7 On Your Side Investigates inside one organization’s efforts to get the mentally ill and homeless off of NYC streets
April 10, 2025
ABC7 News
Dan Krauth
NEW YORK (WABC) — Ride the subway or walk the streets of New York City, and you’ll see a tragic combination of two things on full display: homelessness and mental illness.
Getting help is an endless cycle for these people in need, bouncing from the streets to the hospitals and often to the jails. Violence plays its part as well. Take the numerous incidents of people being pushed onto the subway tracks.
That’s where the S-O-S team from Services for the Underserved steps in, pounds the pavement, and reaches out to anyone they can find in need of help. They simply walk up to people in the subway system, on the sidewalks, and the streets of New York City, and open up with a few simple questions.
“Do you have housing? Are you good?”
7 On Your Side Investigates joined S-O-S for a day, looking for people in and around Grand Central who clearly have nowhere to go.
“We’re looking for someone who is not always disheveled. Sometimes clothes are soiled, might be dirty. Someone who might be out of place,” said Charisse White of Services for the Underserved, a non-profit that provides mental health services.
“We normally just introduce ourselves and ask them, ‘Are you looking for a shelter or do you have a safe place to stay?” White adds. “That’s usually how we break the ice.”
White says it’s a toss-up. It takes multiple visits to get their attention. Other times, the response is immediate.
“There are some; they will want placement right then, and we’ll connect them to a safe haven,” White said.
For the most part, they’re playing the long game, earning some trust little by little. Those in need eventually get accustomed to seeing the S-O-S team and accept their help.
Services for the Underserved also leaves them with a care package of food and water. But more importantly, a business card with contact information so they can reach out when they’re ready and need help.
Services for the Underserved is trying to get the homeless and mentally ill placed in transitional housing, not in shelters and especially not in emergency rooms.
“We get them vouchers, tell them how to apply for housing. We teach them employment so they can work,” says Perry Perlmutter, President and CEO of Services for the Underserved. “We teach them all different things, how to deal with their mental illness.”
That is the key. Teaching them to live with their illness is the ultimate goal. When they do, then living on their own is next, in an apartment, but with support inside the building.
Kathy Hernandez spent nearly two decades homeless before getting her own place. She lived on the streets and in the subways of New York for 17 years.
Today, she explains how it feels to have her own place in one word.
“Awesome,” said Hernandez.
She now not only has an apartment, but the non-profit got her a motorized wheelchair for her disability and a therapist for her mental health. But this process doesn’t happen quickly.
“The pipeline is very slow,” said Perlmutter.
He says there’s not enough space and, more importantly, not enough money.
“The problem is there’s not enough supportive housing on the other end. So the shelters are all full, and there’s just not enough room for all the people in New York City. We really need to build much more supportive housing in the city.”
Services for the Underserved have helped place more than 4,000 people in supportive housing. They’re opening another thousand units this year.
It’s a never-ending job because, unfortunately, one thing is for sure: the more they look, the more they find people who need help.