As the city returns to life, New Yorkers are noticing the number of homeless in the subways and on the streets.  And with reports of stabbings, slashings and other violent crime, the first reaction seems to be to place the blame on the homeless mentally ill.  Sheryl Silver is the Senior Vice President of Community Support Programs at The Bridge, an organization dedicated to getting help to the homeless suffering from severe mental illness, in whatever form they need.  She joins In Focus to talk about The Bridge’s approach to offering help. They have 1,500 housing units for those who can live on their own. They operate outpatient clinics for anyone capable of making and keeping appointments. But perhaps the most difficult part of their job is serving clients who live on the streets.  Imagine being charged with going out in the streets, day after day, to find homeless men and women who need psychiatric medications, or are mandated by courts to take those medications, going block by block to track them down.  That’s what The Bridge does every day.  She also talks about their attempts at telehealth services, buying hundreds of phones for clients and the minutes to go with them.  Many of their clients have never had a cellphone.  Others lost them, or sold them.  But she talks about their dogged attempts to make sure everyone who needed meds got them, all through the pandemic.  They also had a coordinated effort to get the homeless mentally ill vaccinated, despite having no documentation, many of their workers walking their clients from facility to facility until they could get them a shot.  She says they lost clients to COVID, many who were never diagnosed, but they know they also saved a lot of lives.