New York City plans to build a live-in “safe space” care facility for homeless people with serious mental illness who are repeatedly treated at and discharged from city hospitals, Mayor Adams said Wednesday.
The program, dubbed “Bridge to Home,” aims to stop “the revolving door” by taking in those who have been hospitalized repeatedly, filling a gap in care left after patients are discharged and have nowhere to go, Adams said.
“The new facility will provide a safe space for New Yorkers with mental illness to live, to heal and be cared for so they get the life-changing help they need,” Adams said from the Bellevue Hospital atrium in Manhattan.
“It will also help reduce unnecessary emergency room visits and inpatient hospitals. If we don’t get people off the streets that are dealing with medical issues, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, they end up in the emergency room,” Adams said.
The plan is to house patients for six to 12 months, giving them their own room, three meals a day and onsite health care, including therapy, medication help and substance use disorder treatment. The end goal is to graduate the patients into supportive housing, said Dr. Mitchell Katz, head of the city’s public hospital system.
The city has not yet identified where the 100-bed, $13 million facility will be located, according to a spokesman for the mayor. Adams, who has said he wants to ramp up involuntary hospitalizations, a controversial initiative that takes those who appear to be a threat to themselves or others off the streets and into hospitals, said the program will be in action in 2027.
Advocates slammed the announcement for lacking details.
“Tackling homelessness requires meaningful and comprehensive new investments in affordable housing and our mental health care system, with strong community input. Unfortunately, the mayor’s sparsely detailed announcement today, and his plan to curb our city’s homelessness, do not reflect that imperative,” Beth Haroules, senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said.
“If we don’t see these types of investments from our city leaders soon, we are headed for incredibly dark days, especially with another Trump administration.”
Adams announced the $650 million in mental health funding over the next five years last week at his State of the City address, where he also declared his plans to dedicate some of that funding to adding more Safe Haven beds, which are shelter beds for those with mental illness or addiction.
In the speech, he also committed to building 100,000 new homes in Manhattan.
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