NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — With homelessness, mental illness and public safety among New Yorkers' top concerns, Mayor Eric Adams is investing $650 million into health care and social service resources to keep unhoused people off the streets.
NYC Health + Hospitals CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz pointed out the current systemic struggle of treating mentally ill, unhoused New Yorkers long-term.
“What do we do after that 14 or 21 or 28 days? We send them out to nothing,” he said. “Best case scenario is you have an outpatient visit with a loving case manager 5 days later.”
Under a new model dubbed “Bridge to Home,” the city’s public health care system will offer a supportive, home-like environment to patients with serious mental illness who reach the point of discharge, but have nowhere to go.
“We’ll meet New Yorkers where they are and provide a supportive facility that gets them the treatment and temporary housing they need,” Adams said of the initiative.
Bridge to Home will provide patients with single rooms, three meals a day, structured recreation and comprehensive behavioral health care including medication, therapy, substance use disorder treatment and 24-hour support. Katz noted that the program keeps patients on the right track, and prevents them from “revolving back onto the street.”
Patients will remain in the program from six to 12 months until they can be transitioned to permanent supportive housing, providing a new continuum of care that was previously missing for those who phased out of inpatient treatment.
The health care system expects to ramp the program up in fiscal year 2026, and fully operationalize it in fiscal year 2027, serving up to 100 beds, City Hall said.
In addition to the Bridge to Home program, local government plans on adding 900 “Safe Haven” shelter beds—providing space in low-barrier-to-entry facilities that offer transitional housing. According to Adams, this initiative has already seen success.
“Our administration has moved 2,800 people from Safe Haven stabilization beds into permanent affordable housing,” he said.
One hundred “Runaway and Homeless Youth Beds,” which provide specialized resources to help younger adults, will also be added under the investment, and the Adams administration will invest $30 million into a pilot program to connect soon-to-be parents applying for shelter services with help finding permanent housing.
Adams is a long-time advocate of removing people with mental illness from New York City streets, stating in the wake of a Manhattan stabbing spree last November that left three New Yorkers dead: “We walk past people every day that we know they do not have the ability to make the right decisions to take care of themselves. This is a problem that was created when we closed the psychiatric facilities many years ago.”
While Adams’ directive that those suffering from severe mental illness be involuntarily removed remains controversial, many critics like Public Advocate Jumaane Williams emphasized their disapproval over a framework that “[centers] overreliance on police, diminishes the role of health professionals, and de-prioritizes the role of peer support.”