Last November, Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to move unhoused people on streets and subways with severe mental illness involuntarily to hospitals and shelters for services. Advocates were in an uproar. A year later, his office released the long-promised data showing how the program is running.
“One year ago, we made a commitment to New Yorkers that the days of ignoring the mental health crisis playing out on our streets were over,” said Adams. “I’m proud that a year into this effort, we have made progress helping and housing a significant number of those most in need of care and support.”
New York City’s homeless population is notoriously hard to quantify in numbers. But the most up-to-date data suggest that more than 85,000 homeless people are sleeping in the city’s main municipal shelter system, said the Coalition for the Homeless (CFTH). Their research shows a large majority of the street homeless have severe mental illness or other significant health problems. A substantial majority of those affected by homelessness are Black and brown New Yorkers: about 56% are Black, 32% are Hispanic/Latinx, and 7% are white.
Adams has maintained that “walking past” people living on the street is “unacceptable” and will continue to be a focus for his administration. The city is investing in training first responders, bringing psychiatric beds online, and strengthening inter-agency coordination, all of which took a serious hit during the COVID pandemic, he said. The plan is for mobile teams to lean into the most challenging cases with engagement, compassion, and support. He wants to move away from relying on incarceration and jails like Rikers Island for dealing with mentally ill people on the street.
On a weekly basis, the city is bringing an average of 137 homeless people believed to have untreated severe mental illness into hospitals for evaluations, said Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom. She said more people are trusting outreach workers and coming in for services.
“Every person we have supported has friends, family, or loved ones [who] can now witness them in a safe, stable place receiving the care they need,” said Williams-Isom. “While we know there are many more out there [who] need support, we come together today to recognize the incredible interagency work that has made this all possible and to affirm that this work will continue to help New Yorkers in need.”
BronxWorks Assistant Executive Director Scott Auwarter said there has been “unprecedented progress in the coordination of services with hospitals and mental health teams” in the Bronx. “Most of our clients subject to removal orders are now receiving comprehensive inpatient treatment and are now able to stabilize, so they can succeed in transitional and permanent housing,” said Auwarter.
So far, 54 formerly homeless people now have apartments and are stabilizing their lives in a hospital or supportive setting, said Adams. The early numbers—a 145% increase in connections over the prior year—have been encouraging. He’s also looking to support and pass the Supportive Interventions Act sponsored by Assemblymember Edward Braunstein in Albany.
“It will address a series of flaws and gaps in New York State mental hygiene law that are making it more difficult to help those who don’t know they need help, and it would further clarify the role of city services and provide assistance for those who cannot take care of themselves,” Adams said about the bill.
Williams-Isom added that the current law makes it impossible to deploy the number of certified clinicians needed to engage the large number of street homeless people with mental illness. She said the program needs legislative fixes and more help from private hospitals to run more effectively.
Before Adams’s plan, data about the removal process was not tracked consistently, according to the city. Agencies were not comprehensively tracking the number of involuntary removals being performed, which made monitoring and measuring progress nearly impossible.
In response to the Amsterdam News inquiring about the racial and ethnic breakdown of the new involuntary removal data, Williams-Isom said that is a current concern and she will look into the numbers. They were not readily available by press time.
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) requested records through the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) on December 13, 2022. According to records given to the AmNews recently, individuals were moved under the NYC Mental Health Involuntary Removals Policy since November 29, 2022, but the hospital said it either didn’t keep information about race or there were so few categorized that way that accounting for them would “constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
“Being able to look at the trends and the data is how we’re making sure that we are getting people the help that they need,” said Williams-Isom.
The AmNews also raised the question of tracking instances when any restraint methods are used to move people into facilities that could be potentially traumatizing.
“New York City Police Department members are acutely aware of this longstanding, highly complex issue and are proud to be part of the significant advances already being made in our city,” said Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Edward Caban in a statement. “We work closely with our many partners each day and night to ensure that all New Yorkers, especially our city’s most vulnerable populations, can access the services they require and deserve. Essential to this vital undertaking is the ongoing support and attention of our collective efforts.”
People have been moved mostly to H+H hospitals such as Bellevue, Jacobi, South Brooklyn, Harlem, Queens, Metropolitan, Elmhurst, and Lincoln, according to the FOIL records.
The city has partnered with the state and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to offer extended hospitalization to people brought in for care. Patients are being transferred to the state’s new Transition to Housing Unit.
The city has now opened two Extended Care Units, at H+H/Kings County and at H+H/Bellevue. All H+H psychiatric beds that were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic will be brought back online by the end of 2023, bringing psychiatric capacity to 1,000 beds. In addition, since the launch of the Subway Safety Plan in February 2022, more than 6,100 New Yorkers have checked into shelters.
Williams-Isom said that there are plans to open a new, hybrid low-barrier drop-in program near Jamaica Center in Queens in the coming weeks.
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member who writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
