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Where Democratic mayoral candidates stand on mental health
  ���������’s Health Pulse  June 24, 2025

Democratic candidates for mayor have made severe mental illness and homelessness a defining issue in the primary, echoing a policy debate that has recently loomed over city and state politics.

There is wide agreement that the city needs more voluntary mental health programs, like peer clubhouses, which offer support in a social setting, and housing with services attached. However, candidates differ significantly on their approaches to involuntary commitment.

Frontrunner former Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he supports more psychiatric commitments and greater court involvement in treatment.

Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, whose rise in the polls has put him within striking distance of Cuomo, has advocated for removing police from mental health responses.

The extent to which police should be involved in mental health programs has animated millions of dollars’ worth of campaign messaging: One of the largest ad spends in the race is a  from the Andrew Cuomo-affiliated PAC, known as Fix the City. The ad paints Mamdani’s policies as a threat to public safety and claims he wants to “put the homeless into our subway stations.” The slogan, which also appeared on mailers, refers to a  of Mamdani’s to put mental health outreach workers in vacant subway storefronts, according to a spokesperson from Fix the City.

The plan, one of Mamdani’s first major campaign proposals, promises to establish a Department of Community Safety, a new city agency that would take the reins from the NYPD on several mental health functions like emergency calls and street outreach teams. In a  to ���������’s, Mamdani, whose campaign focuses on freezing rent and free buses and childcare, said the city’s “overreliance” on  contributed to a “revolving door” for people with severe mental illness. His Department of Community Safety would have a $1.1 billion budget, including $455 million of new funding and $605 million coming from existing city services.

That plan has largely become the target of Cuomo and hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson, who is also in the Democratic primary. Both have been much more open to the role of police in the mental health care system.

Cuomo wants to  including in high-security wards for people in the criminal legal system. He also wants to screen people leaving the city jail system for potential court-ordered treatment. Cuomo also wants to add 600 units of supportive housing each year – units with accompanying social services – on top of the city’s existing supportive housing goals. The proposal would cost $2.6 billion from the city’s capital budget, his campaign said.

Some other candidates, like Comptroller Brad Lander, say they’ll fix the problem by focusing on housing. Lander’s campaign is primarily focused on housing the estimated 2,000 ����������ers who are homeless with a severe mental illness. His plan focuses on using housing vouchers and city dollars to immediately housing the most vulnerable ����������ers with attached social services. In his response to the ���������’s questionnaire, Lander said he supported more flexibility to involuntarily hospitalization and court-ordered treatment but emphasized his housing plan.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a late entrant into the race, and former comptroller Scott Stringer both said they support involuntary commitments in “extreme cases,” in their responses to the ���������’s survey. The speaker said involuntary police removals are often “ineffective” and has called for more funding for intensive mobile treatment teams, which provide multiple services to people living on the street, and  to transition them into housing with residential services.

Stringer said he wants to see , including an officer on every peak-hour train and continue to pair police with outreach workers.

State Sen. Zellnor Myrie of Flatbush wants to drastically expand the number of co-response teams, which pair police officers with social workers and other civilian service providers. His plan calls for an additional 150 teams operating around the clock.

State Sen. Jessica Ramos of Jackson Heights said she would focus her mayoralty on expanding treatment facilities and crisis centers before promoting more involuntary commitments citing what she said was a lack of capacity in the city’s mental health system. Former Assemblyman Michael Blake of the South Bronx supports the use of involuntary commitment but said the city could do more to promote alternative services including overdose prevention centers, which cater to people at risk of homelessness.