Whether riding the subway or walking along a busy stretch of sidewalk, New Yorkers are likely to cross paths with people who have nowhere to sleep. Some of those people might also need mental health or substance abuse treatment.
Those with unmet needs sometimes get stuck in a cycle of homelessness, hospitalization and jail. The Manhattan district attorney’s office is now funding a new program, called Neighborhood Navigators, to connect homeless people with services before they interact with the criminal justice system.
The program is partly aimed at preventing crimes, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg said. But he said only a small share of encounters ever escalate to that level. Neighborhood Navigators also intends to help people who aren’t violent — and whom many New Yorkers may cross the street to avoid.
“What the navigators do is they cross the street to that conduct,” Bragg said in a recent interview. “They engage with people in distress and they build relationships, and ultimately connect them to services.”
The DA’s office has committed $6 million to the nonprofit The Bridge, which is hiring and training navigators to work in four Manhattan areas with high rates of chronic homelessness, mental illness and addiction: Chinatown/Lower East Side, Central/East Harlem, Midtown West/Hell’s Kitchen/Chelsea, and Washington Heights. The workers have already provided resources to more than 400 people since the program launched earlier this year, and more than 80 people are currently enrolled in ongoing service coordination, according to Bragg’s office. The program is slated to run for at least the next three-and-a-half years.
“I think sometimes you just need that person to build that bridge between the service and the individual,” said Neighborhood Navigator Zhi Lu, on a scorching hot day in August.
He was sitting on a bench in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, a long stretch of grass, sport courts and jungle gyms connecting half-a-dozen neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan….
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