Gov. Kathy Hochul has earmarked $359 million to establish and expand supportive housing options for New Yorkers, she announced Tuesday.
Supportive housing developments help tenants access primary and behavioral health care and ensure they attend appointments. The case management services are often carried out by nonprofits. The state financing, a mix of bonds and subsidies, will create a total of 329 supportive housing units in Brooklyn and the Bronx across four development projects.
One project will create 115 affordable homes in the Mount Hope neighborhood in the Bronx, including 69 supportive units for homeless New Yorkers with mental illness and substance use disorder, for $54 million. Yonkers-based nonprofit Westhab will connect the supportive unit tenants to community mental health providers and offer employment counseling, according to its chief executive Richard Nightingale.
The state will invest $83 million in a similar development in Brownsville, where L+M Development Partners will construct a new building on the campus of the existing Marcus Garvey Apartments. The campus currently offers 52 supportive units for formerly incarcerated New Yorkers, and the project will add 88 with services provided by South Bronx-based nonprofit the Osborne Association.
Christina Green, Osborne’s supportive housing director, told Crain’s staff will connect tenants 50 and older to primary and behavioral health care, employment support and financial literacy classes. The association and the developer decided to expand services for individuals in that age group to meet growing demand, she said. By 2030, about one-third of people incarcerated in the state will be 50 or older. L+M Development aims to break ground on the new Marcus Garvey apartments in May and complete them by December 2026, Green added.
Beyond the Mount Hope and Brownsville projects, the state will invest $170 million to build 385 affordable units in East New York, including 94 supportive apartments for families experiencing homelessness. Additionally, developers The Jericho Project and Procida Development Group will receive $52 million to build 129 units in the Melrose section of the Bronx. The project will include 78 supportive units for homeless youth and adults and 42,000 square-feet of community space where case managers can work with tenants.
Hochul announced the funding as part of a total $412 million she has dedicated to six affordable housing projects. The financing is part of her $25 billion housing plan which aims to create or preserve 100,000 affordable homes across the state, including 10,000 supportive units.
Four hospitals in New York have earned top honors for both patient safety and price transparency, according to an inaugural list released Tuesday by patient safety watchdog organization Leapfrog Group and software company Turquoise Health.
Three of the honorees, NYU Langone Tisch Hospital and Kimmel Pavilion, NYU Langone–Brooklyn and NYU Langone–Long Island, are part of the NYU Langone health system. They, along with White Plains Hospital, received dual recognition, an honor earned by less than 20% of institutions nationwide.
To earn the distinction, each facility had to achieve both the Leapfrog Group’s highest grade for patient safety measures–an A–and the highest level of compliance with the federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule. Leapfrog assessed hospitals using up to 22 patient safety metrics from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services combined with a survey. California-based Turquoise Health graded hospitals on how well they comply with the national price transparency rule, which requires institutions to publicly post their prices for procedures so patients can compare costs.
Dr. Robert Grossman, the chief executive officer of NYU Langone Health, credits artificial intelligence and new technologies with NYU’s consistently high patient safety ratings and appearance on the list.
Each hospital’s physicians use an electronic dashboard to oversee all patients’ changing conditions and respond quickly, he told Crain’s. Doctors can see what is happening across the entire enterprise, pinpoint where a patient experiences a hospital-acquired event and send a team over, he said.
“It’s all contemporaneous, so it's not like we're waiting six months and then we see the results,” Grossman said. “[Patient safety] requires an enormous emphasis and a team effort.”
NYU hospitals also use artificial intelligence to understand correlations between events and outcomes and if they can be improved, Grossman said. AI can parse through patients’ medication data and catch orders that physicians might miss, Grossman added, so individuals don’t go home without medicine and increase their chances of readmission. He noted that as a result, system hospitals have received Leapfrog’s highest safety grades for multiple years in a row and report some of the lowest mortality and readmission rates in the country.
Leapfrog’s safety grades center on how well hospitals prevent “never events” such as patients developing infections during their stays or falling in the hospital. Dr. Rafael Torres, White Plains Hospital’s chief quality officer, said the Westchester hospital focuses on performing “always events” to minimize the chance of negative outcomes.
The hospital uses technology to remind staff of simple steps, such as washing their hands when they enter and leave a patient’s room, that help avoid infections, he said. White Plains also uses an extensive pre-surgical testing program to reduce high-risk patients’ chances of having an adverse reaction to a procedure. The steps have helped the hospital earn multiple A grades from Leapfrog, he said.
Robert Andrews, the chief executive of the Health Transformation Alliance, which represents more than 60 large employers who provide health care benefits and released the list along with Leapfrog and Turquoise Health, said the list shows how difficult it is to achieve high levels of both safety and transparency.
Flaws in the federal price reporting system are partially to blame for hospitals’ low rates of compliance, he said. According to the Patient Rights Advocate nonprofit organization, only a third of New York hospitals adhere to the federal rule. Complicated processes for collecting and loading price data exacerbate the issue, Andrews added.
