Alliance Alert: We are encouraged to see improvements in New York City’s B-HEARD mental health crisis response program, particularly the reported increase in the percentage of eligible emergency calls receiving a response. The increase to 78% of eligible calls receiving a B-HEARD response is an important step forward, demonstrating progress toward ensuring that people experiencing mental health crises receive appropriate, health-centered support rather than a default police response.
However, significant improvements are still needed to make B-HEARD a truly effective and accessible alternative to police-led crisis response. Chief among these is the need to center the program around trained peer supporters with lived experience of mental health challenges, who can build trust, engage people experiencing crises, and offer compassionate, recovery-oriented assistance. We must also improve response times, expand operating hours, and extend coverage to all areas of New York City so that people can access timely, appropriate support whenever and wherever a crisis occurs.
We are supportive of Mayor Mamdani’s administration’s efforts to strengthen and overhaul B-HEARD and are encouraged by its commitment to expanding the program and integrating peer support. The success of B-HEARD should ultimately be measured not only by how many calls receive a response, but by whether people receive timely, voluntary, effective, and trauma-informed support that connects them to the community-based services they want post crisis.
The Alliance will continue advocating for these improvements in New York City while also pushing for broader statewide changes through our work with the Daniel’s Law Coalition and other advocacy partners. Our goal remains a statewide crisis response system that prioritizes peers and health professionals, reduces unnecessary police involvement, and ensures that every New Yorker experiencing a mental health or substance use crisis has access to compassionate, community-based assistance.
We commend the progress being made and look forward to working with city and state leaders to build a crisis response system grounded in recovery, dignity, choice, and the expertise of people with lived experience.
Mamdani Reverses Adams Plan to Move B-HEARD Away From FDNY
By Ethan Geringer-Sameth | Crain’s Healthcare | November 9, 2026
The Fire Department will keep running B-HEARD, the city’s mental health emergency response program, after Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration scrapped a plan by predecessor Eric Adams to hand the program to the public hospital system.
The program, which deploys clinicians to non-violent mental health 911 calls in lieu of police, will continue to use FDNY’s emergency medical services and social workers from New York City Health + Hospitals, officials confirmed. The decision to maintain the status quo is the latest course shift for the program, which has struggled to meet mental health 911 calls amid ongoing concerns of inappropriate and sometimes fatal police responses.
Last November, during Adams’ final weeks in office, the lame duck mayor announced the program would move entirely under the purview of New York City Health + Hospitals to streamline resources and repurpose EMTs to improve ambulance response times, which have slowed dramatically in recent years.
But since taking office, Mamdani has left that plan on ice while he reconfigured parts of the city’s mental health system under a new Office of Community Safety.
At a City Council oversight hearing in October, Office of Community Safety Commissioner Ayesha Delany-Brumsey said the administration was adding staff to fill vacancies and eyeing an expansion of the program under the purview of the FDNY.
“That work for some time had been stagnant, but now this administration is providing the support necessary,” she said of the program.
Last week, City Hall spokesman Sam Raskin confirmed that the administration had permanently tabled Adams’ plan. The decision is the latest example of Mamdani reversing a last ditch policy push in Adams’ final weeks in office.
Since its launch as a pilot in 2021, the program has struggled with staffing challenges that have hampered its ability to respond to calls. In the third quarter of 2025, just 37% of eligible calls were assigned to the unit, according to a January report from the city’s Independent Budget Office. On the campaign trail, Mamdani called for the program to expand citywide and be staffed with peers — trained counselors with their own experience with mental health issues — under the jurisdiction of a new Department of Community Safety, an agency that has yet to be stood up.
At the oversight hearing in October, Delany-Brumsey said the program was staffing up and improving 911 call triage. For the first time since 2024, the city completed training last month for a new class of 27 B-HEARD workers that will fill vacancies in the program, officials said.
B-HEARD currently operates in the Bronx and parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Its $35.3 million budget has not meaningfully changed in the last three fiscal years.
“We believe (the budget) is sufficient to operate the program,” said Office of Community Safety spokeswoman Malika Granville in an email to Crain’s. “We will review the need for additional resources through the budget process.”
Responses appear to be improving. Last fiscal year, the city’s emergency dispatch system received 10,945 911 calls that were eligible for a B-HEARD response, and of those, about 8,524, or 78%, received one, officials said at the hearing.
“We are working very closely with FDNY to ensure that we have the resources necessary, both staffing and vehicles, to make sure that this program operates and can expand,” Delany-Brumsey said.
FDNY spokeswoman Amanda Farinacci said the agency was supportive of the program’s direction.
“The FDNY is pleased to remain a key partner in B-HEARD, which provides a critical service to New Yorkers experiencing mental health crises,” she wrote in an email. “We look forward to working with our partners across city government to strengthen and expand the program and ensure New Yorkers who need it receive timely and appropriate care.”
H+H President and CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz has expressed frustration with the program’s ability to respond to calls in the past. At a City Council oversight hearing in March, he said he supported “any arrangement that gets the social worker there.”
“Our common goal should be to get the social worker to these calls, and that is not happening under the current arrangement,” he said at the time.
Under Adams’ plan, which was set to begin last spring, the public hospital system was slated to hire 70 new nurses, social workers and supervisors, H+H officials said.
Health + Hospitals did not return a request for comment on the program’s direction and referred inquiries to the mayor’s office.