Brian there on WNYC last week, as Mayor Adams celebrated the opening of the bridge to home,

a new facility to help unhoused people with severe mental illness,

transition into what's called supportive housing.

City Council passed a law to try and address a problem with supportive housing, that's

housing plus supportive services. And here's the kind of shocking breakout stat. There are

5,000 empty supportive housing units, even at a time of

what is believed to be severe shortage and, of course, plenty of demand. To talk about this

disconnect between supply and demand, we're joined once again by David Brand, housing reporter for WNYC

and Gothamist. Hey, David. Hey, Brian. Let's start with a more

robust definition of supportive housing and how it differs from, let's say, a shelter. How do you

explain what it is? Sure. So supportive housing is a really, really important tool to helping

New York City and other places around the state and the area address homelessness.

So there's 40,000 or so units of supportive housing in New York City.

More than half of those are in congregate sites.

So they're buildings with apartments specifically for people who have experienced homelessness,

with mental illness, with HIV-AIDS

diagnoses, young people who have aged out of foster care, other people with certain special needs,

and they live in the building and there are on-site social services.

So case managers who help them with benefits and maybe finding jobs and other things that they need to work on.

There is counseling, psychiatric help, recreation programs.

And then there are about 16,000 or so what they call scattered site units.

And these are units that are leased by nonprofit providers who then house people experiencing homelessness

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