Alliance Alert: On Tuesday, March 4th, as part of our Annual Legislative Day, the Alliance for Rights and Recovery held a press conference with NYS Senate Mental Health Chair Samra Brouk and Assembly Mental Health Chair Jo Anne Simon, as well as Assembly Mental Health Committee member Monique Chandler-Waterman and various mental health advocates, calling for funding for alternatives to involuntary treatment. We strongly urge New York lawmakers to reject proposals that would expand involuntary inpatient and outpatient treatment, which disproportionately harms communities of color and fails to provide lasting solutions to the state’s mental health crisis.
A new report released this week from the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and Community Access highlights the severe racial disparities in the implementation of Kendra’s Law, further proving that forced treatment disproportionately impacts Black and Brown New Yorkers. Expanding coercion will not fix our mental health system, it will only reinforce longstanding inequities and drive more people away from seeking voluntary care.
People who are involuntarily committed to hospitals often do not receive the essential services they need, including housing, employment support, and long-term community care. Many homeless individuals who are hospitalized involuntarily are simply discharged back onto the streets without any additional support—repeating a cycle of institutionalization, trauma, and instability. We cannot hospitalize our way out of this crisis. Instead, lawmakers must focus on building a robust continuum of care in the community rather than diverting millions of dollars into coercion-based policies.
The Alliance is committed to pushing for real alternatives, including:
- Incident Review Panels to assess critical system failures and improve accountability
- Using all $16.5 million in proposed funding for enhanced voluntary services rather than involuntary outpatient treatment
- Expanding INSET teams, which provide peer-led, community-based outreach and engagement
- Creating Peer Bridger programs in community hospitals to help individuals transition out of hospitalization and into ongoing care
- Funding more Housing First units with ACT team support, ensuring people receive both housing and clinical services
- Securing a 7.8% rate enhancement for mental health and substance use agencies to address workforce shortages and meet growing community needs
We are also advocating for funding for Daniel’s Law mental health first responder teams to ensure people in crisis receive care, not police intervention. Additionally, we support the passage of the Treatment Court Expansion Act, which would divert people with mental health challenges away from the criminal justice system and connect them to treatment and support instead of incarceration.
New York’s focus should be on voluntary, community-based solutions, not coercion. Lawmakers must invest in proven services that provide real recovery opportunities, rather than funding policies that continue cycles of harm. We urge leaders to take the right path forward—one that prioritizes dignity, support, and community-based care over forced treatment and institutionalization.
We will continue to push for our priorities, and against any increases in involuntary commitment, as budget negotiations continue. Monitor this Enews to learn ways you can continue to join us in our advocacy efforts. See below for more.
How Does It Feel to be Involuntarily Committed? NY Advocates Condemn Gov. Hochul Plan
By Jimmy Vielkind | Gothamist | March 4, 2025
Evelyn Graham-Nyaasi knows what it’s like to be involuntarily committed for mental health treatment.
The Manhattan resident, who has bipolar disorder, recalled that in 2018, someone in her home accused her of threatening them with a knife and called the police.
“ The officer was like, ‘Do you wanna get in the police car or the ambulance?’” said Graham-Nyaasi, who denied having a knife. She said emergency responders took her to Bellevue Hospital, where she was held for more than a week.
“ I was locked up in the room where all these people were screaming and yelling,” she said. “There were no toilet seats, no doors, nothing. It was a horrible experience.”
Graham-Nyaasi is part of an ad hoc coalition of civil liberties lawyers, mental health providers and advocates speaking out against a proposal by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that would make it easier for authorities to involuntarily commit someone for mental health treatment. Opponents say it’s overreach and that voluntary treatment is more effective, while proponents say it’s a necessary tool to boost public safety and help homeless people with severe mental illness.
The debate is one of many fights taking place in Albany as state lawmakers hammer out a budget for the next fiscal year. Two key Democratic lawmakers are scheduled to join a rally opposing the proposal on Tuesday.
Police officers statewide now have the power to bring someone into treatment if, in their judgment, they appear mentally ill and are behaving in a manner likely to result in serious harm to themselves or others. Hochul says the legal standard should be broader, matching previous court rulings on when involuntary commitment is warranted.
“We need to expand involuntary commitment into a hospital that includes someone who does not have the mental capacity to care for themselves — such as refusing help for the basics, clothing, food, shelter, medical care,” the Democratic governor said during her State of the State address in January.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has also called for the law’s expansion, as have representatives of business improvement districts around the state. Tom Harris, a former NYPD officer and the president of the Times Square Alliance, a nonprofit focused on local businesses, said the proposal would help homeless people who have otherwise refused aid from outreach workers.
“If someone is lying, bleeding on the street, we get them help,” he said. “It is a societal failure when the presence of people on the street suffering with the disease of addiction and mental illness becomes normalized.”
But state lawmakers and civil rights advocates who oppose the proposal worry it could become a dragnet that applies to any homeless person, regardless of their mental health needs.
Norman Siegel, former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said Hochul’s proposal was overly broad and unnecessary. He represented Joyce Brown, a homeless woman known publicly as Billie Boggs who successfully challenged her involuntary commitment to Bellevue Hospital in 1987.
”The fact that someone doesn’t have shelter by definition, if this becomes the law, they could pick everyone up immediately because they’re unhoused,” Siegel said.
Siegel and other mental health providers outlined another argument against the measure: Even if a stricter standard compelled more people to treatment, where would they go after they stabilize in a hospital?
Involuntarily committed homeless patients too often end up back on the streets rather than in supportive housing or community-based treatments, said Doug Cooper, interim executive director of the Association for Community Living, a statewide group representing organizations that provide housing and services to people with psychiatric disabilities.
“Right now, that system of care is fractured and suffering, and we don’t have the resources to do what’s necessary to meet those people’s needs,” said Cooper. “ To change the standards without having the availability of quality services just doesn’t make much sense. You can’t do one without the other.”
He said the state should increase funding for organizations that provide care, which would let them open more beds and pay better wages to reduce staff turnover. Hochul proposed increasing spending on such contracts by 2.1% in her budget, but Cooper argued it should be closer to 8% to account for inflation.
During a February budget hearing, State Office of Mental Health Commissioner Ann Sullivan said the governor’s involuntary confinement plan was targeted at a small number of people with specific needs.
“There is room within the community-based hospital system for the small increase in individuals for the change in the involuntary-commitment law,” Sullivan said, adding that Hochul’s budget proposes significant investments across the mental health system.
Jim Walden, a lawyer and mayoral candidate who lives in Brooklyn, said he would like to see the state simultaneously change the standard and provide more funding. He has spoken publicly about his older sister Debbie’s struggles with mental illness, choosing to name her after she was killed while homeless. He said she had depression and received treatment at several institutions.
Medication was effective, Walden said, and his sister was able to get a job, maintain an apartment and find a boyfriend. But she would take her medicine erratically, and then not at all, he said.
Walden said he successfully pushed to have his sister involuntarily committed, and she was released after she was stabilized. In 2012, she ended up on the streets, got into a fight and died, he said.
“If we want to protect people, they can’t be on the street,” Walden said. “There’s got to be a legal system that requires them in these circumstances to stay and get the treatment that they need so that they can live, you know, as close to a normal life as possible.”
How does it feel to be involuntarily committed? NY advocates condemn Gov. Hochul plan – Gothamist