November 28, 2023 New York Times, By Dave Giffen This original letter to the editor, written by Coalition for the Homeless Executive Director Dave Giffen was published on November 28, 2023 in the New York Times: To the Editor: “Behind Acts of Violence, Years of Mistakes” (front page, Nov. 21) effectively underscores the decades of neglect, underfunding and mismanagement that have made New York’s mental health system such a resounding failure for so many people in our city. But it also perpetuates dangerous stereotypes about people who are homeless and makes assumptions about the value of “mental health shelters” that do not comport with reality. The breakdowns in the social safety net for people living with mental illness are indeed an urgent problem, but those breakdowns affect all people living with mental illness, not just those without homes. By focusing only on homeless individuals — and on what is statistically a small number of violent actions by some of those individuals — you are feeding into the misperception of homeless New Yorkers as deranged and dangerous. In reality, as you note, individuals who are homeless are much more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of crimes. While the legal right to shelter is critical to ensuring that thousands more people are not relegated to sleeping on our streets or in the transit system, shelters — including mental health shelters — are in no way appropriate settings for individuals with severe mental illness. In fact, our clients in those shelters often report that those environments exacerbate their symptoms, rather than support their needs. Supportive housing has proved to be the most effective way of stabilizing homeless individuals with mental illness and other disabilities.
