Adams touts plan to take mentally ill off NYC streets one year after launch
Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday touted his year-old initiative to get more mentally ill homeless New Yorkers off the streets — as more than half of the Big Apple’s 100 most troubled vagrants now off the streets and getting help.
An average of 137 mentally ill locals are now being taken off the streets by first responders and city health professionals every week — a significant number of them removed involuntarily under the mayor’s directive officials said.
So far, 54 vagrants named on two Top 50 lists of the city’s most at-risk homeless New Yorkers are either hospitalized or in housing and working toward normalcy, officials said.
“These 54 lives matter and they matter to everyday New Yorkers,” Adams said at a City Hall press conference Wednesday. “We see them, we sought them out, we helped them out and now their lives are on the right path.
“We want to be clear,” he added. “We know there’s so much more to be done. We know that there’s so much work to be done. But starting these first steps gives us an opportunity to show that we are moving in the right direction and it fortifies the team.
“Lessons learned, new ways of approaching this and continue to be steadfast with one North Star: No New Yorker should sleep on the street in general, but specifically those who are experiencing severe mental health issues,” Adams said.
Adams announced the directive on Nov. 29, 2022, in the wake of a spate of violent subway crimes by mentally ill vagrants, saying the “tough love” plan was the answer to the crisis among the homeless.
The endeavor came with challenges, as the city had never undertaken systemic forced removal of the mentally ill. It also caught the NYPD off guard and raised concerns about cops making the involuntary seizures.
One year later, Adams also said 1,000 homeless people have been moved to permanent housing during this fiscal year — more than double the number during the 2022 fiscal year.
He cited the case of Jordan Neely, the violent vagrant who was strangled to death on a Manhattan subway train in May as an example of the troubled New Yorkers that the directive is targeting.
“Jordan went through the system, and that was a real textbook case of how, if you ignore the problem over and over and over again, it can turn out to be a tragic outcome,” Adams said,
“Our goal is to catch the Jordans at the beginning of the process. Give him or her the wrap-around services they deserve, give them community, give them care, give them support and whatever medical intervention we can do so they don’t go in and out and slip through the cracks.”
One New Yorker who was helped by the mayor’s initiative is Terry Brown, a distraught homeless man who was contemplating suicide when he called city activist Shams DaBaron — himself a former homeless man.
Dabaron said Wednesday he calmed Brown down and got him help — and now is back on his feet with a housing voucher from the city.
“I never thought it’d happen,” Brown told Adams at Wednesday’s presser. “First time ever I’m looking for an apartment right now. I’m searching, I’m searching, I’m searching, thanks to you guys.”
But the mayor conceded that his directive is still a work in progress that needs better record-keeping and and expanded approach — including legislation pending in Albany to make involuntary removals easier.
The bill from state Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Flushing) would allow nurse practitioners, social workers and other professionals to request someone be involuntarily admitted while expanding the criteria that would warrant a mentally ill person to be removed.
At the local level, city Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) said he’s introduced three bills that would improve record keeping, push federal lawmakers to expand Medicaid funding for mental health disorders and state officials to expand civil commitment law.