“It's not all the fault of the providers by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “We are mindful that the fact that an institution's data [is] missing doesn't necessarily mean [they’re didn't] try their best. There’s also been some confusion or ambiguity in the reporting.”
Furthermore, he said, hospitals’ patient safety performance is highly dependent on the populations they serve. New York has fewer hospitals on the list than states of a comparable size: In California, for example, dozens of hospitals earned dual recognition. However, Andrews emphasized that New York’s urban hospitals are more likely to treat complicated, sicker patients, making it harder to achieve high safety ratings.
Ultimately, the inaugural list is not meant to be “punitive,” but to serve as a guide for patients and employers looking for high-value care, Andrews said.
“Price is important. But I don't know anybody who wants their wives to give birth at the cheapest hospital,” he said.
The alliance, the Washington D.C.-based Leapfrog Group and Turquoise Health plan to release another dual recognition list in 2025.
New York City has decided to scale back its relationship with health care company DocGo by declining to renew the provider’s $432 million contract to care for and transport migrants upstate, the mayor’s office confirmed to Crain’s Tuesday.
As of Wednesday morning, the company's stocks dropped from $3.85 to just above $3. DocGo’s emergency, no-bid contract to provide services to migrants in and outside of the city is set to expire May 5. Instead of renewing the contract, the city says it intends to end the DocGo contract and issue a competitive request for proposals to identify a new provider that will take over the work.
“As part of our work to reduce spending, we will not be renewing the full DocGo emergency contract that currently serves approximately 3,600 migrants at this time and will instead be issuing a competitive RFP to take over this work moving forward,” said Camille Joseph Varlack, Mayor Eric Adams’ chief of staff, in a statement.
Once the contract period ends, the city says it will use an existing contract with Garner Environmental Services to care for some 1,800 migrants downstate for roughly three months. Garner’s services will cost the city $10 less per person, per night compared to the existing DocGo contract, according to the mayor’s office.
Varlack said the city is also working with Comptroller Brad Lander’s office “on a temporary extension for the upstate DocGo hotels to ensure we are not disrupting children in school and are not leaving our upstate partners without proper notice.” She said DocGo will continue to serve families upstate until the new RFP provider is selected.
DocGo spokesperson Abigail Rush said the company is “immensely proud” of the work it has accomplished on the city’s behalf and added that DocGo will continue to provide medical services, case management and other services to asylum seekers in New York City under the existing contract and other continuing contracts with the city.
Rush emphasized that DocGo’s contract has been extended through the end of the year to provide services to migrants upstate.
“The contract between the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and DocGo for housing of asylum seekers in hotels in Upstate New York has been extended through the end of 2024,” Rush said in a statement. “This extension is designed to ensure sufficient time to transition and/or close emergency sites as needed and when directed by the City.”
The news about DocGo’s contract broke after the market closed. Its stock was priced at $3.85 a share on Tuesday, down from a 12-month high of $10.50 in August.
DocGo has been beset by controversy over the last year. In a July New York Times report, migrants in DocGo’s care said they had been misled to believe the company would help them find work and that they had endured threats from the company’s hired security teams.
Meanwhile, DocGo CEO Anthony Capone resigned in September after the Albany Times Union revealed he had misrepresented his college education.
State Attorney General Letitia James launched a probe into DocGo last summer, and City Comptroller Brad Lander began a “real-time audit” of the company’s migrant services contract in September. Investors in the company filed a class-action lawsuit against the firm in October, seeking to recoup the losses they suffered after the company’s stock prices fell following negative news coverage.
Lander praised the city's decision to wind down its emergency contract with DocGo but raised concerns over the city's continued reliance on emergency contracts for migrant services. A recent comptroller review of Garner, the replacement contractor, found the company to be "extremely expensive."
“While I am glad to see the Administration shift away from DocGo, we continue to be concerned more broadly about the costly emergency contracts the City is using to staff services for asylum seekers," Lander said in a statement. "Our office will watch closely to ensure that asylum seekers do not see a lapse in services and urges the City to issue an open-ended transition to non-profit organizations to avoid paying for-profit companies millions more than necessary."
City Hall said the decision to part ways with DocGo will be good for city coffers.
"This will ultimately allow the city to save more money and will allow others, including non-profits and internationally recognized resettlement providers, to apply to do this critical work, and ensures we are using city funds efficiently and effectively,” Varlack said.
Housing has sucked up much of the oxygen in ongoing state budget negotiations, but another disagreement between the governor and lawmakers remains unresolved: whether to toughen penalties around shoplifting.
Gov. Kathy Hochul put retail theft at the center of her policy agenda this year, amid data showing that shoplifting has risen in New York in recent years even as it has fallen in other parts of the country. Most notably, her budget proposal called for making it a felony to assault a retail worker — a provision that is facing resistance in the state Legislature.
“I just don't believe raising penalties is ever a deterrent on crime,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said last month. He spoke for many in the Democratic-controled Legislature, which has generally opposed Hochul’s prior attempts to toughen criminal penalties and roll back parts of the state’s 2019 bail reform laws.
