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Public health officials credit the plan for drawing attention to mental health, often too easily ignored by political leaders. We did not say everything would be perfect, burbled the co-mayor as if anybody outside his immediate orbit expected an outcome even close to competent. During the hearing, Ms. McCray distanced herself from the operations of the program, and left it to Ms. Herman and a budget official to answer many of the more specific questions. McCray formally serves as chair of the Mayors Fund to Advance New York City and is the face of ThriveNYC an $850 million dollar administration initiative she helped design to improve the citys mental health and substance abuse services. They have good ideas, but the implementation is what they stumble on, said Steve Coe, the chief executive of Community Access, which provides housing and other services to the mentally ill. Thrives primary focus is on the other end of the spectrum: New Yorkers who have less serious and possibly undiagnosed mental health problems, a population that according to City Hall encompasses 1.7 million city residents. You may opt out at anytime. The data also showed almost 190,000 Narcan kits were handed out to hospital where opioid use is common, but there is no evidence of how many were used. Despite that, the program has been granted an even bigger budget going forward and is now on track to spend $1billion over five years. De Blasio says the questions smack of sexism, that McCray is a key decision-maker, and it should come as no surprise that she plays a role in staff picks and high-profile initiatives. Bill de Blasio's wife can't account for staggering amount of taxpayer money that the NY Mayor gave her for mental health project . The site said it had tried and failed to acquire a line-item budget from Thrive, and the two budget breakdowns it had seen showed wildly different numbers. How many other big-bucks initiatives are in similar straits is unknowable mostly because bureaucrats never blow the whistle on themselves and also because Gothams formal watchdog, city Comptroller Scott Stringer, is among the most incurious individuals ever to hold the office. The Thrive program, which had its budget raised to $250 million per year in 2019, has produced some underwhelming numbers in terms of how many people it impacts. And while it sounds good to spend heavily on a mental health initiative, it appears that nobody has noticed any real benefits from that investment. How about the Hurricane Sandy recovery effort six years, uncountable delays and billions of dollars later? During a meeting,the City Council learned this astounding amount of potential waste. Read our full Disclosure. But now, that money cannot be accounted for, and . Market data provided by Factset. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Black Democrat DA tells the truth on crime, but progressives won't listen. But there are other mysteries out there, too. Budget watchdogs have lamented Thrives opacity. More than $15 million has been budgeted over the last three years for the effort; none has been spent. Read our full Disclosure. Bill de Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray cannot explain where $850million given to the mental health program she champions has gone, according to reports. Some have closed their doors; others have chosen to stop providing mental health services. It is a hard thing to measure, because its never existed before, Ms. McCray said in an interview at Gracie Mansion last month. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Fast-forward to Wednesday, when the City Council was startled to discover that McCray and Team Thrive are closing in on having spent an eye-popping $900 million since the programs inception and nobody seems to have a clue on what. The city would not make McCray available for a recent interview. . The programs at issue ostensibly are meant to assist particularly challenged people the helpless, often homeless, mentally ill and small children whose futures are forfeited because they landed in shamefully nonfunctional schools, an experience from which they will never recover. With Thrive, spending rose to $346 million in fiscal year 2018, according to an analysis by the City Council. or redistributed. Two locations have been selected, in East Harlem and the Bronx, but neither has opened yet. So far, she has not been able to get the mayor to take it. The Thrive program budgeted millions to create diversion centers, a place other than jail for officers to bring those experiencing a mental health crisis. It's gone. With over 22,000 layoffs of city workers looming, the mayor cant seriously expect to keep funding full-time, highly paid speechwriters and professional videographers for his wifes political ambitions. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. We cant have a universality in this from day one, he added. It seems that Mayor Bill de Blasio's wife (Chirlane McCray) headed a taxpayer-funded project called ThriveNYC and now she can not, or will not, account for $850 million in taxpayer money. Questions have mounted in recent days over McCrays expansive role in high-level City Hall decisions, despite having no official title other than wife of the mayor. That it should happen in a single week is worse its an embarrassment. Thrive said it has developed a list of 417 metrics to measure how effective the program is moving forward, but asked to assess its impact so far, Politico said the data was piecemeal and showed a largely failing picture. This story has been shared 175,437 times. It promotes that misconception that too many people have, that people who have mental illness or people suffering from substance use disorders are violent, which is not true, she said at a health care conference. Click here to log out. Think Stockholm syndrome, rolled into a big ball with the United Federation of Teachers. Folks, let