Send E-Letters to Governor Hochul Urging Her to Support Funding of Mental Health Housing Programs in the 2025-2026 State Budget

Hello - Please take a moment to send an E-letter directly to Governor Hochul to remind her of the importance of modernizing the Mental Health Housing System across New York State! As you know, the current housing models are outdated with the oldest being created in 1984. Since then, there have been minimal changes to the models to enhance their ability to serve those who live in them. Providers have been left to face modern challenges including an erosion of resources coinciding with a higher-needs population served within a more intensely regulated environment.

With your support Bring It Home has enjoyed significant success in the previous three enacted State budgets, but over the past four decades providers have had to adapt to new challenges without the resources needed to adequately do so. To properly care for our residents, we must modernize our housing programs. We need a 7.8% inflationary adjustment to contract rates and about $230 million to enhance staffing, provide much needed resources, and to pay staff an adequate wage to address ongoing recruitment and retention challenges.

We are extremely grateful for Governor Hochul's investments made in the previous three enacted State budgets, including the 5.4%, 4%, and 2.84% COLAs. Unfortunately, as helpful as these increases were, funding that doesn't keep pace with inflation leads to growing funding deficits, which make it difficult for providers to maintain current services, let alone make model enhancements needed to serve today's residents. We are asking for a 7.8% rate increase, which represents the total of the current inflationary increase of 2.9% (CPI July, 2024) and the difference between the human services COLAs over the past three years (12.2%) and the CPI increases (17.1%) over that same period.

Sending a letter is so easy to do! Just enter your street address, zip code, and full name below and a digital copy of an E-letter will be generated addressed from you to the Governor. You can then either choose to e-mail it to her OR print and mail a hard copy.

 

We have created this letter because in the coming months, the Governor and her team will be forming the Executive State Budget for 2025/2026. Once the Governor's Budget is released in January, it will be very difficult to get additional funding added above the amount that she proposes. That's why it is imperative that we make it clear to the Governor that she needs to put substantial resources in her executive budget proposal NOW.
 
Our goal is to send at least 25,000 letters to the Governor before she finalizes her budget in mid-December.
 
Thank You for helping us Bring It Home!
 
The Bring It Home Coalition