A state-of-the-art mental health center for the homeless rising in Allapattah is awaiting approval from the county before opening its doors.

The Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery is a pioneer facility with a mission to target comprehensive recovery and promote self-sufficiency to break the homelessness-to-jail cycle and reduce the financial burden on the state and taxpayers. The sprawling 150,000-square-foot, seven-floor campus at 2200 NW Seventh Ave. will include a receiving center, integrated crisis stabilization unit, residential treatment, outpatient behavioral health, primary care and more.

Judge Steve Leifman of the 11th Circuit, who spearheading the project, said the facility is not operational yet and is waiting on negotiations with Miami-Dade County.

“We finally received the proposed operating agreement from the county. We have a meeting with the mayor and her staff in November. There’s only a couple of items, nothing critical, to resolve,” said Judge Leifman.

After the operating agreement is drafted, it will go before the county commission, which needs to approve it for it to be official. “The mayor wants to get in front of the commission ASAP and once it’s passed, then we can start hiring people and it will take us six months from there,” Judge Leifman said.

Once open, the facility is to provide 208 beds, 16 acute care and crisis stabilization beds, 48 short-term residential beds and another 144 for longer-term residential treatment. A team of doctors, nurses, therapists and social workers is to coordinate services and create a holistic, integrated approach to care.

Day activity programs are to include a barber shop and basketball court, classrooms and educational spaces, a courtroom, legal and social service agencies, transitional housing, employment services and vocational rehabilitation.

The facility will also provide an avenue for academic research and intends to develop and refine best practices and fill treatment voids, improving patient and community outcomes.

Mr. Leifman had the idea for the project over 20 years ago. In 2000, he heard a case involving a Harvard-educated psychiatrist who worked at Jackson Memorial Hospital and had a late onset of schizophrenia, became homeless and started to cycle through the criminal justice system for minor offenses.

“As a result of his case, we had a summit that year and we mapped out the intersection between the criminal justice system and the community mental health system,” Mr. Leifman said.

After stakeholders and experts saw how dysfunctional the system was, they formed the 11th Judicial Circuit Criminal Mental Health Project to make massive structural change through a two-part approach of pre-arrest and post-arrest diversion programs.

Mr. Leifman said the county has done well with the homeless population but about 1,100 people remain on the street, most of whom have acute, mental illnesses that haven’t been appropriately addressed.

Miami-Dade spends $232 million annually to warehouse 2,400 people with mental illnesses, making the county jail the largest psychiatric institution in Florida. The new center will act as a diversion and treatment program geared to address needs that have gone unmet, reduce recidivism and save millions of tax dollars.