Mamdani to build ‘peers’ army to aid New Yorkers facing addiction
As published in the Gothamist, May 7, 2026
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Mamdani to build ‘peers’ army to aid New Yorkers facing addiction
By Caroline Lewis, Gothamist
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is set to announce new funding on Thursday for substance use recovery organizations across the city to hire hundreds of people who have their own experience with drug or alcohol addiction and have been trained to help others.
The city is investing $12 million from legal settlements with opioid manufacturers to hire 500 people to bolster the city’s peer recovery workforce, officials said.
The peers, as they are called, are tied to organizations across the city that provide a mix of treatment and harm reduction services. The workers undergo a standardized training program and receive state certification.
“We know how invaluable it is for someone who’s struggling with substance use disorder to hear from a person who’s been in their shoes who’s walked the walk,” Jorge Petit, the city’s new executive deputy commissioner of mental hygiene, told Gothamist.
The peer workforce initiative is part of a broader effort that began under former Mayor Eric Adams, which aims to ramp up the city’s spending of its opioid settlement dollars to help drive down overdose deaths.
As of last June, the city had received $190 million from legal settlements with pharmaceutical companies that were accused of helping to fuel opioid addiction and overdoses. That amount is expected to grow to $550 million by 2041, the city said.
Deaths from accidental drug overdoses have declined citywide since peaking at more than 3,000 per year in 2022 and 2023, city data shows.
But even after a major drop in overdose deaths in 2024, New Yorkers in parts of the South Bronx and Harlem continued to die from overdoses at much higher rates than the rest of the city, as did older Black New Yorkers, the data shows.
The city has set a goal of reducing overdose deaths by 25% by 2030. City officials said there was urgent need for the peer workers.
“This $12 million investment will help connect New Yorkers to life-saving services while creating hundreds of good-paying jobs rooted in lived experience and community trust,” Mamdani said in a statement ahead of the formal announcement.
As part of their duties, the peers will be doing outreach and working to enroll more New Yorkers in recovery programs, according to City Hall.
Petit said the city is working to distribute opioid settlement dollars to organizations that work in high-need areas across the five boroughs.
Funding to hire peers will be distributed through city contracts with Community Health Action of Staten Island, Exponents, the Fortune Society, Odyssey House, Phoenix House, Let’s Talk Safety and Samaritan Daytop Village.
The city’s opioid settlement dollars initially went primarily to city-run services, but the city has more recently started diversifying the programs it funds and sending the money to more organizations working with drug users in the community.
In fiscal year 2025, the city spent $41 million of its opioid settlement funds on programs designed to prevent drug overdoses, connect people with addiction treatment and help the families of those who have died from accidental overdoses.
The funding ramped up to $48 million this fiscal year and is slated to grow to $50 million in the coming years, according to a recent report from the city.
