NYC Mayor Adams Enrages Liberals with New Plan to Deal with Mentally Ill, Homeless

Leftists are seething after New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to deal with the mentally ill and homeless in the city.

In a Tuesday statement, the mayor said, “This directive lays out an expedited, step-by-step process for involuntarily transporting a person experiencing a mental health crisis to a hospital for evaluation.”

“It explicitly states that it is appropriate to use this process when a person refuses voluntary assistance, and it appears that they are suffering from mental illness and are a danger to themselves due to an inability to meet their basic needs.”

The city said that “outreach workers, city-operated hospitals, and first responders have the legal authority to provide care to New Yorkers when severe mental illness prevents them from meeting their own basic human needs to the extent that they are a danger to themselves.”

The announcement comes as New York is experiencing a massive crime wave due in part, no doubt, to soft-on-crime policies like bail reform. On Sunday, the New York Post reported that felonies on the city subway surged 40 percent this year.

Adams’ strategy is straight out of the playbook of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who implemented a similar policy in 1999.

Unsurprisingly, New York’s liberals, who are famous for their “bleeding heart” mentality toward the mentally ill and homeless, are quite upset about the mayor’s new directive.

New York City Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán tweeted, “This is deeply problematic.”

🧵 This is deeply problematic. I’ve visited trained, dedicated professional mental health first responders across the US. They consistently point out a couple of truths. Often the wrong responder & response is what creates a deadly situation, not the mental health crisis itself. https://t.co/Qj3uVg1MU1

— Tiffany Cabán (@tiffany_caban) November 29, 2022

Housing Works, a New York-based non-profit, also criticized the plan. “What happens when someone refuses hospitalization? This seems like it boils down to letting the [New York Police Department] hospitalize people by force,” the group tweeted.

What happens when someone refuses hospitalization? This seems like it boils down to letting the NYPD hospitalize people by force, an escalation of @NYCMayor’s sweeps. https://t.co/0MEnMTt7QB

— Housing Works (@housingworks) November 29, 2022

Frankly, it’s nice to see one of the most liberal cities in America finally adopt a common-sense policy to deal with a real problem.

It seems as though New Yorkers are starting to reach their breaking point regarding crime, as indicated by the support for Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin and his promise to get tough on criminals.

Despite Zeldin’s loss, the fact that he had a real shot in one of the nation’s bluest states shows that even many liberals are starting to question liberal policies.

The results of Adams’ new policy remain to be seen, but if it succeeds, perhaps it will serve as an example to other liberal cities as they attempt to solve their own crime and homelessness problems.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.