The New Jersey Department of Community Affairs (DCA) is an essential agency in the Garden State. Its programs and services support the community with everything from fire and building safety to community planning and development, affordable housing and disaster mitigation and recovery.
So diverse and all-encompassing is its role, that Commissioner Jacquelyn Suárez admits that she wasn’t quite sure what to expect when she took the reins of the DCA in September 2023.
“We know we’re the government, but we shouldn’t always be telling people what they should be doing in their communities.”
“I relied on some of the things that had worked so far in my career,” she acknowledges. “But I really wanted to get back to some of the basics.”
The DCA plays an essential role in the smooth operation of local governments and community organizations throughout New Jersey, but Suárez explains that it’s often easier for people to identify problems than to find solutions.
“One of the things that I’ve tried to do is empower staff and our stakeholders across the state,” she says. “We want to always come at it from a position of, ‘how are we going to work together to make it better?’ as opposed to, ‘we just want to come up with a forum to voice some of our complaints.’”
Overarching support
With New Jersey comprising 564 municipalities and 21 counties, moving toward a more streamlined and efficient delivery of services has its challenges.
When she stepped into the role, Suárez understood the need for a shift in approach. Together with the chief of staff and communications team, she worked out three pillars to support their goals over the next couple of years.
“One was data-driven decision-making. We were flush with cash due to state and federal grants during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we knew those faucets were not going to be left open forever,” she explains.
“So we needed to figure out how to identify the programs that are seeing the greatest results and the best impact on the communities that we serve.
“Our Office of Homelessness Prevention and our Office of Eviction Prevention are, to me, the greatest examples of our data-driven decision-making. They are trying to capture people upstream before they fall into homelessness, when it’s not only really costly for the state, but also costly emotionally for that family.”
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The second pillar was shoring up stakeholder engagement and partnership. “We know we’re the government, but we shouldn’t always be telling people what they should be doing in their communities,” Suárez affirms.
“New Jersey is the most diverse state in the nation. We wanted to make sure that we were meeting communities and our stakeholders where they are, hearing directly from them and then collaborating, communicating effectively.”
Finally, Suárez and her team took a solutions-focused perspective.
“That just went back to really relying on the first two pillars, the data, the stakeholder engagement, and then coming up with solutions that were going to better not just the residents’ lives, but also attack the problems,” she notes. “We are the department that coalesces around everything else in the state.”
Leading the way
As a qualified attorney and the first Hispanic Commissioner in the DCA, Suárez takes her leadership role seriously – not just to champion representation, but also to lead by example.
“I think there’s a balance to be struck there, making sure that I’m also empowering those around me to make the decisions and to do the work that I know they’re capable of doing,” she says.
After working her way up through the department for nine years before being promoted to the job, Suárez understands the importance of a committed and dedicated workforce. Part of this involves communicating their needs to higher education institutions around the state so that the curricula include the necessary courses for students to graduate job-ready.
“We want to make sure that they even know that these jobs are available to them in the government sector,” she explains.
“We are the department that coalesces around everything else in the state.”
Employee retention has been another focal point for the DCA.
“Some of our employees are the ones who are on the front lines and are dealing with constituents who are at very high levels of stress,” Suárez says.
“We wanted them to understand that we not only appreciate that work, but we wanted to have open communication about how we could better support them.”
Underpinning these initiatives and employee support is the drive to make the programs and services of the department as effective as possible for the people it serves.
“We’re trying to layer in our resources so we can have a greater impact,” Suárez concludes. “How can we better support our residents through our programs, and how do we set them up for success? It all comes back to collaboration.”
