City Council pushing bill to provide free mental health services to migrants | #citycouncil

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By Jon Levine

Big Apple lawmakers may need their heads examined.

Newly arrived migrants to the five boroughs may soon be able to visit with taxpayer-funded therapists to get in touch with their feelings, should a new City Council proposal become law.

The bill would station mental health coordinators at all 218 city migrant shelters and run taxpayers — on the low end — at least $15 million a year, according to a Post analysis.

The proposal was introduced last week by Councilmembers Lynn Schulman (D-Queens), Shahana Hanif (D-Brooklyn), and Jennifer Gutiérrez (D-Brooklyn). The trio failed to get the bill passed last year.

The measure “would require the Mayor’s Office of Community Health to have at least one mental health coordinator at any location where refugees and migrants receive services from the city.

The locations will include emergency congregate housing, shelters run by the Department of Homeless Services, and resource centers that provide various social services to refugees and immigrants.”

Schulman, the bill’s lead sponsor and chair of the council’s health committee, said the details were still preliminary.

“Mental health is also part of health care,” she told The Post several times during a brief phone interview.

Many city migrants have been spending their time in some of the Big Apple’s finest hotels at full taxpayer expense — it’s unclear if therapists would also make house calls.

Despite the city’s red carpet treatment — which has included taxpayer-funded meals, phones, and prepaid credit cards —  migrants have been suffering a raft of mental health struggles since arriving in New York, activists say.

“We’ve had many of the asylees break down weeping as they express what they’re going through,” said Power Malu, executive director of Artists Athletes Activists in testimony to the council last year, adding that many migrants felt the city accommodations were like “detention centers in Mexico.”

The cost of tending to the more than 175,000 migrants who have arrived in New York City in recent years could balloon to $12 billion and has already forced drastic cuts to other areas of the city budget. Bipartisan critics in the council said the new mental health plan was a non-starter.

“Our schools don’t have enough counselors, crossing guards, safety agents, and the list goes on, but now we should provide free mental health services to the world? Talk about misplaced priorities,” said Councilman Bob Holden (D-Queens). “I don’t see this as workable legislation.”

The Council’s Minority Leader Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island) also dismissed the idea as “just more free stuff at the expense of taxpayers.”