Governor Hochul: “This is long overdue. We see New Yorkers clearly suffering in plain sight. And people have long thought that the rules and regulations required them to be just left there and ignored. That's not how we treat God's children. We have to give them hope, give them treatment, and recognize they're there because they need help.”
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul joined Mayor Eric Adams to make an announcement on subway safety and mental health.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.
PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Thank you for your powerful words of commitment to address a problem that has been long time simmering. And I have one message for New Yorkers: We can, and we will, do better. And it is because we have not had the collaboration, the partnership, the willingness to roll up our sleeves and work together as a City and a state for far too long. And as we said when we gathered here on January 6th, that era is over.
And this era of working together is what will take us to a level that New Yorkers have not seen before. Unprecedented cooperation that'll lead to real reasons. And this may seem like a problem which is too tough to tackle, but I do believe as the Mayor does, we have assembled the best and the brightest, the most committed public servants to come to solve this, we will accomplish what New Yorkers deserve, and that is a safe ride on our subway system, at the same time recognizing the very real humanitarian crisis that has been unfolding before our eyes for far too long. Individuals who deserve better as well.
So I want to thank Mayor Adams for his willingness to work so closely together. Our commissioner of NYPD, she's doing an incredible job, Commissioner Sewell. Janno Lieber, who has been bringing us ideas on how to make the MTA more welcoming, more inviting, that you will want to be here. And I want to thank leaders of the labor community, particularly Tony Utano and all the TW workers who showed up, day after day after day, not worried about their own safety during the pandemic, they worried about the safety of the riders and our buses and subways. And I want to thank them in particular, and to all the other members of our team. Dr. Ann Marie Sullivan, our Commissioner of Mental Health, who took her team into the subways, went up to individuals to find out what was going on, in real time, with our homelessness problem, I want to thank her for literally being so hands-on and bringing her ideas to us as well, and the other members of the team.
We have a common objective: we have to bring this city, this state, back from this pandemic. And as I look at the streets, and I was a little bit late, and I apologize the Mayor, because I'm always on time. I had a jog a few blocks because the traffic was getting heavy. That's all right, I need the exercise. But that being said, it does look a lot better than it did a year ago, year and a half ago, when these streets for ghost towns. So we are coming back, but we want people to leave their cars at home. Get back on the subways, and join the 3 million New Yorkers who've already taken the step to do that. We're down a little bit, you'll hear about this from Janno. We need to get up to at least our pre-pandemic numbers of 6 million, but this is a very positive sign.
But it is counterintuitive for someone to say, “I'm called back to my job. I can't stay at home working zoom anymore. It's time to come back,” at the same time they're seeing headlines and stories about individuals, Asian women who go down on the subway and have that literally have their back against the wall because of the very real fear that something could happen to them. And so, we’re going to change that mindset.
And New Yorkers, we’re a little cynical sometimes. And you do want it done yesterday. And the Mayor is right. We need some time to execute this, but the bottom line is that we have plans. We know what we're doing, and we're going to make sure that the public is aware of our efforts as well. And I thank all the riders who are here today, people walking through here. This is a sign of life that [has been] missing for far too long.
And as we're coming through this pandemic, and our infection rate statewide is about two and a half percent. We're getting there, my friends, we are making tremendous progress. But in the meantime, all the issues that rose up their ugly heads, they've been there simmering under the surface for far too long, and now they've risen up and we will address them.
So I want to talk about some of the steps that we are going to be taking. One is that we talked about mental health challenges. And what I want to talk about is how we're going to address the regulations that the Office of Mental Health and Dr. Sullivan will talk about this in her regulations, but we need to talk about what's involved in removal and involuntary commitment for the highest need individuals. Individuals who truly have demonstrated that they're not capable of taking care of themselves. That's a cry for help. That is a cry for help.
