Andrew Cuomo has released a plan to address what he calls the city’s “mental health crisis,” laying out a blueprint for a mayoralty that focuses on increasing residential services and psychiatric commitments if he’s elected in November.
The mental health plan proposes coordinating government efforts to commit people living on the street while increasing the number of institutional beds for those coming from the criminal legal system, along with voluntary housing units with on-site services. The plan includes considering all people being discharged from a psychiatric hospitalization or Rikers Island for court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment and creating a cross-agency unit responsible for mobile outreach, data collection and case management for unsheltered people.
Like other Democratic candidates, Cuomo – the frontrunner going into the June primary – is also calling for the expansion of an array of voluntary programs, like mental health clubhouses, which combine a social club environment with treatment services, and intensive mobile treatment services, which currently have a wait list of more than 1,000.
The plan would add another 600 supportive housing units each year and expand the city’s involuntary hospitalization and long-term treatment apparatus. Cuomo’s supportive housing proposal would use $2.6 billion from the city’s capital budget to fund the creation or preservation of the new units, which come with social services for chronically homeless individuals, for five years. The units would be on top of the city’s existing goal of adding 15,000 of supportive apartments by 2030.
Cuomo’s proposal calls for involuntary removal and commitment laws to be “consistently enforced” using the state’s new standards, which Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders have signalled will be part of a state budget deal, despite Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrew Stewart-Cousins’ initial resistance to the policy in favor of expanding voluntary treatment options. He also said he will direct the city’s public hospital system, New York City Health + Hospitals, to open between 100 and 200 high-security psychiatric beds, known as forensic beds, for people coming from the city jail system.
Under Cuomo’s plan, all people being released from a psychiatric hospitalization or Rikers Island would be required to be assessed for court-mandated treatment under a state law known as Kendra’s Law, which Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have pushed to expand in recent years. The program has been criticized by civil liberties advocates who say the system is coercive and disproportionately ensnares Black and Latino residents.
The announcement is similar to an ongoing push by Adams, who has called for a deeper reliance on involuntary police removals and psychiatric commitments and is seeking a second term as an independent. In January, Adams announced a $650 million infusion to fund 900 new low-barrier shelter beds, known as safe havens, for the most vulnerable street homeless New Yorkers. Last month, he said the city would put an additional $46 million toward 5,850 additional supportive housing units.
Cuomo’s plan also mirrors a push from Hochul to expand the number of beds available for long-term psychiatric commitments and use new powers to arrest and hospitalize homeless people against their will. Hochul, who succeeded Cuomo as governor in 2021 after he resigned amid allegations that he sexually harassed multiple state employees during his time in office, has pushed for changes in the state budget to make it easier to commit people when they appear to be unable to meet basic needs of food, shelter and clothing. The state Office of Mental Health also added 125 beds to the state’s two-dozen long-term psychiatric centers in the first four months of 2025, the largest expansion of institutions in years and a reversal of a decades-long trend to shutter beds that continued under Cuomo when he was governor. Hochul announced plans to add an additional 100 forensic beds to state-run facilities in the city as part of the state budget, the final details of which have yet to be released.
