Opinion | Helping Homeless People Who Are Mentally Ill

To the Editor:

“Behind Functions of Violence, Years of Mistakes” (front webpage, Nov. 21) successfully underscores the many years of neglect, underfunding and mismanagement that have built New York’s mental overall health process this kind of a resounding failure for so numerous individuals in our city. But it also perpetuates unsafe stereotypes about people who are homeless and helps make assumptions about the value of “mental wellness shelters” that do not comport with truth.

The breakdowns in the social basic safety web for individuals living with mental health issues are indeed an urgent issue, but these breakdowns have an effect on all persons dwelling with mental sickness, not just people with no homes. By focusing only on homeless persons — and on what is statistically a little number of violent actions by some of those men and women — you are feeding into the misperception of homeless New Yorkers as deranged and hazardous.

In fact, as you notice, men and women who are homeless are a great deal far more probably to be the victims than the perpetrators of crimes.

Although the authorized right to shelter is vital to ensuring that hundreds far more folks are not relegated to sleeping on our streets or in the transit system, shelters — including psychological overall health shelters — are in no way acceptable configurations for individuals with serious psychological health issues. In reality, our shoppers in all those shelters often report that these environments exacerbate their signs, rather than help their demands.

Supportive housing has proved to be the most successful way of stabilizing homeless persons with psychological illness and other disabilities.

Dave Giffen
New York
The writer is executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless.

To the Editor:

As a New York Metropolis behavioral health social employee for the earlier 16 several years, portion of that time invested as the director of a Manhattan homeless shelter, I are unable to thank you adequate for this write-up. My knowledge hoping to get suitable mental wellbeing guidance for shelter clients was very little quick of tragic.

Hostile very first responders from the New York Law enforcement Office and Unexpected emergency Health-related Products and services and flippant crisis space medical professionals often painted my colleagues and me as idealistic, naïve and unqualified bleeding hearts who unsuccessful to understand why they could not intervene in what just one crisis home medical professional described as a “social difficulty,” compared to a biological one.

There will usually be a deficiency of means in New York Metropolis, but a absence of accountability — for racial, cultural and socioeconomic biases — may possibly be the more substantial problem here.

Melissa Flanagan
Brooklyn

To the Editor:

Whilst our program for assisting persons with the most sizeable worries is not best, and we as a town have a approaches to go to make fantastic on the guarantee of deinstitutionalization by offering a sturdy continuum of mental health and fitness companies, there are numerous vivid spots and growing proof that what we are carrying out is doing work.

This post indicates challenges with mobile cure systems, for case in point, but they in reality have incredibly higher good results costs in supporting men and women who have not been aided by any other systems, as is explained in a May well 7 New York Situations posting, “Someone in Their Corner.”

Moreover, the two metropolis and state governments, and nonprofit providers, are making new packages to fill gaps in the continuum of treatment. At the Institute for Neighborhood Dwelling, we just launched a step-down system for folks in mobile courses who are ready for much less intense cure, encouraging very clear the backlog of folks waiting around for a cell procedure slot.

Before this year we released a different new software for people today who are unhoused and cycle in and out of hospitals. So much, we have put 93 per cent of them in long lasting housing in under 100 days. I think that significantly of what we are undertaking is efficiently assembly the needs of men and women with the most severe psychological wellness problems.

We ought to work toward a procedure the place we do not fall short a single person, but, in contrast to what this article indicates, failure is much from the rule.

Jody Rudin
New York
The author is president and C.E.O. of the Institute for Neighborhood Dwelling.

An Immoral Oct. 7 ‘But’

To the Editor:

Thank you to Thomas L. Friedman for his considerate sequence of columns about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. His Nov. 26 column, “There Are More Than Two Sides to This War,” displays us complexities but also involves a simple, pure metric for speaking about the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

It is a comment from Mansour Abbas, a Muslim and member of Israel’s parliament: “No just one can take what occurred on that working day. And we can’t condemn it and say ‘but’ — that phrase ‘but’ has turn into immoral.”

Equivocating liberals ought to acquire note. This is a profound assertion, from anyone who has a right to make it.

Candace Singer
Port Washington, N.Y.

Biden and the Israel-Gaza War

To the Editor:

I’m upset when I hear properly-that means buddies blaming Joe Biden for the horrors of the Israel-Hamas war as if he’s Lyndon Johnson bombing Vietnam or George W. Bush bombing Iraq, somewhat than blaming the guy who’s bombing Gaza or the terrorists who attacked that man’s susceptible region or only sensation unfortunate for the entire entire world.

This is for my Democratic pals:

1. Joe Biden is working for peace employing regardless of what impact he has more than the get-togethers involved and justifies a Nobel Peace Prize for his initiatives.

2. Correct diplomacy is complicated. I confess I know nothing at all about the complexities, but at the very least I know what I do not know. Do you?

3. If the Democratic Get together stays break up more than this war, we will wind up with a president who imprisons his enemies — maybe which includes you and me — and makes our nation into a war zone combating “the enemy within just.” Make sure you do not lessen: The hazard is real.

Cindy Glovinsky
Ann Arbor, Mich.

Father and Son Seeking to Mend a Divide More than Jan. 6

Mr. Mock presents as a caring, attentive, hardworking household guy led amiss by Donald Trump’s shameless and amoral self-portrayal as a sufferer.

Mr. Mock is involved about the outcome of his feelings and steps on his son, A.J. Mock. He made a slip-up but he was maliciously misled. He neither warrants nor wants imprisonment.

He needs to be at house in discussions with his son and neighbors, engaged in straight chat, exchanging views and emotions about how and why we arrived at this time and spot. We need to hear a single a different and be provided time to inquire issues and then time to ponder responses ahead of even starting to contemplate motion. Preserve him free!

Paul Eric Rudder
New York
The author is a law firm.

Planet Earth Will Endure Us

To the Editor:

Re “We Just can’t Afford to pay for to Hold Producing Low cost Factors,” by Yvon Chouinard (Feeling visitor essay, Nov. 24):

A quick observation about an outstanding commentary: It is not our world that is at threat. It is us. Our species. Yes, it is true that if we persist in our behaviors, we’ll desecrate it, but earth Earth has demonstrated time and yet again that it has the capacities expected to outlast the likes of us.

David Hill
Mill Valley, Calif.