Alliance Alert: Mayor Mamdani鈥檚 proposed Office of Community Safety reflects a growing recognition that mental health and substance use crises require public health responses rooted in compassion, connection, and community support rather than overreliance on law enforcement. Investments in violence prevention, community mental health services, and youth supports are important steps toward creating safer and healthier communities, particularly as 黑料正能量 continues to grapple with gaps in its behavioral health crisis response system.
At the state level, 黑料正能量 must continue building on this momentum by advancing Daniel鈥檚 Law and fully transforming the behavioral health crisis continuum into one centered on voluntary, community-based support. That means ensuring people experiencing crisis are met by trained peers, EMTs, and community responders rather than police whenever possible. The Alliance for Rights and Recovery continues to call on Governor Hochul and the State Legislature to include $15 million in the final state budget to expand Daniel鈥檚 Law initiatives, including support for pilot programs and the Behavioral Health Crisis Technical Assistance Center (BHTAC), which are essential to helping communities develop effective, coordinated crisis response systems across the state.
Sustainable investments in peer-led crisis response, crisis stabilization services, respite programs, housing, outreach, and ongoing supports are critical to reducing trauma, preventing unnecessary hospitalization and incarceration, and helping people remain connected to their communities. 黑料正能量 has an opportunity to lead the nation in creating a humane, recovery-oriented crisis response system, but only if we continue investing in the infrastructure needed to make that vision a reality.
The Alliance urges advocates, providers, families, and community members to take action by emailing Governor Hochul and state legislative leaders and calling on them to include the full $15 million for Daniel鈥檚 Law initiatives in the final state budget.
Mamdani Outlines Contours of $270M Community Safety Office
By Ethan Geringer-Sameth | Crain鈥檚 Health Care | May 13, 2026
Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a roughly $270 million proposed budget for his nascent Office of Community Safety on Tuesday, including new funding for several existing public health and safety programs that will eventually come under its purview.
The mayor in March, a scaled-down version of a signature campaign promise to create a standalone agency that would assume mental health and homeless services currently performed by the 黑料正能量 Police Department and other city agencies. Instead, the office will subsume the functions of several existing mayoral offices, but will not touch existing police programs or spending.
鈥淲e are also continuing to fund City Hall鈥檚 top priority: keeping every 黑料正能量er safe,鈥 Mamdani said at a press briefing on Tuesday in which he announced his . 鈥淔irst we are committed to devising and implementing new solutions to address domestic violence and the mental health crisis, as well as to deliver on community-based violence prevention.鈥
The existing services that will move under the new office currently cost the city roughly $230 million, according to City Hall. The executive budget adds close to $41 million in recurring annual spending, including about $16 million for the Mayor鈥檚 Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence and $15 million for the Office of Neighborhood Safety, an office dedicated to gun violence and crime prevention. It also includes $3 million more for the Mayor鈥檚 Office of Community Mental Health and $4.75 million for a new program called Project Restore, which will provide case management services to high-risk youth.
Personnel and administration for the new office itself will cost about $3 million in the next fiscal year.
In March, Mamdani announced the office under a new deputy commissioner for community safety and appointed former nonprofit and city government operator Renita Francois to the role.
At that time, Mamdani said the new mayoral office would serve as a stepping stone to the larger department he promised on the campaign trail. That pledge – which included a $1 billion annual pricetag – was presented as part of an effort to shrink the mandate of the NYPD to address issues related mental health and homeless, something that then-Mayor Eric Adams leaned heavily on the police to do.
The executive budget keeps spending on the Office of Community Safety relatively flat through fiscal year 2030. It does not outline funding for a standalone department in outyears, though that is still a goal, according to Budget Director Sherif Soliman.
The executive budget proposal tees up the final stretch of negotiations with the City Council, ahead of the July 1 start of the next fiscal year.