along the way.

Q: Homelessness was one of the tougher problems that Mayor Bloomberg struggled with. Looking back, do you feel like there were things that should have been done differently? For example, with the drop-in centers, the city was no longer letting folks stay overnight there. Do you think maybe that option should have been kept on the table, given the dire economic circumstances?
A: No, absolutely not. I mean, where’s the dignity in people having to spend the night in a chair? We can do better than that, we’ve done better than that. The city opened over 500 safe haven beds, another 500 or so stabilization beds, we increased faith-based community beds. What we did is have people move out of chairs and into beds and get the support and get a good night’s sleep, and I think that was the right thing to do.

You can always do better, and we ought to look back for lessons learned. But nobody could foresee the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. In our city, which is a city with a right to shelter, the number one job of the Department of Homeless Services is to ensure that everyone is housed that needs to be housed every night. And we did that. No prior administration can say that. And so, do we wish that the economic times had been different, do we think the mayor’s aspirational goals of reducing homelessness is a right one? Absolutely. And I believe it will happen, and I think you’ll see that downturn pretty significantly before Michael Bloomberg leaves office. But the goal and the role and the responsibility changed dramatically when the economy went south. We had to focus on expansion, being able to add beds. We had 58 percent more applicants for shelter in the family system in the economic downturn than before—think about that—in the largest homeless system in the world, and we still housed everyone every night. It’s remarkable. And that’s a story that never got told. So do I wish that we had figured out a better way to tell that story? I do. And maybe that’s the lesson.

Q: Do you have any advice for your successor?
A: I don’t have any great advice. Seth [Diamond] is a smart guy, been around a long time, he’ll do a great job. I would tell you he’s got an incredibly capable staff and I’m sure he’ll listen to them. So I think the future’s bright at DHS and the legacy of the mayor on this issue, I think, will be very positive.

Q: Much has been made of the departure of senior staffers of the Bloomberg administration, including yourself, with the implication being that maybe people don’t think the third term is going to pan out as well as the mayor hopes, and they are looking for opportunities elsewhere. What is your response to that?
A: I think quite the contrary. One of the things when you come into government is you want to leave your department better than you found it, and you want to know when to arrive and you want to know when to depart. I think the mayor deserves a lot of credit for being supportive of senior staff members leaving and bringing on new folks. To me, the biggest honor I’ve ever had in my life is to be able to be the commissioner of homeless services for more than four years. I actually think I served longer than any prior commissioner. But having served longer any prior commissioner, there is a point in time when it’s in your own best interest and the city’s best interest for somebody else to come in, and I think this was the time.

Q: The folks the Doe Fund deals with tend to be homeless former inmates, often with substance abuse problems. And you guys do pretty well with that group. Are there lessons the city or other jurisdictions could learn from the Doe Fund?
A: Oh I don’t think there’s any question about that. I think the lesson of the Doe Fund that I’ve seen first in Philadelphia and now in New York, and I hope we’ll see across this country, is that you can take folks with pretty significant, tough histories and help them by providing a hand up and the kinds of support these folks need, and help them become effective tax-paying citizens very quickly and move back into their own homes in the community, without being on public support.

Q: Specifically in New York City, are there things that the Doe Fund does that the city doesn’t do, or that the city could do better?
A: I think the Doe Fund in part is supported by the city, I don’t know that you can separate the two. Do we need more Doe Fund-like programs in the city? I’d say any city in this country could benefit from that. But I think the Doe Fund, we appreciate the support that [we] receive from the city and the state. And so it’s all a collaborative effort.

Q: Do you ever give to panhandlers on the street?
A: Very, very rarely, almost never. Because I think it’s kind of an enabling activity. Every now and then, I have a personal need to do something and I’ll do it. I think it’s a very personal issue. I think generally people are better off not giving, not enabling. But you gotta go where your heart is.

Transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.