For many New Yorkers living with serious mental illness, leaving the hospital does not mean they will find stability. Instead, discharge often marks the beginning of another unfortunate cycle — from psychiatric units to shelters, from shelters back to emergency rooms, and sometimes back to the streets or to jail.
While New York City, and NYC Health + Hospitals in particular, has built a robust network of social supports and a comprehensive continuum of mental health care, a longstanding gap stubbornly remains. Too often, patients who no longer require inpatient psychiatric hospitalization are discharged but have nowhere to go but homeless shelters and limited support to transition back into the community.
Unfortunately, many New Yorkers land back on the streets, and the stability achieved during inpatient treatment can quickly unravel. They may become disconnected from care, struggle to navigate complex social service systems, and face barriers to securing housing and other essential supports. This challenge has long frustrated New York City and municipalities across the country, where effective pathways from inpatient care to community are often insufficient.
To address this gap and interrupt that pattern, NYC Health + Hospitals centered patients’ experiences, seeking to understand and solve the underlying reasons why so many people lose that connection to care and social services after discharge. The result was the Bridge to Home program, an innovative model designed to provide the treatment, support, stability, and continuity necessary for guests’ successful transition to permanent supportive housing and longer-term wellbeing.
Bridge to Home offers guests a home-like environment with 24/7 staffing, psychiatric care, social services, substance use treatment, case management, and housing navigation support. Residents can stay for up to 12 months while staff help maintain clinical stability and secure permanent supportive housing.
The first Bridge to Home facility opened in Manhattan in September 2025. This new approach required NYC Health + Hospitals to bring together stakeholders across the social service and behavioral health systems — from the New York State Office of Mental Health to the City’s Department of Social Services — to align policy and services around the needs of a highly vulnerable population.
“Bridge to Home has already shown us what is possible when we meet patients where they are and give them the time, stability, and services they need to recover,” said Mitchell Katz, President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals.
Early outcomes suggest the model is working. More than 87 percent of current guests attend weekly clinical visits, roughly two-thirds have completed housing applications, and several participants have already transitioned into permanent supportive housing.
Following the success of the Manhattan location, NYC Health + Hospitals recently announced plans to open a second Bridge to Home facility in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and has secured funding for a third site. The new Brooklyn facility, expected to welcome guests in fall 2026, will serve up to 50 unhoused New Yorkers diagnosed with serious mental illness by providing transitional housing paired with intensive onsite medical and behavioral health support.
The program’s expansion to those second and third sites reflects sustained demand among eligible patients across the city’s public hospital system. It also reflects a broader shift in how public health officials increasingly view homelessness and serious mental illness not as separate crises, but as deeply interconnected challenges.
By creating a structured, supportive, clinical environment between hospitalization and permanent housing, Bridge to Home aims to give guests enough time and stability to recover without falling back into crisis.
When the second and third sites open, the combined locations will serve up to 150 New Yorkers at a time — an effective, innovative model that continues to strengthen the public hospital system’s behavioral health continuum of care. While the overall demand to serve this population may require the city to invest in creating additional Bridge to Home sites in the future, we are optimistic about the program’s expansion as long as it continues to provide positive outcomes and a pathway to permanent housing for our guests.
Jason Hansman is Deputy Chief Strategy Officer, Office of Behavioral Health, and Chris Keeley is Senior Assistant Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Office of the System Chief Medical Officer for Clinical Services and Population Health at NYC Health + Hospitals.