me tell you something, if there truly is a "scheme" here and the money was intentionally "misused" or funnelled somewhere, that is criminal. Mayor Bill de Blasio's Wife Loses $850 Million Dollars. The wife of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio "can't account for" $850 million in missing taxpayer money that was granted to her mental health project, according to reports. Sign up for our free email newsletter, and we'll make sure to keep you in the loop. The city invested heavily on mental health before the de Blasio administration: For example, the Health Department spent $243 million in the 2014 fiscal year on mental health contracts. And the depth issue, I dont know of many city initiatives that have so quickly touched so many New Yorkers in such a short period of time, Belkin said. Thank you for contacting us. How many other big-bucks initiatives are in similar straits is unknowable mostly because bureaucrats never blow the whistle on themselves and also because Gothams formal watchdog, city Comptroller Scott Stringer, is among the most incurious individuals ever to hold the office. Thats because there never was any doubt what the program was about. In the case of diversion programs, which aim to keep individuals with mental health and substance use problems in treatment instead of jails, Thrive only tracks the number of people released under supervision and those screened during pre-arraignment not if or how city-funded intervention worked. Bob McManus is a contributing editor of City Journal. Legal Statement. Please share your thoughts about this article below. There is a program NYC Safe that is embedded into the criminal justice and homeless services agencies to connect high-risk individuals to outpatient treatment, according to a 2015 city announcement. (VIDEO) Donald Trump Pitches Agenda 47: Create Freedom Cities. "I'm not sure anybody does.". So its a mater of choosing your poison do you choose the additional income or keeping your credibility with the public?. (Separately, the Health Department spends nearly 10 times as much on the seriously mentally ill.), Ms. Herman stressed more than once during the hearing that Thrive was not a new mental health system. That message contrasted one repeated by Mr. de Blasio, including during a radio interview on Friday. Hey, the family that preys together stays together, right? While this may appear to be a good idea to spend a lot of money on a mental health effort, it appears that no one has seen any actual results. Those moments often involve the police, and have led to confrontations where officers have been injured, and the person the officers came to help getting physically hurt or killed. Bob McManusharshly assessed the programs effectiveness for the New York Post: So, ipso presto, co-Mayor Bill coughed up enough cash to break a pack mules back and sent it off to co-Mayor Chirlane who then went forth to cure Gothams mental-illness problems. The site said it had tried and failed to acquire a line-item budget from Thrive, and the two budget breakdowns it had seen showed wildly different numbers. But weve built the structure that can get us there.. Were US Rail Workers Instructed to Bypass Railcar Safety Inspections? One, fromCity Hall, showed $594million in spending, but a second, from the Independent Budget Office, showed $816milion. Does anybody know how well more likely, how poorly the co-mayors hugely expensive pre-K program is working, especially that portion consigned to the citys notoriously problematic not-for-profit sector? The City Council discovered this shocking amount of potential waste during a meeting Wednesday. She occasionally speaks of her own experience with therapy, and in the interview, she spoke obliquely of her brief return to treatment last year. I first saw the story online under the title: "Bill DeBlasio's Wife Reportedly Loses $850 Million of Taxpayer Funds! On his now-frequent tours of early presidential primary states, Mayor Bill de Blasio has taken to invoking a less-familiar aspect of his tenure: a nearly $1 billion plan to address mental illness in New York City. The program has made more than 7,800 referrals to outpatient treatment for those individuals between August 2015 and November 2018, according to city numbers. I first saw the story online under the title: Bill DeBlasios Wife Reportedly Loses $850 Million of Taxpayer Funds!, Sometimes you look at a headline like this and think: that cant possibly be true.. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray, was given $900 million to start a mental health initiative focusing on helping the homeless in the city. The mayor and first lady have falsely declared stigma rather than lack of services as being the major barrier faced by the seriously mentally ill thereby justifying the diversion of funds to public relations campaigns rather than services, DJ Jaffe, executive director of Mental Illness Policy Organization, an advocacy group, wrote in an email. The city said that was a function of the programs design. Its safe again and were having a lot of fun over there. Four years later, no one seems to know what that money was actually used for, according to the New York Post. The outcome has not come close to reaching the goal. That is, no one appears to have kept receipts; the subways and street corners are still crawling with lunatics, and no one in control knows what will happen next. That is, reversing Bloomberg administration plans to shut down 100 miserably malfunctioning schools, thus saving the jobs of barely competent teachers and administrators and shutting up small bands of noisy parents who loved the schools despite their failings. But the vast majority of city spending on the program goes to more than 40 other endeavors, such as a crime victim advocate program; social and emotional learning in public schools; and a corps of young behavioral health clinicians paid by the city to work at nonprofits for three years.