Intensive Mobile Treatment invests in humanity
The crisis of homelessness is felt in every community of the five boroughs. As city leaders continue to grapple with questions about how to create a stronger social safety net, it’s important to look at the service models proven to curb chronic homelessness for New Yorkers who often fall through the cracks of traditional health care and service-providing systems. It’s also critical to take a hard look at the long-term costs of homelessness, and how real investments today can lead to immediate and long-term savings for taxpayers.
Essential to the city’s plan to address this crisis is the Intensive Mobile Treatment (IMT) program. IMT is a system of targeted care and support for individuals who are at high risk of mental illness, substance use, or chronic homelessness. On an IMT team, nurses, psychiatrists, social workers, and case workers work in tandem to plan a person’s care, designed to treat a person’s underlying mental and physical health while also seeking to create stability in their housing and employment.
Organizations that operate IMT programs, including ours at the Center for Urban Community Services (CUCS), work specifically with individuals who are transient and isolated from care. These patients often face overlapping challenges of mental illness — including psychosis and schizophrenia — while also searching for housing, dealing with substance use disorders, and moving in and out of the carceral system.
While a recent audit by City Comptroller Brad Lander noted the absence of city metrics on IMT’s impact, service providers like CUCS can offer insights into IMT’s effectiveness as an intervention tool based on their unique IMT teams.
An investment in IMT is proven to pay dividends. IMT interventions are a less expensive option than relying on other services: high-risk individuals without IMT are more likely to become entangled in the criminal justice system or use city emergency departments as their first point-of-care.
The average cost of incarcerating an individual on Rikers Island falls somewhere around $42,420 per month and hospitalization costs a staggering $108,270 per month. Both of these outcomes come at enormous cost to taxpayers while failing to address the underlying issues that brought people into those systems to begin with. IMT, on the other hand, costs a fraction of the price at just $3,700 per month per participant.
Furthermore, IMT has proven to reduce involvement in other more costly systems. For example, initial data shows that rates of incarceration decline about 30% in the first-year participants are engaged with IMT when compared to the 12 months prior to their enrollment.
The success of IMT is also reflected in city policy: The city, in understanding the critical importance of this work, has recently doubled the number of IMT teams for CUCS citywide from four to eight.
Unfortunately, IMT could be in danger of city-level cuts to the agencies and nonprofits that provide it. These threatened cuts would undermine the long-term benefits of IMT and its role in the broader safety net — and rolling them back could lead to far higher costs for the city in the future.
IMT’s success is rooted in the person-centered approach — its ability to build effective, lasting relationships with the most difficult-to-engage New Yorkers. Many of the individuals that our teams work with have tried to access traditional, established assistance programs but have not been able to maintain a stable relationship.
Some patients may be living on the street for long periods of time; others may split time between various shelters across the city. IMT focuses on establishing trust before gradually bringing people into care. Without trust there is no care — the relationship is the treatment.
IMT also requires long-term, consistent attention to create meaningful change in a patient’s life. Some of our patients receive care through the IMT program for multiple years before “graduating” to stable housing and long-term care. Part of IMT’s intention is to maintain relationships with patients over multiple months and points of contact. Frequent staff turnover — an inevitable side-effect of cost-cutting and depressed wages — undermines that goal.
As we navigate the complexities of budgetary decisions, it is imperative to prioritize long-term solutions over short-term cuts. Cutting programs that have proven to be effective will only lead to more surprise costs for taxpayers down the road.
The IMT program stands as a testament to the idea that investing in human lives is an investment in the future of New York. Decision-makers must recognize the profound impact of such initiatives across communities, advocating for a compassionate approach that supports both short and long-term economic and social gains that go beyond immediate financial considerations.
Yu is the acting CEO and chief medical officer of the Center for Urban Community Services, where Misra is the deputy chief program officer.
New City, N.Y.: Oh, how I wish we could exhume the dead Grand Old Party of our recent past. You know, the sane, professional persuaders of policies. Although I’m a Democrat, I have — dare I say — occasionally voted for a Republican if I agreed with the substance of the candidate’s offerings. The New Republicans (my term) are not only extremists but are energetically and actively working on changing the face of our country towards a more nihilistic, autocratic one. This is not my opinion, these are the words and actions of the party members and its leader.
How could any serious representatives of the people (that’s us) expect to get everything they want without any compromise? That just doesn’t work. It’s not a serious argument. It’s simply a disguise for delays, vengeance and personal advancement in the hopes of reclaiming complete power.
I am genuinely and deeply concerned about our future. If the New Republicans, like House Speaker Mike Johnson (photo), get their candidate in the Oval Office, what can we expect? Rep. Elise Stefanik just said that if she was the vice president, she wouldn’t count the electoral votes if her team was losing the election.
That a person is running the party who is not in office and has 91 criminal indictments pending against him should send chills up your spine. With a few words from him, his sycophants blew up the border deal simply for campaign reasons. Lies are bald-faced without guilt. Hypocrisy is shouting from the rooftops. This upcoming election is more important than any in my lifetime. May sanity rule its outcome. May truth once again sustain us. May we all live in peace.
