Paterson officials introduced Rev. Angela Fields on Monday as the city's first Chief Homelessness Officer, standing at the 21st Street skatepark and playground beneath the Route 80 overpass — a spot that has doubled as an encampment site. Before the press conference began, Paterson police moved an unoccupied tent away from the podium, a small but telling detail about the challenge Fields now inherits in New Jersey's third-largest city.
Fields is a native Patersonian and graduate of Eastside High School who has spent a decade working on homelessness issues, according to Gothamist. She most recently served as executive director of Family Promise of Hunterdon County, where she oversaw the opening of the county's first residential support facility for unhoused families and was named to NJBIZ's Best 50 Women in Business list in 2023, according to William Paterson University. Before that, she worked as director of community outreach at Eva's Village, one of Paterson's largest shelter and social service providers, giving her existing ties to the city's safety net well before taking this new post.
Fields has also served on Governor Phil Murphy's Interagency Council on Homelessness since February 2025, an advisory body charged with developing statewide recommendations on housing policy and funding coordination, according to Family Promise of Hunterdon County. She is also an ordained minister who, per Gothamist's reporting, experienced homelessness herself after moving to Atlanta for seminary. At Monday's introduction, Fields said she wants to help people regain security and steadiness, and that a planned Homeless Hub will bring services together, reduce duplication, identify gaps and improve accountability.
A City That Draws People In Need From Across New Jersey
Paterson attracts more people seeking help than surrounding communities because it has a denser concentration of social-service organizations, shelters and government agencies, per Gothamist. The city draws people from across New Jersey and beyond who come specifically for those services, which also means Fields' role will require coordinating city services for homeless individuals seeking housing and stability well beyond Paterson's own residents.
The scale of that need is difficult to pin down precisely. Paterson counted 336 people experiencing homelessness during its 2025 Point-In-Time count, an annual effort to assess the homeless population, but experts believe that count likely underestimates the real number, according to Gothamist's reporting. That local uncertainty echoes a broader statewide trend: overall homelessness across New Jersey rose 24% between 2023 and 2024, reaching 12,680 unhoused individuals, according to data compiled by Monarch Housing Associates, which coordinates the annual federally mandated survey for the state.
From a Failed Crackdown to a Service-First Strategy
Fields' appointment follows months of contentious debate over how Paterson should handle unsheltered homelessness. Mayor Andre Sayegh and Council President Alex Mendez had backed a city council ordinance that would have imposed fines of up to $2,000 and jail sentences of up to 90 days for people sleeping or setting up tents in public places, a measure introduced after the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2024 Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling cleared the way for cities to penalize unsheltered sleeping even when shelter beds are scarce. Officials pointed to resident complaints about encampment obstructions near Route 19 as part of the rationale, per CBS News.
The ordinance was withdrawn in January 2025 after facing fierce public opposition. Organizations including Black Lives Matter Paterson and the New Jersey Coalition to End Homelessness led the pushback, arguing that fines would deepen poverty without providing anyone actual shelter. That fight was not unique to Paterson — other New Jersey municipalities, including Summit and Morristown, introduced similar public camping bans in early 2025, part of a regional wave of anti-encampment proposals that followed the Grants Pass decision and drew resistance from groups like the ACLU of New Jersey, according to NJ Spotlight News.
Sayegh said Fields' hiring is part of his administration's broader effort to tackle homelessness, according to Gothamist. Her three-year position is funded by opioid settlement money, and it comes as Paterson has been awarded a $3.2 million federal grant to support its homelessness response.
Building a Homeless Hub and Linking Addiction Treatment to Housing
Central to Fields' mandate is Paterson's plan to build a Homeless Hub facility, which would serve as both a shelter and a central location for connecting people with resources and services. City officials have identified a former Salvation Army building on Van Houten Street as a potential site for the hub, per Gothamist. According to a City of Paterson document, the local Continuum of Care was focusing its resources on permanent housing with supportive services to address homelessness.
The city is also weaving in its existing addiction treatment infrastructure. RealFix, Paterson's medication-assisted treatment initiative, delivers Suboxone directly to people seeking help with opioid addiction and helps place people in inpatient treatment programs, according to Gothamist. The program was created in 2022 after Paterson won a $1 million grant through the Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Mayors Challenge, according to Insider NJ. Paterson's broader homelessness strategy also includes a reentry program and a financial empowerment center.
Ed Boze, who spoke at Monday's announcement, said people leaving inpatient addiction treatment need housing to sustain their recovery, and that Fields' role will be instrumental in helping the city serve people rebuilding their lives, according to Gothamist. Fields is now tasked with coordinating those overlapping systems — shelter, addiction treatment, reentry services and financial support — into something more unified than the patchwork Paterson has relied on until now.
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