Mayor Adams releases a mental health plan (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

On May 10, Mayor Eric Adams made his first extended remarks on the death of Jordan Neely, a Black homeless man with a history of mental illness who was killed on the subway ten days earlier by Daniel Penny, a white Marine veteran.

Adams called Neely's killing a "tragedy," and said he "did not deserve to die." But Neely didn't receive critical mental health care, Adams said, which left him decompensating and calling for help on a subway car in the minutes before Penny choked him to death. Neely himself said he was hungry and thirsty and unafraid to die or go to jail, according to witnesses. (Penny was later charged with manslaughter by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and maintains his innocence, claiming that Neely was a danger.)

Adams, a first-term Democrat, has released at least five plans to address mental health and subway safety. He said to solve the crisis Neely's death embodied state lawmakers must make it easier for clinicians and judges to commit people or otherwise order treatment, even against their will. That means changing the standards of risk-to-self in New York's Mental Hygiene Law through what Adams called "the Supportive Interventions Act."

But there is no record of the Supportive Interventions Act and little evidence that Adams has made a serious push for something resembling it.

"We are urging our partners in Albany to act on the legislative agenda that I first announced in November, which we have now put forward as a bill entitled the Supportive Interventions Act," Adams said in the May 10 live-streamed address that was closed to the press.

"We need the tools to get people into treatment at critical moments when they are simply unable to self-direct," the mayor said.

Adams was widely criticized by New York Democrats for waiting over a week after Neely's killing to speak publicly about it at any length, and for his failure to condemn Penny's actions in any way. Meanwhile, many civil rights watchdogs and mental health advocates have raised alarms about the moves toward forced hospitalization and more coercive methods of treatment.

With just days left in the state legislative session due to end June 9, the Mayor's Office would not provide specific legal language or even say whether the would-be bill has a sponsor or a number in the Legislature, a necessary step for legislation to be considered. A search for the act in the Assembly's legislative database yields no results.

A spokesperson for Assemblymember Edward Braunstein, Chief of Staff Suzanne Monteverdi, confirmed that his office was working with the Assembly bill-drafting unit to introduce a bill "regarding psychiatric care" along the lines of the Supportive Interventions Act. But those efforts could be stymied by an "end-of-Session bill drafting backlog," she wrote by email. Three days after publication, with one scheduled session day left, Monteverdi said a bill was submitted and awaiting a bill number.

A similar bill, introduced by Braunstein and State Senator Jessica Scarcella-Spanton earlier this year, The New York State Mental Health Reform Act, would do some of what the mayor is seeking, including changes that would make it easier for hospitals to admit and hold psychiatric patients. That legislation was previously championed by former State Senator Diane Savino – a Staten Island Democrat who is now a senior advisor to Adams – but never passed. Brian Stettin, who helped draft the bill as a policy director for Treatment Advocacy Center, a national nonprofit focused on expanding court-ordered treatment laws, is now Adams' Senior Advisor for Severe Mental Illness.

The current bills have no co-sponsors in either house of the Legislature. The administration is backing different legislation that has yet to be introduced, according to a spokesperson for Adams.

“This legislation is going to change the way we approach mental health intervention here in New York State,” Scarcella-Spanton said in a statement. “By establishing court-ordered in-patient medical treatment, we will be breaking down the barriers that hinder access to care for individuals with severe mental illness. It aims to create better opportunities for successful mental health intervention and lower the chances of extreme outcomes for those seeking out help during a crisis.”

The legislative language may be included in an end-of-session omnibus deal, known as "the Big Ugly," that typically clears both chambers with little time for public review or debate. And it could have the support of Governor Kathy Hochul; last year, she pushed for a similar playbook in an eleventh-hour memo to state legislators during budget negotiations. The push contributed to a late budget agreement that included the expansion of involuntary outpatient treatment via Kendra’s Law, but no changes to the self-danger standard.

But the bill "being drafted at the request of NYC" is still in the works, Monteverdi wrote in an email, referring to the Supportive Interventions Act. Braunstein's office directed further inquiries to the Mayor's Office.

The Would-be Supportive Interventions Act
​​Adams has repeatedly pushed for more forced hospitalizations after a stream of attacks on and by homeless New Yorkers with severe mental illness in recent years.

In the live-streamed address, the mayor said the Supportive Interventions Act would codify language to allow people to be civilly committed or involuntarily hospitalized if a mental illness prevents them from taking care of basic needs, even without committing a dangerous act. Police and EMTs already do that under the vagaries of the existing law, a practice reinforced in the courts and by guidance from state Mental Health Commissioner Ann Marie Sullivan last year. Adams issued a controversial directive last November to police and outreach workers to ramp-up those "removals" from public spaces.

