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# Cohen Higgins Blocked the Door and People Suffered
- URL: https://friends-of-south-dade.ghost.io/cohen-higgins-blocked-the-door-and-people-suffered/
- Published: 2026-08-03T18:11:35.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-03T18:11:35.000Z
- Author: Pete Kendall 

Dear Jorge

 Miami-Dade voters approved a mental-health diversion center in 2004\. The building was eventually completed at a cost of $50 million. Funding for its first three years had been identified. 

 Yet **the doors remained locked**. Treatment rooms that could have hosted people in need sat quiet as a cavern.  
 For months, Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins helped keep the Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery from receiving a vote.  
 While the facility sat empty, taxpayers were spending about $1 million a year just to maintain it.   
 It was designed to **treat people with severe mental illness** who otherwise **cycle between homelessness, emergency rooms and the County jail.**  
 **Cohen Higgins was unreasonable and demanded delay.**  
 She **questioned whether retired Judge Steve Leifman**, a man of impeccable character, who spent decades championing the project, **stood to benefit financially**.   
**Her delay tactics** did not produce a better center. They **helped keep a completed onem sit empty.**  
 Only after community pressure mounted and it became clear that most Commissioners supported opening the facility did **Cohen Higgins change tactics**.

 **She ran to the front of the line like she was always leading the parade.**  
 She will undoubtedly point to that final “Yes.”  
**Voters should remember everything that came before that.**  
 Responsible oversight asks hard questions, obtains safeguards, and then acts. 

**Obstruction** keeps repeating the same questions while **a $50-million public facility gathered dust** and vulnerable people were **stuck in jail or living on the streets instead of receiving treatment.**  
 She eventually voted to open the doors.  
 But remember, **Danielle Cohen Higgins spent months holding them shut.**