HelpNAMI-NYC Responds to NYC Preliminary Budget for FY 2024
New York, NY, January 13, 2023–In response to Mayor Eric Adams’ preliminary budget for FY 2024, the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City (NAMI-NYC) made the following statement:
NAMI-NYC thanks Mayor Adams for making investments in healthcare services and affordable housing in the Fiscal Year 2024 Preliminary Budget. Funding for community-based mental healthcare and programs and services supporting mental health are needed more than ever in New York City. We strongly encourage the Mayor to prioritize meaningful investments into community-based services and public hospitals in the Executive Budget. NAMI-NYC also urges the Mayor to fully fund staffing lines that support the critical and appropriately trained workforce that is needed to deliver these services.
Peer and community-based mental health programs offer more positive long-term health outcomes and greater cost-savings for the City compared to the revolving door of psychiatric hospitalizations, homelessness, and incarceration. We look forward to working with the City Administration and the New York City Council on needed improvements to health facilities and the Health and Hospitals’ borough-based clinics as well as investments towards nonpolice crisis responses that include peer workers.
We also urge the Mayor to invest specifically in supportive housing units for people with serious mental illness (SMI) as soon as possible, as well as remove application barriers for existing units. We also stand ready to work with the Administration on the conversion of office and other vacant space to supportive housing units with wraparound services for New Yorkers with SMI, the integration of peer lived experience of unhoused New Yorkers into policymaking, and greater access to behavioral healthcare in shelters.
To learn more or join us in our advocacy work, visit www.naminyc.org/advocacy.