And so, people who are suffering from the extreme symptoms can be a danger to themselves and a danger to others. We need to issue regulations that will give those who witnessed this behavior, those who are in the subways, the law enforcement, other individuals, our teams that we talked about bringing together the experts, give them more authority to take some steps to get people out of those circumstances and into a place so they can begin the healing.
And this is long overdue. We see New Yorkers clearly suffering in plain sight. And people have long thought that the rules and regulations required them to be just left there and ignored. That's not how we treat God's children. We have to give them hope, give them treatment, recognize they're there because they need help. And that's exactly what we're going to do. So we’re going to be issuing new regulations identifying what we can do to help people get to the help they need before something happens to them or an innocent bystander.
Also, we talk about why aren't there more beds available. If someone does need psychiatric care, where are the beds? Well, during this pandemic, for many reasons, flex and surge, and lack of reimbursement that's satisfactory to the hospitals because they need more money to cover their expenses. We have about a thousand beds that should be fully functioning, 600 in New York City alone. So what we're going to do, we've agreed to an increase in the Medicaid reimbursement.
The state's share of it being a 10% increase and the federal government we're asking to match that. So it would be a 20% increase in how our hospitals are reimbursed when it comes to providing psychiatric beds. And when we overcome that barrier, the gap between psychiatric and non-psychiatric beds and make it closer, that creates the right incentive to say, yes, let's get them fill with the people who need the most help.
We're also proposing $27.5 million for psych beds statewide. As I mentioned, an increase of what we have right now. Also, supportive housing beds, and another $12 million for 500 supportive housing beds.
And also here's the challenge: You can have all the beds you want, but if they're not staffed by professionals, it serves no purpose. And we have a shortage of healthcare workers. That's why in our budget, just announced a few weeks ago, we announced a $10 billion dollar plan to shore up our healthcare workforce, and support our hospitals. But within that, when you peel back, who takes care of these people who have the greatest psychiatric mental health needs? We have a severe shortage of psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses. So we're putting nearly $10 million dollars on the table for recruitment and retention, even helping them pay off their student loans and saying, “Come from other states, come from elsewhere, go to this profession because your fellow New Yorkers need you.” So that scenario, we're going to be announcing up to $150,000 in loan forgiveness for these individuals.
Also our safe option support teams, our SOS teams. Yes, we want to have at least 20. There's about 8 to 10 on each team. We have RFP’s out. There's a process we have to follow but in the meantime, we've had volunteers from all kinds of state agencies who have stepped up, embedded with our New York City partners to be literally in the subways address and then we expect to have that taken care of shortly. So basically, we know it's a big problem. But shame on us at this moment in time, if we don't turn over every single stone, find every possible way to deal with this.
Whether it's making sure that people feel safe. That the laws are being enforced, critically important. Even codes of conduct. You'll hear from Janno about this. Yes, there are rules that just have been ignored for far too long. But also public safety. Getting the guns off the streets. Another one of our priorities are working together toward that objective, and dealing with the homelessness crisis. And as human beings, we all have a responsibility to use our resources, use our talents, use every level of government, to deal with this problem for the individuals involved and also for the security and peace of mind for people. Not just in the subways, but on the streets of New York, the streets of upstate communities, because we need to do this.
This is what government does. We take care of people. We provide the resources and we'll get this done. So we hear New Yorkers. We hear about it all the time. Yes, when I'm jogging down the street or walking down a little bit slower. People come up to me. This is how I stay engaged. And they tell me their fears. They tell me their worry. They have a baby stroller, couple of toddlers and an infant. And they say, “We want the old New York back. We don't feel safe anymore.” And that hits me right here in my heart. Because this is the greatest city that the world has ever known. We just have to take care of some problems and give people that faith again.
And faith comes from results. They'll see results. They see cooperation. They don't see fighting. We don't need to fight with each other. We need to fight for the people out there who are counting on all of us. That's what we've promised to do. And that's why we gathered today in this very place to send out a message. We understand. We hear you. We have a plan, and we'll get the job done.
Thank you very much.