Of $1B Missing from NYC Mental Health Program — Some Went to Unused ‘Diversion Centers’

To no avail, government watchdogs, politicians, and the media have long asked for accountability in spending from the $1 billion budget of New York City First Lady Chirlane McCray’s ThriveNYC, the program that was supposed to combat mental illness for New Yorkers.

City Comptroller Scott Stringer has blasted the first lady and her husband, Mayor Bill de Blasio, for showing little of how the $1 billion mental health plan is actually helping New Yorkers and whether it’s worth all that taxpayer money.

ThriveNYC hasn’t provided data that shows its programs are working, even though it promised to do just that, the New York Daily News reported more than a year ago. Not much has changed.

Now, we see that about $100 million was used for “diversion centers’ to treat mentally ill instead of sending them to jail but those centers haven't been used, or have been barely used, according to a new report from local news organization The City.

The report shows that the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in 2017 spent $52 million in taxpayer dollars to refurbish a 14,000-square-foot former IRS office in the Bronx for a state-of-the-art “diversion center." Four years later it sits empty.

These “diversion centers” were part of de Blasio’s criminal justice reform plan to have police drop off people in mental health crises there instead of bringing them to hospital ERs or jail, which is what they have long done.

Another $51 million went to a similar facility in East Harlem that opened in November 2020 and where only 45 people have been brought in for help so far, costing $1.1 million per visit.

New Yorkers have questions about where the $1 billion in their taxes went, now they know how a fraction of it was wasted.

The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.