{"id":287241,"date":"2026-02-08T12:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T12:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/287241\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T12:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T12:03:15","slug":"miami-dades-new-50m-mental-health-facility-remains-closed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/287241\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami-Dade\u2019s new $50M mental health facility remains closed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla.  \u2014 Ready and waiting to open, but still closed, is Miami-Dade County\u2019s first of its kind mental health and recovery center.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cIt really shouldn\u2019t be that difficult to do something so good,\u201d said Judge Steve Leifman with the Miami Center for Mental health and Recovery. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The facility was voter-requested and 20 years in the making, with the intent to finally stop the county\u2019s jail from also being its psych ward. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cWe identify 16,400 people over the last five years, they spent 1.2 million days in DCJ, cost taxpayers $414M, and they all get released,\u201d said Leifman. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The holdup comes from some of the 13 county commissioners who all say they support the project, but have hamstrung the opening with questions about long-term funding. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">They are important questions, except they\u2019ve been answered, again and again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Federal grants and opioid settlement money pays for the two year pilot, by which time, the facility pays for itself, and then even recoups $32 million a year for a cash-strapped county. The University of Miami will be tracking that. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Law enforcement members want it open, and other counties have toured the still-closed facility, hoping to build their own.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Still, some commissioners stall, ask questions, then cut the mics for time. <\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Ready and waiting to open, but still closed, is Miami-Dade County\u2019s first of its&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[103,61,60,410,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-287241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}