The disagreement has helped delay the state budget well past its April 1 due date, although Hochul and other officials have indicated that a deal might be within reach.
Hochul’s other proposals include making it illegal to aid the sale of stolen products online, funding a $25 million State Police deployment to investigate “organized retail theft rings,” and giving a combined $15 million to local prosecutors’ offices and police departments to combat shoplifting. Hochul would also set aside $5 million to create a $3,000 tax credit for small businesses that spend money on anti-shoplifting measures.
State Senate leaders have voiced support for some of those plans, like the tax credit and the penalty for online sales, while the Assembly said little about the issue in its official budget proposal. But the increased penalty for assault in particular has been a sticking point.
“The retail theft problem is a national problem,” said Assemblyman Harvey Epstein of Manhattan. “I’m optimistic that we’ll do something that’ll be impactful.”
Hochul’s push has won support from some business leaders. Leaders of the Five Borough Jobs Campaign — a coalition that includes business improvement districts, the city’s chambers of commerce and the Real Estate Board of New York — has called on the Legislature to fully back Hochul’s package, saying shoplifting has eaten into the bottom lines of the city’s small business owners. The Retail Council of New York State, an industry group, has also praised the governor’s plan and has reported lobbying lawmakers on related issues.
Another supporter of the tougher penalties is Mayor Eric Adams, who has urged state lawmakers to approve Hochul’s package. He said last week that he disagreed with Heastie’s assertion that harsher penalties would not deter crime.
“What it does, and what I believe it should do, it keeps dangerous people off our streets,” Adams said of the proposed felony charge.
Paul Connor has plenty of hurdles when it comes to helping run Stony Brook’s Eastern Long Island Hospital.
There’s finding quality doctors, recruiting nurses and luring lab technicians in a tight labor market. What makes Connor’s job particularly challenging, though, is the region’s chronic housing shortage, where even cardiologists making $350,000 a year struggle to find places to live, he said.
“This is the most challenging place to recruit,” Connor, a chief administrative officer, said from his home in Greenport, about 100 miles from New York City. “The single most difficult impediment to get around right now is the housing prices.”
Long Island’s North Fork, which includes Greenport, is at the extreme end of New York’s housing crisis. Median prices in the once affordable, laid-back alternative to the Hamptons have jumped 50% in four years to almost $1 million, according to appraiser Miller Samuel and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Listings have declined 60% to 137 properties for a population of about 50,000.
But it’s far from unique with New York state reeling from a lack of affordable places to live after years of adding far more jobs than homes. In New York City, rental vacancies are at a more than 50-year low and the median monthly rent on new leases in Manhattan climbed in February to $4,230.
Property prices have soared upstate in places such as Buffalo and Syracuse, while housing production in New York City’s suburbs — home to some of the most restrictive zoning rules in the country — are far behind other major urban centers.
Even if properties are listed, mortgage rates hovering near 7% are putting many of them out of reach of potential buyers.
Suffolk County, where the North Fork is located, added an average of 1% of new homes to its housing stock from 2017 to 2021, putting it at the bottom of the state’s housing production along with Monroe County, home to Rochester, according to data from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
“It’s a huge concern. It’s not just a New York City issue anymore,” said Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, which advocates for affordable housing. “Affordability is an issue across the state.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul tried and failed to pass mandatory housing quotas for localities last year after backlash from across New York, including the suburbs of Long Island. She’s seeking a less ambitious plan this year to create up to 15,000 new units on state land , which is also likely to face opposition even as the state realizes it needs more housing to stem the flow of workers to lower-cost regions across the U.S.
In Albany, lawmakers are locked in heated negotiations to revive tax incentives for new developments in New York City if they include affordable housing. The provision, known as 421-a, expired in 2022, and a new version may pass along with the state budget as soon as this week.
Housing availability is a problem across the U.S., but the New York metropolitan area has the most severe underproduction, according to the advocacy group Up for Growth. The crisis has spread far beyond the suburbs, after families fled the city during the pandemic, inflation pushed up building costs and mortgage rates jumped.
Suffolk County has become especially prohibitive after prices for the Hamptons rose 104% in the past four years, said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel.
“Part of the squeeze with the North Fork is the spillover effect from the Hamptons because prices have risen so rapidly that the North Fork became this cheaper alternative — until it wasn’t,” he said.
Greenport’s hospital, the largest employer on the North Fork, is seeking the town’s approval to expand housing for its workforce after the portion of staff that live in the area dwindled to 47% from closer to 80% two decades ago, Connor said. The hospital’s foundation is considering shared equity programs to help doctors with down payments in exchange for collecting a portion of the equity on their homes.
Connor, who first said cardiologists can’t afford to live on the North Fork at a March 21 event hosted by the Times Review, said the region more generally is struggling from the housing shortages.
“Whether you’re a cardiologist or you work in one of the local restaurants, it’s to the advantage of everyone in our community to have people who live and work locally,” he said.