"The Big Apple's $30-billion social safety net amounts to a badly frayed patchwork of systems that still cannot reliably get New Yorkers in psychiatric crisis from subway platforms to hospital beds, a Streetsblog investigation has found. Those billions support the largest municipally owned health care system in the country with 11 major hospitals; fund a shelter system that, by court order, must provide a bed for every homeless person;and put thousands of cops, firefighters and paramedics on the beat everyday."
"The challenges begin at the core: every call for aid is split among a half-dozen agencies, each with different, and sometimes conflicting, roles: There are contractors doing outreach for the Department of Homeless Services; There are police officers; There are EMTs with the FDNY; There are workers in the public hospital system's emergency rooms and psych wards; There are shelter intake and placement workers for the Department of Homeless Service;"
New York City allocates about $30 billion to a municipal safety net that includes the largest city-owned health care system with 11 hospitals, a court-mandated shelter bed system, and public safety personnel. The network frequently fails to get psychiatric-crisis homeless people living in the subway into appropriate hospital care. The affected population is roughly 1,000 people and disproportionately shapes perceptions of subway safety. Responsibilities for responses are split across multiple agencies and contractors, producing disjointed action. Consequences include individuals left on platforms during psychotic episodes and quick hospital discharges that return people to the subways.
Read at Streetsblog
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