For Immediate Release
Contact: Leanne Ricchiuti, Overit for Association for Community Living, 518.222.8073
June 7, 2023
RELEASE
Association For Community Living Executive Director Sends
Letter to Governor on Mental Health Housing Task Force
(Albany, N.Y.) – The Association for Community Living (ACL) Executive Director, Sebrina Barrett, sent the following letter to Governor Kathy Hochul today, urging her to sign the bill that “establishes a task force to study aging in place in mental health housing.” This is the second year in a row that the bill has passed through both houses of the Legislature. This session, the vote was unanimous, which is a clear signal of the strong support and need felt statewide. With such a strong show of support from an overwhelming majority of the Legislature, ACL is urging the Governor to sign this vital legislation.
“Dear Governor Hochul:
The Association for Community Living, Inc. (ACL) would like to express our unequivocal support for bill A.5119 (Gunther)/S.5178 (Brouk), which recently passed the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. The thousands of mental health residents currently facing significant medical challenges cannot wait any longer for the care they need to age in place with comfort and dignity. This is the second year in a row that the bill has passed through both houses of the Legislature. This session the vote was unanimous, which is a clear signal of the strong support and need felt statewide. With such a strong show of support from an overwhelming majority of the Legislature, ACL respectfully requests the signature of this vital legislation. The Association of Community Living (ACL) is a membership organization of not-for-profit agencies in New York State that provide housing, support and other services to people with serious and persistent mental illness. ACL’s members operate more than 40,000 OMH funded and licensed units of housing in the state.
There are more than 40,000 New Yorkers with severe mental illness living in community-based mental health housing in housing models established nearly 40 years ago, which no longer represent the needs of the current population. When created by New York State, their focus was to assist residents in transitioning from a model that is congregate based with 24 hours a day, 7 days a week support, to a model that is a single apartment with support services as needed. Today more than forty percent of mental health housing residents are age 55 and over, with nearly a third of those age 65 and over. Across New York State these residents are treated for more than 166 different medical conditions, with the most prevalent being diabetes, hypertension, COPD, dementia, cancer, mobility issues, and similar medical conditions. More than three-quarters of the housing providers surveyed reported that they are not equipped with the resources to provide care for the medical needs of the residents. Moreover, most nursing homes will not take residents who have severe mental illness, nor are such facilities able to serve their mental health needs. We have examples of providers making more than 100 requests for nursing home care for a single resident, with no results in placement. With only 180 beds statewide designated as geriatric congregate residences, only a fraction of the beds needed exist to serve this growing population. Further, despite the geriatric designation, currently there are no additional resources for the care of these fragile, aging residents in the mental health housing system. Therefore, with demographic changes within the mental health housing community, this legislation seeks to be responsive to meeting the increasingly complex health and mental health care needs of such residents.
Community-based nonprofit providers are the backbone of our mental health housing system, but they are struggling. They provide housing and rehabilitation services to clients who experience the most complicated behavioral health and medical illnesses. There are no nurses or professional staff of any kind and because of the funding erosion, staff in the programs often work alone, while supervising hundreds of medications, creating Medicaid service plans, engaging clients in Medicaid reimbursable services and writing the Medicaid billable notes that must pass an OMIG audit.
Through the establishment of this task force and assembly of experts in mental health, geriatrics and mental health housing, the state will be proactive in determining the best approach to caring for the elderly population with persistent mental health issues living in housing across the state. We welcome participating in any way to help develop recommendations on the adequacy of resources and housing models to care for residents who are aging in place. For these reasons and more, we strongly urge your approval signature on A.5119 (Gunther)/S.5178 (Brouk) to develop and analyze the solutions that can help these residents safely, gracefully and comfortably age in place, meeting both their mental health and medical needs. This task force is vital to ensure that we continue to serve and care for the most vulnerable New Yorkers in a safe and appropriate setting with dignity.”
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