Here’s some scary news: The Cuomo administration is preparing to shove thousands of mentally ill New Yorkers out of supervised settings — where they can be forced to take their medication — into far less restrictive, far more dangerous “community housing.”
This, despite two recent cases of people being fatally shoved from subway platforms — both allegedly by crazy people.
Albany, under pressure from the Obama administration, recently ordered psychiatric facilities not to place any discharged patients in adult homes, where staff can ensure they take their meds.
Instead, they’ll be placed in “community housing,” without full-time supervision.
This is part of the state’s plan to essentially empty adult homes into community-based “supportive” apartments, leaving up to 6,000 people — including those with schizophrenia — to live on their own, with minimal supervision.
“People with disabilities should have access to community-based services, accessible housing with appropriate supports and employment opportunities,” said Cuomo in an executive order in November.
But as Pat Webdale — whose daughter Kendra was shoved to her death in 1999 by a schizophrenic who’d stopped taking his meds — has warned, “It would be just like deinstitutionalization, the same as putting people on the street.”
And that’s precisely what led to the massive homeless crisis of the 1970s and ’80s.
Indeed, one of those who lives in just such housing — and allegedly receives a whole array of social services — is Jeffrey Hillman, the “homeless” man who roams Midtown and was famously photographed being given a pair of boots by a city cop.
Similarly, according to state Sen. Martin Golden, of 15 residents of Surfside Manor in Far Rockaway who were put in supportive housing, six went back to the adult home, three wound up in a psychiatric hospital, two died and one is homeless.
Yet the Cuomo administration wants to basically empty adult homes, limiting the mentally ill population living there to 25 percent of total residents.
Granted, the move isn’t entirely voluntary: The Obama administration has made clear in numerous states — including New York — that it wants to shut adult homes entirely, saying they illegally segregate the mentally ill. It’s prepared to sue to make that happen.
And if Albany doesn’t move, it could find itself back in front of none other than the imperious federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who in 2011 effectively ordered the immediate dismantling of the adult-home system — summarily rejecting every effort by Albany to reach a compromise.
We understand that Cuomo is stuck between a rock and a hard place. And his spokesman insists that the state intends to “ensure that those who need housing will receive the support they need.”
But history teaches — repeatedly — that moving the mentally ill into situations with reduced supervision invites disaster.
As Assemblyman Philip Goldfeder warns, “My biggest fear is that they rush into something in the name of helping people and ultimately hurt them.”
Not to mention endangering the general public.