Cherry Hill and Camden County residents calling the 988 mental health crisis line still have no local walk-in facility to turn to after a $29 million-plus state funding shortfall stalled a crisis center that was supposed to open this summer.
The Camden County center is one of five planned statewide that have no clear opening date, NJ Spotlight News reported Thursday. The state Department of Human Services awarded $37 million in grants in 2024 to build the centers in Camden, Essex, Bergen, Monmouth and Morris counties. None has opened.
The gap matters locally because the 988 system operates on three tiers: the phone hotline, mobile response teams dispatched to callers and brick-and-mortar crisis receiving centers where people can walk in, get screened by clinicians and receive treatment regardless of ability to pay. Camden County has the first two tiers running. The third remains unfunded.
Calls tripling, dollars lagging
Calls to New Jersey's 988 line have tripled since the hotline launched in July 2022, reaching more than 180,000 annually. State officials expect more than 240,000 requests for help in 2026.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill's $60.7 billion state budget, signed in late June, includes almost $29 million for the full suite of 988 programs. But a nonpartisan legislative analysis pegs the 12-month cost at $71.4 million, leaving a gap of more than $29 million.
Legislation pending
State Sen. Joe Vitale (D-Middlesex), who chairs the Senate health committee, has outlined legislation (S4600) that would require the state to find $35 million to open all five centers this year. A separate Vitale bill would add a 40-cent fee to telephone lines to create a sustainable funding stream, a model used in other states, but that measure has largely stalled, according to the New Jersey Monitor.
"The centers will literally save lives — that's not an exaggeration — from the initial 988 call to the emergency mobile response to the crisis centers," Vitale told NJ Spotlight News on July 28. "All three elements complete the continuum. Anything less is a mistake."
Local context
Sen. James Beach, Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald and Assemblywoman Melinda Kane, who represent Cherry Hill, have not publicly addressed the 988 crisis center delay. The three legislators supported a separate $4 million state grant awarded to Jefferson Cherry Hill Hospital in October 2025 to build South Jersey's first EmPATH psychiatric emergency unit, expected to open in 2027. That program is hospital-based and separate from the 988 crisis center network.
Camden County's mobile crisis teams, part of the 988 system's second tier, have been active since March 2025. Statewide, those teams have been dispatched more than 1,300 times since then.
More than 700 people died by suicide in New Jersey in 2025, an increase from 2024. More than 13% of New Jersey adults reported being depressed last year, according to America's Health Rankings.
No committee hearing date has been announced for S4600. Residents in crisis can reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.
