A New Place to Call Home: East River House

As of December 30th, 2009 we have opened our largest residence to date – our 41-bed East River House located in East Harlem. We have been planning this project for several years and with the support of New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH), we purchased the property in March of 2006 and began construction in January 2008. The design is by DeLaCour and Ferrara Architects, and the general contractor is Rende Contracting Corporation. We would also like to thank the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) for providing a small loan toward the acquisition.

East River House will be home to 41 adult men and women with serious mental illness who are referred from Bellevue Hospital’s inpatient psychiatric unit, Kings County Hospital inpatient psychiatric unit, Manhattan Psychiatric and Rockland Psychiatric Centers, and the Brooklyn Mental Health Court. Like our other residences and scatter-site apartments, East River House can help halt the cycle between hospital, shelter and jail for these individuals and provide them with shelter and comprehensive services that will help them move on to more independent housing and lead more productive lives.

These on-site services include:

• Peer counselor assistance
• Case management
• Entitlements counseling
• Psychiatric rehabilitation including (symptom management, socialization, community integration, discharge planning from day one)
• Substance abuse treatment
• 24/7 front desk coverage
• Computer training
• Benefits assistance
• An evening meal prepared by a cook
  

Residents will have access to building amenities such as a laundry room, computers, a community room with a kitchen and a large backyard for outdoor activities. In addition to fulfilling the needs of our consumers, our housing program has made an initiative to meet the needs of our environment by becoming more eco-friendly. East River House includes green elements such as ENERGY STAR windows and appliances, central a/c and heating.

Besides being our largest residence to date, East River House is also noted for being one of the first Bridge residences to use low-income housing tax credits (the other housing project is The Bridge Revitalization [HUD 202]). Other sources of financing are from Dormitory Authority of the State of NY (DASNY) bonds, and OMH rent subsidies and service dollars. Tenants also contribute 30% of their annual income as rent.

Take a look inside East River House:

Program Profile: SHACT

As of January 1, 2010, The Bridge has implemented a first-of-its-kind program, SHACT – Supportive Housing and Assertive Community Treatment, but before you can understand SHACT, let’s discuss ACT, Assertive Community Treatment Program.

ACT
This program was created to respond to the needs of people with serious mental illness who do not do well in conventional programs. The ACT program responds to these circumstances by providing highly individualized treatment, support and rehabilitation services to people in their natural living settings, usually where they live. ACT brings the services to the consumer instead of the consumer attending programs at the agency site. The program uses a multi-disciplinary team approach made up of psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, substance abuse specialists, vocational counselors, and a peer support workers. Each day teams visit consumers in the community and work with them to meet recovery goals set in their service plans (i.e. educational goals, employment skills and opportunities, improving family relationships); at least one team member is on call for emergencies. Services are not time-limited; clients may utilize the services of ACT for as long as they need them. The Bridge Act team is one of 43 teams in the New York City region and 78 across the state of New York.

SHACT
SHACT will be implemented by The Bridge in the Bronx. 68 clients will be enrolled in ACT and will be able to live in 68 supportive housing beds being created for the project. SHACT will offer an essential housing resource to ACT participants many of whom are in shelters, newly discharged from hospitals without housing or are living in substandard environments. ACT agencies across the New York City region will be able to refer ACT clients to The Bridge SHACT program in the Bronx to receive housing in addition to ACT treatment, support and rehabilitative services.

Not only do ACT and SHACT offer a solution to reduce psychiatric hospitalizations and visits to the emergency rooms, but they offer individuals an opportunity to live more independent and productive lives within our community.

Read More About ACT
For more information check out:
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
New York State Office Mental Health