In his attempt to become a mayor, Andrew M. Cuomo New York City depicted as in crisis mode and he said that his top priority would keep people safe.
To do this, Mr Cuomo, the former Governor of New York, says that the city has to do more to remove people with serious psychological disorders from the streets and to relieve fears about controversial attacks involved.
On Tuesday, Mr Cuomo will release a detailed 36 -page plan about how he would do that, including the expansion of involuntary hospital admissions and require people who are dismissed from public hospitals and prisons are screened for compulsory outpatient treatment.
The plan includes more than a dozen proposals to tackle what he calls the ‘mental health crisis’ of the city. Mr Cuomo will call to add more supporting housing units and psychiatric beds in hospitals and to improve access to preventive mental health care. His most important focus is on removing people who pose a danger to themselves and the public.
Mr. Cuomo’s plan Was around $ 2.6 billion in capital financing every year to build at least 600 extra units of supporting homes – deeply subsidized apartments with social facilities offered on site – every year. He also calls for the extension of the use of judicial orders under the law of Kendra, a Stational Act that allows courts to oblige outpatient treatment.
Mr. Cuomo wants to require ‘universal screening’ when people are fired from public hospitals and from the Rikers Island Jail Complex, to see if they should be subject to the legal order of a Kendra. He would also collaborate with state leaders to demand private hospitals to do the same.
Mr Cuomo’s opponents have argued that he deserves the blame for making The mental health system worse By supervising a reduction of psychiatric beds as governor. From 2012 to 2019, the number of beds in the Psychiatric Facilities of the State fell by 23 percent.
The loss of beds, which also took place in private hospitals in response to falling Medicaid compensation rates, accelerated after the pandemic. A shortage of psychiatric beds is mentioned as one of the most important reasons why hospitals hurry to discharge psychiatric patients, often before they are fully stabilized.
Mr. Cuomo, who leads in polls prior to the Democratic mayors primarily in Junedefended his record in the plan and in the interview. The plan suggested that intramural institutions “are often not effective and inefficient places to provide care” and that the reduction of the psychiatric beds of the State Hospital was more than compensated by the increase in beds in supporting housing and other homes for people who did not need any intramural care. The plan also calls on to add the city’s health and hospitals system between 100 and 200 new intramural psychiatric beds for people involved in the criminal justice system.
Under Mr Cuomo, the State also sharply reduced the part that paid for the costs of protecting people in New York City, The burden shift to the city.
Zohran Mamdani, a state legislator who is in second place in mayors, polls, wants to create a new city office The Ministry of Community Safety mentioned to relocate many mental health problems from the police. Another candidate, Brad Lander, the City Comptroller, has Focused on a “Housing First” approachThose people move directly from the streets to apartments, not in hiding places, and does not need drug tests.
Mr Cuomo’s plan said that the first model of the house is a “valuable strategy”, but “not a silver bullet”, partly because it does not do enough to ensure that unstable people, who can “be disturbing for what is already a fragile ecosystem”, accept services.
The plan states that more people should be referred to the treatment under the law of Kendra, which was approved in 1999 and named after Kendra Webdale, a woman who was murdered that year when she was pushed for a metro train.
But the system is already overloaded and enables people to fall through the cracks. A 2023 New York Times Investigation Discovered that people under the rights of Kendra had been accused of violent actions in the past five years of more than 380.
Mr. Cuomo said there were insufficient fines for non -compliance. If someone refuses to follow his treatment plan, the only consequence that he can be brought to a hospital for evaluation, which often leads to them being fired after 72 hours.
Improving the mental health system was a central issue this year in the negotiations on the government budget. Mrs. Hochul and state laws Agreed last week To anchor the existing guidelines of the state that expand the criteria to bring people in a psychiatric crisis to a hospital against their will.
Mr Adams, who withdrew from the Democratic Primary to re -sell himself as independent in the general elections in November, has called for more involuntary hospital admissions. In January he announced his $ 650 million to tackle homelessness on the street And serious mental disorders.
Mr. Cuomo said that Mr Adams should do more to ensure that city health officials can involuntarily satisfy people in the context of their basic needs.
“We are not maintaining the legal standard, we really do not help anyone and we are in danger,” he said.
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