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5.6% Of New York State’s Capacity of DOMH’s SRO Are Located in One East Harlem Zip Code

After uncovering the excessive density of drug treatment programs in Harlem placed by the Office of Addiction Support and Services (OASAS), we have reviewed the density of other types of social services traditionally rejected by wealthier and whiter districts.

The pattern is quite clear. Harlem and South Bronx are systematically used as the containment zone for New York City by City and State agencies. Consistently, the boroughs of Queens and Staten Island are not supporting a fair share of social services.

Our latest FOIL request is to Department of Mental Health (DOMH), to understand where the State agency place patients with serious mental health issues into supportive housing. Unsurprisingly, we learned that DOMH has allocated an extremely excessive amount of such SRO housing to the zip code 10035 where Timbale Terrace will be placed. 

It is rather shocking that we found that zip code 10456 in the Bronx has 9.4% of the entire state’s SRO capacity! (or 995 out of 10635 people) This zip code only houses about 0.5% of NY State’s population.

In East Harlem, zip code 10035 has 0.2% of New York State’s population but has 5.6% of all of New York State’s SRO housing capacity (or 595 out of 10635 people). On top of this, within zip code 10035, 6 out of the 7 existing DOMH SRO programs are located in CLOSE PROXIMITY to each other.

Click here to see underlying data

7 SROs in zipcode 10035

Sadly, as you know, DOMH is not the only government agency that over-burdened East Harlem. East Harlem district also bears an unfair burden of other social services rejected by other wealthier districts. Below is a summary of the data we have (click to see more detailed analyses of the distributions of drug treatment programs, harm reduction program and adult only shelters):

  1. Zip code 10035 has 0.2% of New York State’s population, but DOMH has allocated 5.6% of all SROs capacities in New York State to the zip code (in other words, 595 patients out of 10635 patients are placed in zip code 10035)
  2. East Harlem has 1.4% of NYC’s population, but it has 14% of NYC’s opioid treatment capacities as allocated by New York State’s Office of Addiction Services and Support (NYS OASAS)
  3. East Harlem has 1.4% of NYC’s population, but it has 8 to 10% of NYC’s adult-only shelter capacities as allocated by New York City’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS)

Data Record

The following are the original FOIL data from DOMH and the versions converted into Excel (CHAN_OMH_20221114231716017)

As for public records, these buildings can also be found on DOMH’s website here. There, do search for “residential program” under “program category”. But exact address and residents capacity is not available to the public. More details of each building can be found on www.nyconnects.ny.gov