Christine Ierardi
He tried
Brookfield, Conn.: Voicer Herb Paserman wants to know why the “Repubs” passed on the border bill. They dumped it because it would’ve cost a fortune and accomplished nothing (kind of like the Inflation Reduction Act). He asked if anyone had a better plan. Donald Trump had a better plan and it was working before President Biden canceled it. Lay the blame for the border mess where it belongs.
Fred Schoeneborn
Foolhardy
Parkland, Fla.: We all know that the dead-on-arrival border bill which was/will be rejected by the Republican Party is the best deal they’re gonna get. Knowing that it is a political ploy because they want Donald Trump to be in office is dumb because they will never get a better deal. President Biden and the Democrats offered them everything they want. Should Trump win, I would love to see what will eventually pass under his leadership (or lack thereof). Take the deal now, dummies, it ain’t gonna get better.
John Squicciarini
Biden ambassadors
Manhattan: Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs was a pitchman for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, which was delayed when Trump was president. That delay cost thousands of lives. Taylor Swift first endorsed Biden in 2020. With the outstanding victory of the Chiefs in those last three seconds of overtime against the San Francisco 49ers, 25-22 in Super Bowl LVIII, they are now winners two years in a row. Travis and Taylor have more oomph as a power couple after Sunday’s win, with a presumed endorsement of Biden in 2024. They are thought to be a threat to Trump and those who support him in the next election. Make-believe theories exist on the far right. The world awaits to see if the Justice Department has the courage to follow the Constitution and do what’s right for America instead of making excuses for Jan. 6, 2021, and everyone responsible for it. Alan Lehrer
Low blow
Auburndale: I wonder if ex-President Trump could list the exact dates on which his children were born. What a cheap shot Robert Hur took for bringing up the date of President Biden’s son’s death. I hope Hur never experiences the same pain. Cathi Venis
Disrespectful
Rockaway Point: Trump’s dig at Nikki Haley’s husband for not being around — because he is in military service — is an offensive, stupid comment that no true patriot would make. Comments like these are further proof that Trump’s enablers have little to no influence over him. Yet these same people want us to believe that Trump will suddenly take their advice if (God forbid!) he takes office? Trump is currently controlling our MAGA GOP Congress from the outside, and he instructed them not to sign the desperately needed new immigration/border bill until he, Dictator Trump, can claim credit for it! There are infinite reasons Trump is not like Jesus, a glaring one being that Jesus suffered for our sins. Trump wants us to suffer for his. Patricia J. Murphy
Troublemaker
Jamaica: The Orange Guy (Trump) is bad, hateful and trouble. He wants to be a dictator, so goodbye democracy. God bless and help America!
Charlene Black
Try talking
Henderson, Nev.: Re “Tucker Carlson in Russia, possibly to meet Vladimir Putin” (Feb.
9): The essence of democracy and debate is the willingness to listen to differing points of view, even if you disagree with them. Americans have lost the ability to debate, as they are not being properly informed by Big Tech and the mainstream media, which tend to censor information or perspectives they don’t like. Thus, we have also lost the ability to resolve conflicts via diplomacy, which leaves war — brutal war that may lead to the end of humanity — as the only remaining option. It’s a very sad day in the world when you have to justify interviewing anyone, particularly one of the world’s most powerful leaders. Kudos to Carlson for practicing one of the fundamental tenets of true journalism by interviewing Putin despite massive criticism from the mainstream media.
Michael Pravica
No fun
La Jolla, Calif.: How lame is the feature “Word Wheel”? Five out of six days, the word is a plural, which is lame and shows no imagination. Recently, the word “teashops” was the answer — a word that isn’t even in the “Concise Oxford English Dictionary”! Get rid of it. Jeff Prescott
Win if by land
Wallington, N.J.: Regarding the British man who flew British Airways to JFK Airport and was sent back, having no passport or plane ticket: Someone should tell him to simply run across our southern border, where no paperwork is necessary. He will not only be allowed to stay in the United States, he will also be welcomed with a free cell phone, housing and all types of financial incentives! Ronnie Deckert
State of insecurity
Maspeth: Despite all the left-leaning politicians trying to downplay the rise in crime in NYC, I have one question they should be asking anyone who lives in close proximity to migrant shelters: Do you feel as safe in your neighborhood as you did before these migrants?
With all that is going on (the latest being a 15-year-old with a gun and our police being set upon by these migrants), how can anyone feel safe if the police are not? They were not vetted — they can be gang members, criminal thugs from their own countries or just plain freeloaders coming here for free room and board as well as prepaid cash cards each month courtesy of Gov. Hochul.
Veronica Kwiecinski
A night to remember
Rome, Italy: My stylish and siren-like 19-year-old mother was off to a New York party on a snowy January night in 1924, a swirl of cocktails and gossip tales, clinking of glasses and tinkling of piano keys. An inviting young musician invites her to sit down next to him on the piano bench. He plays something old-fashioned as she sips her old fashioned. Then he asks her reaction to the opening bars of a new-fashioned piece he is in the middle of composing. A two-finger trill, a two-and-a-half octave slide up the keys, followed by an explosion into a new age of American music. My mother took another sip and told the piano player she thought those few measures were the cat’s pajamas. A hundred years ago last night, 1,100 more people heard the same George Gershwin play the first performance of his “Rhapsody in Blue.”