“I would say that I don’t turn to the New York Post for facts,” Mayor Bill de Blasio whined Tuesday as he dodged questions about the failure of first lady Chirlane McCray’s billion-dollar mental health initiative, ThriveNYC. And McCray’s own responses were even worse.
“The truth is that ThriveNYC is attempting to do what’s never been done before, which is to create pervasive access to mental health services in New York City,” the mayor insisted at his Queens press conference.
Attempting, maybe. But what it’s actually done is spend $850 million since its 2015 rollout without much to show for it — or even any clear sign of how it would measure success for most of its component programs.
Slammed not just by Post reporting, but all across the political spectrum, Thrive looks especially bad after the recent Chinatown homeless murders. As we’ve warned ad infinitum, it’s focused more on mild mental health issues, neglecting the serious ones like those of the accused killer.
Which led NY1’s Pat Kiernan to ask McCray herself about it Tuesday. Her laughable reply: “Thrive is a success because we are talking about mental health” — which no one would be, she claimed, without the program.
She also insisted that the city wouldn’t have the “capacity” to send mental health workers down to Chinatown, as it’s done since the murders, without Thrive. Also not true, as homeless advocates and the public record attest.
De Blasio says The Post is “not given to facts.” Try looking closer to home, sir.