Alliance Alert: This morning, the Alliance convened a group of allies from the mental health, disability rights, independent living, and criminal justice reform communities at the Million Dollar Staircase in the state Capitol in Albany to join Senate Mental Health Chair Samra Brouk, Assembly Mental Health Chair Jo Ann Simon and Assembly member Sarah Clark to call for investments in voluntary services and the rejection of forced treatment expansions.
A very special thanks to member agencies Baltic Street Wellness Solutions, Independent Living, People USA and the Hudson Valley Clubhouse for their immediate response to our request to see that today’s event had good support. They shared very powerful personal stories that matched the spirit of the support we have secured from the Chairs.
We are very grateful to our legislative leaders for joining us and explaining to the attending reporters why the Senate and Assembly omitted Governor Hochul’s proposals to expand involuntary inpatient and outpatient commitment from their one house budgets. Their decision affirms what we have long fought for—that community-based, voluntary solutions are the key to real recovery and public safety.
During the event, we emphasized the importance of fully funding alternatives that support people in crisis with dignity, including:
- INSET teams to engage people without coercion
- Peer Bridgers to provide support to help people to leave and stay out of hospitals
- Housing First with ACT teams to ensure stable, supportive housing with effective support services
- Clubhouses to offer recovery-based social connection, employment, and linkage to other community services
- Daniel’s Law mental health emergency response teams to provide health-led responses to people experience crises
- A 7.8% rate enhancement to stabilize agencies and retain essential workers
With less than two weeks before the final budget is passed, we must keep up the pressure to ensure that these investments not only remain but are increased and that no last-minute attempts to expand involuntary commitment make it into the final agreement.
Thank you to everyone who attended and spoke out as well as all of our community allies and supporters. Together, we will continue to fight for a mental health system that prioritizes dignity, choice, and recovery. See below for more information.
Advocates, Mental Health Committee Chairs Call for Expanding
Voluntary Service Innovations that Work, Reject Involuntary Treatment Proposals
March 19, 2025
Contact: Harvey Rosenthal, CEO, 518-527-0564, harveyr@rightsandrecovery.org
Luke Sikinyi, Vice President for Public Policy, 518-703-0264, lukes@rightsandrecovery.org
New York State legislature’s mental health committee chairs Senator Samra Brouk and Assembly Member Jo Ann Simon joined advocates for mental health and substance use recovery, disability rights, independent living, and criminal justice reform to call for expansions in an array services that have been proven to work to voluntarily engage and support people with major mental illnesses in crisis across New York City and New York State.
“Today, we live in a policy environment that suggests we have to choose between promoting public safety or human rights, that to do one has to diminish the other,” said Harvey Rosenthal, CEO of the Alliance for Rights and Recovery. “The truth is programs that provide people with pathways to recovery, housing, innovative services, and that help people to recover using voluntary means will keep all of us safe!” he said.
During a time of great public unrest and fear, New Yorkers with mental illnesses have been falsely portrayed as a major threat to public safety and as a result, policy makers have been pressured to consider policies that “crack down on the violent mentally ill”, they said.
“While people with mental illnesses are involved in about 4% of the violence that occurs in the US, we are 11 times as likely to be the victims of violence, as evidenced in the horrific deaths of Daniel Prude at the hands of the Rochester police department in 2020 and Jordan Neely, who was choked to death on a NYC subway car in 2023,” said Luke Sikinyi, Vice President for Public Policy of the Alliance for Rights and Recovery.
The advocates emphasized that today’s mental health crisis is not caused by people with mental illness but is the product of unaddressed poverty, homelessness, stigma and discrimination, isolation, racism and long-standing and devastating inadequacies in funding for community based mental health services.
“Yet, some would have us address this crisis by returning us to the regressive policies of the past that would hide not help us, that would force us into treatment in a way that drives people away not towards the help we need and in cycles of regular relapses and pointless hospitalizations that do nothing to advance our recovery and our and the general public’s safety,” said Taina Laing, CEO of Baltic Street Wellness Solutions.
“We want to make it clear today that our goals are the same as our Governor, our state legislature and the public: to help stop the suffering and struggles of our people, far too many of whom suffer and struggle on our streets,” said Ruth Lowenkron, Director of the Disability Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. “We are in no way promoting people’s right to suffer but their right and our obligation to provide people with the best treatments we can.”
The advocates strongly opposed proposals that would expand the use of involuntary inpatient and outpatient policies, pointing to a number of proven service innovations that were birthed in New York State and that are proven to voluntarily engage and support people with major mental illnesses that have been included in budget proposals from Governor Kathy Hochul and both houses of the legislature, including:
- INSET teams that are successfully and voluntarily engaging 80% or more of people who might otherwise been considered for a Kendra’s law involuntary outpatient treatment order
- Hospital discharge plans that work and that offer access to
- A person who can walk alongside you for as long as needed, without a series of ‘warm handoffs’ (a Peer Bridger)
- A place to live that will accept you even if you are not fully engaged in treatment or are still using (Housing First residential programs with support from Assertive Community Treatment Teams)
- A place to go: a Clubhouse mental health support center.
The advocates also expressed their great appreciation to both houses of the legislature for their support for:
- First responder teams of mental health and emergency medical technicians in place of police envisioned under Daniel’s law
- Implementation of a statutorily approved Incident Review Process that will immediately investigate tragedies involving violence and affecting and people with mental illnesses and that will call for detailed corrective policies and practices.
“We also urge you to see that all of the $16.5 million in this budget be used to expand local housing and case management services as alternatives to coercive Kendra’s Law orders rather than pay for more staff to process more orders,” said Sikinyi.
“We also give great thanks to both houses of the Legislature for their critically needed proposals to provide hard pressed community agencies with a 7.8% rate hike to keep our agencies open and extend the resources to help us attract and retain a dedicated workforce,” said Glenn Liebman, CEO of the Mental Health Association in New York State.
Speakers included
- Senate Mental Health Committee Chair Samra Brouk
- Assembly Mental Health Committee Chair Jo Ann Simon
- Glenn Liebman, CEO of the Mental Health Association in New York State
- Mark Clarke, Co-Director for Programs, Baltic Street Wellness Solutions, Brooklyn
- Charles Benson, INSET Program Director, Baltic Street Wellness Solutions, Brooklyn
- Blaise Sackett, Executive Director, and Clubhouse members, Hudson Valley Clubhouse, Poughkeepsie