Cuomo Says New York Has a Mental Health Crisis. Here’s His Plan.

In his bid to become mayor, Andrew M. Cuomo has portrayed New York City as being in crisis mode and has said that his top priority if elected would be keeping people safe.

To do so, Mr. Cuomo, the former governor of New York, says the city must do more to remove people with severe mental illness from the streets and ease fears over high-profile attacks involving homeless people.

On Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo will release a detailed 36-page plan about how he would do that, including expanding involuntary hospitalizations and requiring people who are discharged from public hospitals and jails to be screened for mandatory outpatient treatment.

The plan includes more than a dozen proposals to address what he calls the city’s “mental health crisis.” Mr. Cuomo will call for adding more supportive housing units and psychiatric beds at hospitals and improving access to preventative mental health services. His main focus is on removing people who are a danger to themselves and the public.

“You don’t want to institutionalize a person involuntarily unless you have to,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview. “But when you have to, you should for the person’s own benefit, and that’s what we haven’t been doing.”

Many of Mr. Cuomo’s ideas are similar to those proposed by Mayor Eric Adams, who has struggled to confront concerns over public safety posed by mentally ill people in the streets. Gov. Kathy Hochul has also pushed for changes to force more people into treatment.