Mamdani renews support for Morris Park hospital supportive housing project
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has revived a controversial supportive housing project at a Bronx hospital that would deliver more than 80 homes, including nearly 60 for formerly incarcerated people leaving Rikers Island. On Monday, Mamdani announced his support for “Just Home” at the NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi campus in Morris Park, a plan to convert a vacant hospital building into 83 affordable apartments, including 58 supportive units for New Yorkers exiting Rikers Island with medical conditions such as cancer or heart failure. Former Mayor Eric Adams initially supported the project when it was unveiled in 2022, but withdrew support ahead of the 2025 election, urging lawmakers to abandon the plan, according to Gothamist.
The project falls under the city’s “Housing for Health” initiative, which connects homeless patients and families with stable housing. In 2025, the program served nearly 1,600 homeless New Yorkers, placed more than 600 people into housing, and provided medical respite support to nearly 430 patients.
At Just Home, the Fortune Society will serve as both developer and service provider, with on-site case managers collaborating alongside Jacobi medical staff to coordinate outpatient care, including wraparound services from licensed clinical social workers and dedicated peer workers, all just steps from residents’ homes.
Just Home will take inspiration from Castle Gardens, a Fortune Society-run West Harlem development that provides supportive housing alongside on-site social services and civic uses such as a polling site and food distribution, Gothamist reported.
The project will also receive $1 million annually through the city’s Justice-Involved Supportive Housing (JISH) program, an evidence-based permanent supportive housing model shown to reduce returns to jail and shelter use while improving health outcomes.
In addition, the city will release an updated request for proposals (RFP) for the Housing for Health program later this week, which could create up to 190 new homes for justice-involved New Yorkers. With Just Home and the new RFP, the administration aims to bring the total number of supportive housing units for formerly incarcerated residents to more than 350.
“On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we honor a leader who named poverty as a moral crisis. Today, I’m proud to commit my administration to Just Home—an initiative that brings housing, health care, and justice together,” Mamdani said.
“By housing New Yorkers who are too often left on the streets or shuttled through emergency rooms, Just Home meets our housing crisis with dignity.”
Despite last-minute opposition from former Mayor Eric Adams and former Council Member Kristy Marmorato, the City Council formally approved the project in September. Adams had initially backed it in 2022 but reversed his position in 2025, with Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro urging lawmakers to abandon the plan on the eve of the Council vote, as Gothamist reported.
The Council’s vote marked a significant break from its usual practice of member deference, in which lawmakers typically follow the stance of a local member on land-use proposals in their district. Marmorato argued that placing housing for individuals with criminal records at the Jacobi campus would be unsafe.
In an official statement, Mitchell Katz, MD, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, voiced support for the Housing for Health initiative.
“For our patients experiencing homelessness, so many of the problems we see in primary care can be addressed with a simple prescription: housing,” Katz said. “NYC Health + Hospitals has used our land to create affordable and supportive housing for hundreds of New Yorkers through our Housing for Health initiative, and we are eager to add the Just Home project to that list. Our patients leaving Rikers need our support to rebuild their lives.”
Other Housing for Health projects include Morrisania River Commons, approved in August, which will deliver more than 300 affordable and supportive homes along with a new health clinic and community space at NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health Morrisania; Woodhull Residences in Bed-Stuy, which opened in March with nearly 100 affordable and supportive homes at Woodhull Hospital; and 1727 Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan.
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