Our Mobile Psychiatric Teams function as traveling psychiatric clinics, serving clients in the city's voluntary (privately operated) shelters and drop-in centers. The team includes a psychiatrist, a physician's assistant/nurse practitioner, a nurse, and a driver/aide and is coordinated by a psychiatric nurse. The team is equipped to evaluate and fully treat homeless mentally ill men and women - including medication monitoring - as well as consult with appropriate shelter staff.

Our Safe Haven is a reception center for homeless, mentally-ill men and women.   Clients are welcomed with meals, showers, laundry and clothing and offered psychiatric services, benefits assistance, and supportive housing placement. Last year 50 men and women came into Safe Haven with 62% representing long-term street homelessness.  Safe Haven also offers overnight beds to 15 men and women in a low-demand and flexible approach to treatment.  The more home-like setting helps to build trust and engage very isolated and vulnerable clients.  Last year, 95% of clients were able to gain benefits, employment income and/or medical insurance during their stay and 71% moved onto transitional or permanent housing.

"New Providence was very different...they were very supportive. That is what I really wanted and it was very helpful for me...Since I left Project Renewal, I feel confidant." more...

In 1990, the City and State signed the landmark New York/New York Agreement , by which each would bear half the cost of creating appropriate community housing-plus-supports for homeless mentally ill New Yorkers. That pact eventually created more than 3,600 units of supportive housing, and one of the very first community settings to be funded was Project Renewal's Clinton Residence on West 48th Street in Manhattan. The Residence provided housing and round-the-clock comprehensive supports to its 57 tenants, many of whom had spent much of their adult years in psychiatric institutions.

Initially, the Clinton Residence was imagined as residents' permanent home, because the severity of their illnesses suggested they would never live any more independently.

But we found that by offering clients closely coordinated comprehensive services including psychiatric and medical care, case management and employment assistance many of the residents could indeed achieve goals they, and the medical community, never thought possible. With the appropriate opportunities, clients began establishing a network of family and friends, taking on more and more responsibility and even pursuing employment. As a result we changed the program to provide maximum support for peoples' achievable goals of moving on and moving out. We added a strong emphasis on employment, which has been extremely successful both in improving clients' self-esteem and their ability to live with greater independence. Clients can work with nearby Fountain House, an excellent nonprofit skilled in helping mentally ill people succeed; they can work with our in-house printing operation, IMPRINTS; or they can work with our Job Links program, which helps individuals into competitive employment. Also, recognizing that the move from the Clinton Residence to less supervised settings was often too big a step, we converted one of the residence's seven floors into a "transitional" floor, where clients are still connected to the Residence but take on much greater responsibilities. As a result, 73% of the men and women who have come to the Clinton have moved into more independent housing and all continue to succeed in these new settings. And today, a full 75% of the residents are involved in some type of employment activity.

See what the New York Daily News wrote about the Clinton Residence

See what a New York Times Opinion piece said about the Clinton Residence

See what part the Clinton played in a feature article in the New York Times

Project Renewal, with the Department of Corrections and the state Office of Mental Health is piloting an innovative new program to help 50 mentally ill men and women successfully transition from prison to a productive life in the community. The Parole Support and Treatment Program starts working with clients while they are still in prison to prepare them for life on the outside. Once released, clients move into apartments where they receive intensive support from a multidisciplinary team to help them transition to community living.

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