The mayor said he is also seeking further changes to Kendra's Law, a recently-expanded state statute that enables court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment for people who meet the self-danger standard. And he wants state law to require hospitals to consider an individual's long-term mental health when deciding to admit or discharge them, even if they appear stable.

"We'll be making a major push on this legislation in the remaining weeks of the session," he said on May 10.

Since then, there has been no apparent public effort. The Mayor's Office has not provided specifics on the status of discussions or who the administration was lobbying to get the legislation passed.

"The Adams administration has invested significantly in support of New Yorkers living with serious mental illness and our legislative agenda complements that effort," a City Hall spokesperson said in a statement to Gotham Gazette on May 23. "While we don't discuss private conversations, we are working closely with partners in Albany to push these goals forward."

Spokespeople for the mayor's office would not comment on the efficacy of the ongoing forced removal policy or provide details on how many people had been taken to a hospital, how many admitted, or how many received shelter or another form of housing.

In mid-March, NYPD Chief of Interagency Operations Theresa Tobin testified to the City Council that 1,332 people had been transported under the directive so far this year, representing a 4.6% decline from the same period last year. Forty-seven percent were Black and 19% were white, Tobin said, despite white residents outnumbering Black residents nearly two to one. The proportion of removals is nearly identical to mandated treatment under Kendra's Law, where 44% of city residents under a court order are Black and 17% are white, according to state data. Those figures track closely with the city's homeless population; roughly half of the single adults in city shelters are Black.

At the time of the directive in November, the NYPD had already executed 1,300 removals from the subway system. The administration has never provided information on how many of those people actually met the criteria for a psychiatric hold or ended up in shelter or supportive housing.

Adams' Psychiatric Crisis Care Legislative Agenda
In response to requests for details about the Supportive Interventions Act, the Mayor's Office pointed to Adams' "Psychiatric Crisis Care Legislative Agenda," announced last November with the involuntary removal directive.

The 11-point state-level action plan includes similar provisions to the ones Adams described for the Supportive Interventions Act, along with measures that would improve discharge planning, and expand where and by whom an individual may be evaluated for a psychiatric removal or involuntary commitment or outpatient treatment. It would also make it easier to require treatment under Kendra's Law, which Governor Kathy Hochul and the State Legislature expanded in 2022, in part at Adams’ urging.

But that agenda, too, appears to have taken a back seat to other city priorities in Albany throughout the legislative session.

Adams did not mention it in his State of the City address in January or in his February testimony before the State Legislature when he outlined the city's priorities for the state budget during one of the most consequential periods of the political calendar.

His 72-page mental health plan, released in March with city Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan, includes only a single bullet point on the state legislative agenda. After the state budget passed in April, the mayor’s office discussed the administration's successes and defeats in a statement to Gotham Gazette without broaching psychiatric care or safety. 

On Tuesday of this week, top administration officials, including Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer and outgoing Chief Housing Officer Jessica Katz, went to Albany to push for more affordable housing tools and other pieces of legislation. Absent from their public remarks, which included a press conference in the State Capitol, was any reference to Kendra's Law, psychiatric commitment, or the Supportive Interventions Act. Jonah Allon, a spokesperson for Adams, would not provide a list of legislation the administration was lobbying for this week but referred Gotham Gazette to a press release about the mayor's housing agenda. It did not discuss mental health policy.

This year Hochul and the State Legislature included over $1 billion in the state budget for mental health, with funding going to supportive housing, shuttered psychiatric beds, outpatient services, and mobile crisis response, among other services. It did not include language along the lines of the mayor's agenda. 

Aja Worthy-Davis, a spokesperson for Hochul, would not say whether administration officials were in touch to lobby for the psychiatric agenda, or whether the governor supported it.

"Governor Hochul continues to work with the Mayor to ensure that all residents of New York City can have access to the mental health services they need," Worthy-Davis wrote by email. "The Governor launched an historic, $1 billion plan that will transform, enhance, and strengthen the State’s mental healthcare system by increasing access to inpatient and outpatient services, expanding housing opportunities for people living with mental illness, and closing gaps in insurance coverage for behavioral health services. The Governor’s plan will also expand mental health services for children and youth, as well as suicide prevention and crisis intervention services. Governor Hochul will review all legislation that passes both houses of the Legislature."

Spokespeople for Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, both Democrats, like Hochul and Adams, did not return a request for comment.