Kevin Atlanta was homeless until this summer. NY1 met him at a shelter in Queens \u2014 a facility run by the nonprofit group Bowery Residents\u2019 Committee (BRC) similar to where he had stayed \u2014 a place that caters to the chronically homeless.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had been homeless longer than I should have been, but to nobody\u2019s fault but my own, around three or four years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
The city’s mental health crisis has dogged the current administration
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Candidates for mayor differ on how they would act to solve it
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They are pitching supportive housing, outreach teams and new agencies<\/p>\n
Atlanta stayed on the streets, struggling with mental illness and substance use.<\/p>\n
\u201cI been self-medicating a lot when I was out on the street,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was hard to live in Manhattan and accept the looks that you get if you have the same outfit on two or three days.\u201d<\/p>\n
But now he is one of thousands of New Yorkers with a roof over his head in a permanent supportive housing unit.<\/p>\n
The homelessness and mental health crisis in the five boroughs will be one of the toughest challenges facing the next mayor \u2014 and solutions do not come easy, take it from the leaders of BRC.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnderstand that every case is going to be unique, every client is going to be unique,\u201d said Kiahni Hughes, who runs one of BRC\u2019s stabilization shelters in Manhattan. \u201cAnd those are the things we pay close attention to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each candidate\u00a0has a different plan for how he would approach this population.<\/p>\n
Andrew Cuomo released a 36-page mental health plan earlier this year, committing to build 600 units of supportive housing per year for those with serious mental illness.<\/p>\n
He says he will centralize engagement with people living on the street through a new street population management unit, and focus on low-barrier housing options like the BRC shelter.<\/p>\n
Leaders at BRC say the need is there.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now we are don\u2019t know, from one administration to the next, we don\u2019t know what policies or procedures will be implemented,\u201d said Alvin Thompson, who also runs a stabilization shelter at BRC. \u201cBut we do know there is a housing crisis and that there will be people in need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zohran Mamdani\u2019s mental health plan is focused on the creation of a new agency: the Department of Community Safety.<\/p>\n
Mamdani wants to get the NYPD out of mental health care and crisis responses. That includes sending more mental health teams to 911 calls instead of cops.<\/p>\n
He also wants to use vacant commercial space in subway stations to provide medical care and support services for those experiencing homelessness on the subway.<\/p>\n
For Republican Curtis Sliwa, cops are integral to the city\u2019s mental health response.<\/p>\n
He wants to bring back the NYPD\u2019s homeless outreach unit, which was disbanded in 2021.<\/p>\n
He says he has the experience of dealing with homelessness in the subways. He wants safer shelters, to expand mental health response teams in the subway and to transfer those who are dangerous to psychiatric facilities.<\/p>\n
He has suggested bringing back single room occupancy hotels, with therapists and security.<\/p>\n
For those experiencing these challenges, like Atlanta, they hope more change is coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope they realize that the people that are living on the street are living on the street because they are afraid to live in a shelter cause of the conditions that are there,\u201d Atlanta said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Atlanta was homeless until this summer. NY1 met him at a shelter in Queens \u2014 a facility…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[107,109,114,25,14647,111,9,24,11,10,12,87,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-21933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-2025-nyc-mayors-race","9":"tag-app-local-state-politics","10":"tag-app-local-elections","11":"tag-app-top-stories","12":"tag-courtney-gross","13":"tag-decision-2025","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-new-york-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-news","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}