Commissioner Michael Hogan
NYS Office of Mental Health
44 Holland Avenue
Albany, NY 12229
Dear Commissioner Hogan:
This is to urge you and your agency to review and rethink your approval of St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers's (SVCMC) application to run a residential facility at 78 Fort Place in Staten Island for recently released mental hospital patients and mentally ill convicts.
It appears that you were misled about the zoning of the property. The project approval was based upon false and misleading information about the zoning submitted to your agency by SVCMC and its architects. If they had supplied your agency with correct information, it would have been obvious that the proposed renovation of the current structure cannot be approved by New York City.
Others have written you with full details of this false and misleading behavior; I want also to describe here what this means to our community in human terms.
Improvements in facilities, services, and amenities are finally arriving in St. George. Butshould we be forced to host this facility, ourhopes for the future are dashed. We cannot function as a viable community with such a large facilityin a residential neighborhood, near an elementary school, and just a few blocks from two high schools.
In addition to deceiving your agency in its application and deceiving us when it promised to keep us informed of its plans, SVCMC ran two north shore Staten Island hospitals into the ground and eventually declared bankruptcy. It is only state money that would make it possible for SVCMC to open this facility. Two years ago it insisted that the Fort Place residence would house “stable” mental patients. It was only after examining the application for approval with your office that local residents learned of your requirement to take released convicts.
In St. George we are accepting of, and even welcoming to, those requiring special services. We are home to a ProjectHospitality drop-in center for the homeless, a Skylight mentally ill
drop-in center, and presently host a SVCMC facility for the mentally ill. Castleton Towers has many subsidized tenants who are valuable members of our community, and we have a large public housing project located across Westervelt Avenue. And there are many other offices such as Covenant House and an AIDS outreach center. We want our special populations to be properly served.
But a large residential facility is a different matter, as it would not serve our local population, it would stigmatize and not well serve its residents, and it would be detrimental to the community. Please withdraw your approval from this facility: do not crush our neighborhood under the weight of so many needy residents packed into a single building which does not meet zoning requirements.
Sincerely,