WAMC: Mental health program, services to be boosted as part of new effort in Albany County, city of Albany

Dave Lucas, WAMC

Elected officials gathered Wednesday in downtown Albany to announce major efforts to boost mental health programs and services.

Albany County Executive Dan McCoy says for the first time, ACCORD, the Albany County Crisis Officials Responding and Diverting Program, which diverts non-violent emergency calls from police to mental health professionals, will be expanded beyond the hilltowns into the city of Albany in 2025.

"They don't need to be locked up, they need to get the services they need to better their lives to get whatever they need to get their foundation to get them on their working way," said McCoy.

McCoy says the goal is to get unhoused people off the streets and into stable housing. Mayor Kathy Sheehan, a fellow Democrat, says a working group will explore "what it would take to create an ACCORD-type response in the city."

"We're proposing some funding for that in our 2024 budget," Sheehan said. "And so we are in the process of finalizing that budget, it has to be passed by our council. And we are expecting them to be supportive of that."

McCoy also announced a 60-day timetable to roll out expanded long-term treatment and engagement services to the unhoused as an alternative to incarceration.

"Working with CARES [Albany Community Access to Resources and Services], we will begin began another partner to fund an engagement program to direct to indirect with the homeless individuals on the streets to move to more efficient entry into our systems and find stable housing," McCoy said. "So working with cares, we're going to be out on the streets, and we're going to engage the homeless, and we're gonna say, hey, look, we're going to help you, we're going to get you the help that you need, first and foremost, and we're going to try to get you stable housing, because the homeless has become an epidemic. And I've said this before, as we talk about migrants, and we talked about taking care of people coming here. And we want to do that on the counties rolled up their sleeves more than any county in upstate New York, outside the city. But we also have to take care of our own people, too, that are in our shelters. We have 129 kids under the age of 18 living in shelters today, we have over 700 women living in shelters with their children."

McCoy added the former Mercy House homeless shelter for women and children, shuttered in July 2022, will re-open within two months.

Albany Common Councilor Gabriella Romero says the desperately-needed programs will greatly benefit the 6th ward.

"As a criminal defense attorney, defending indigent people, but also as a council member, representing Washington Park and the Lark Street area, this type of program is really going to fill the gap that we see right now in between those that are unhoused, and the programming that our county can provide," Romero said. "I'm so excited for this program, I think I'm gonna see, we are all going to see a really big impact, visually, with the amount of people that are able to get access to quality housing and access to quality services."

Albany County Legislator Sam Fein of the 6th District says the new programs offer an innovative compassionate approach to assisting displaced, addicted and otherwise unhoused people.

"We don't criminalize these issues anymore," Fein said. "And that's a major step forward. But there's a gap because we, until now, we haven't really filled that gap with something. So now we have a compassionate way to fill this gap, give people the services they need by having outreach workers on the street."

Sheehan says implementing the new programs will let the city hit the reset button.

"And make sure that we are sending a message to our residents and our businesses that 'No, it's not OK for you to have people defecating in front of your business, it's not OK for you to find needles in the park, when you take your children there to play.' That's not OK. And so we have to get to the root cause of what is driving those behaviors and those incidents, and we need to bring the right resources to bear. And it's not a police officer," Sheehan said.

Sheehan says the city is making an initial commitment allocating $300,000 of opioid recovery money every year for the next three years.

WAMC News Intern Christian Hince contributed to this story.

Read the original article here.