The Trump administration on Wednesday said it was announcing $700 million in “new funding” for mental health and addiction programs, with an emphasis on combating homelessness resulting from severe, untreated mental illness.
But behavioral health experts instantly cast doubt on the claim, identifying the $700 million not as new funding but as the long-awaited release of existing grants that Congress had previously authorized and that the federal government already planned to spend.
Many of the funding notices posted this week by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in fact, had been delayed several months, worrying state behavioral health officials and local addiction treatment or mental health organizations that rely on federal dollars.
Still, during an announcement in Clinton, Mich., Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cast the funding notices as unique Trump administration accomplishments.
“Through more than $700 million in new investments, we are advancing President Trump’s Great American Recovery Initiative and addressing the addiction and serious mental illness that fuel homelessness across America,” he said in a statement.
