Midtown Mental Health Issues To Be Tackled In Neighborhood Forum

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Homelessness, mental health and street safety are dominating the discourse in Midtown more than any time in recent memory, and neighbors hope that a forum this week will help answer questions and reveal possible solutions.

Thursday's forum will be held over Zoom, co-hosted by Community Boards 4 and 5, which cover Central Midtown and Hell's Kitchen. It will focus on how the city treats people with mental illness — especially those who are homeless — while examining the service gaps that have allowed problems to worsen.

Residents are invited to register in advance and submit questions for the forum, which will run from 6-8 p.m. Thursday and feature a panel of experts.

Maria Ortiz, who co-chairs CB4's housing and human services committee, organized the forum alongside her CB5 counterpart Renee Kinsella, after the two spent months talking about the unsheltered people they encountered in the neighborhood.

"I’m a licensed social worker," Ortiz told Patch. "But even I am not clear on everything that occurs after someone makes a 311 complaint."

Hoping to answer that question and others, Thursday's forum will include speakers from the city's Single Point of Access program, the Mental Hygiene Legal Service, CUCS Janian Medical Care, Breaking Ground and the Fountain House.

Much of the impetus for the forum came from specific unsheltered people whom Ortiz encounters daily. She mentioned a woman toting garbage bags who walks up Ninth Avenue and a shoeless, unkempt man she encountered in Central Park — none of whom seemed to be getting the care they needed.

"Why don’t we do more for people?" Ortiz said. "When we see animals in those conditions, we take them and we care for them."

After discussing 311 responses and the gaps in existing social services, Thursday's speakers will answer residents' questions submitted in advance and asked during the meeting. Representatives for local elected officials will also be in attendance, Ortiz said.

Last week, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer spoke out about conditions on Midtown's streets, saying drug use and public urination had created a public health crisis in the neighborhood.

Her proposed solutions included improving coordination between agencies that respond to vulnerable people, and bringing to Midtown a pilot program being tested in Harlem that removes the NYPD from some mental health 911 calls, replacing cops with social workers and paramedics.

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