Stanley Richards, president and CEO of The Fortune Society — an organization dedicated to supporting successful reentry from incarceration — talked about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s affordable housing plan at Jacobi Hospital, known as Just Home.
He said the project aims to provide stable, permanent housing for the 18,000 individuals served by the Fortune Society last year, 25% of whom are unhoused.
Richards says Just Home targets the 70,000 formerly incarcerated people in the city with complex medical needs, who often cycle through expensive hospital and shelter systems.
He notes that the project could be scalable, but will start with 83 units at Jacobi, with 58 for the target population and 24 for the community, prioritizing local residents.
Richards discussed the personal significance of the project to him, given his own history with Jacobi Hospital.
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