Housing and the economy were the major focus of Mayor Eric Adams’s third State of the City address on Wednesday, as he outlined plans to build more affordable homes and open a new department focused on delivery-worker issues — but notably said little about some of the city’s biggest issues, including the migrant influx and a battle over law-enforcement accountability.
Again calling himself the “blue collar mayor,” Adams highlighted his year of accomplishments in the speech held this year at Hostos Community College in The Bronx. As he’s done since he was a candidate, he also put an emphasis on public safety.
“When crimes go down, jobs go up; when crime goes down, tourism goes up; when crime goes down, our quality of life goes up,” he said.
“When all these things go up, there’s no stopping New York City.”
Adams reiterated his “moonshot” plan to spur the creation of 500,000 new homes, with help from the “city of yes” zoning proposal to approve more housing development everywhere.
He also announced the “24 in 24” plan, which will advance 24 development projects on publicly-owned sites that aims to create or preserve more than 12,000 apartments. Adams also asked Albany lawmakers to clear the way to let the city build the type of housing it needs, which often is denied by outdated zoning laws.
His request for this started a brief chant from audience members: “Let us build!”
Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, whose portfolio includes housing, said the next two years will be focused on clearing any hurdles that could stop the creation of more housing, from legalizing basement apartments to a new tax incentive for commercial-to-residential conversions.
“People want to live here, and we have to make room for more people,” she told THE CITY after the mayor spoke. “In order to get to the 500,000 moonshot number, we have to use every tool at our disposal to get there.”
New Initiatives
Adams also unveiled plans for a new Department of Sustainable Delivery to create guidelines around delivery work — including regulating poorly manufactured e-bikes and their dangerous batteries. It requires approval from the City Council to get done.
“We can’t ignore what needs to happen,” Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi said after the speech. “There are gonna only be more and more modes of delivery that aren’t cars and trucks on our roads. That’s exciting, we want that, that’s innovation, but we certainly have to have a baseline for public safety.”
One streetside initiative is the makeover of Kimlau Plaza in Chinatown — which may include a new “gateway arch” — and building and refurbishing four skate parks in the Bronx and Brooklyn with help from legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk.
And Adams announced that the city Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan was issuing an official advisory designating social media as a “public health hazard” in New York City, the first major city in the country to do so.
Vasan later said the advisory would create guidelines for parents whose kids may want to use platforms like TikTok and Facebook — and will suggest they ban these apps for kids under 14.
The mayor used his time on stage to push again for direct mayoral control of schools, which requires approval by the state legislature.
And he continued his campaign against rats, touting his new garbage containerization program.
“This is not just about defeating rats,” Adams said. “This is about reimagining the urban experience for all New Yorkers.”
Background Battles
Adams’ annual speech summing up the city’s vital signs came amid a cloud of FBI inquiries and a feud with the City Council over law enforcement bills, which he recently vetoed — vetoes that could be overridden over the next few weeks.
And it comes as some polls show New Yorkers have low confidence in his ability to lead. The most recent polling from December found the mayor had just a 26% approval rating, the lowest ever for a mayor since Quinnipiac University began polling New Yorkers in the late 1990s.
Some observers noted the speech was optimistic but didn’t touch on the biggest issues in the city, namely mental health resources and the migrant crisis.
“Announcing nothing new to improve the lives of new arrivals or longtime immigrant New Yorkers, he had chosen to only recycle his arbitrary, short-sighted strategies that deny shelter and dignity to vulnerable families in need,” Murad Awawdeh, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in a statement.
And even some of his housing initiatives didn’t seem to be enough, with more than 89,000 people currently living in the city’s homeless shelters, in the view of Councilmember Pierina Sanchez, a Democrat from The Bronx. The mayor announced the city was reopening the Section 8 voucher waitlist for public housing — first time in 15 years — with a goal of issuing 1,000 vouchers a month,
“I appreciate the waiting list is opening, but 1,000 vouchers when you have hundreds of thousands of people who are rent-burdened and really struggling in buildings that are quite literally collapsing,” she told THE CITY. “It’s just more — and?”
Councilmember Carmen de la Rosa (D-Manhattan) said that while she was encouraged by potentially working with the mayor on his initiatives, it felt contradictory given some of the city’s budget issues.
“He talks so passionately about education, I’m a public school parent — and I have a kid in fourth grade and I know the challenges of reading, and some of the issues our children are facing — but we’re presented an option in the Council to continue to cut education to get out of a fiscal crisis that to some people feels manufactured,” she said.
And looming over the speech — even as Adams professed his love to Speaker Adrienne Adams, a former Bayside High School classmate of his — was the upcoming veto override vote in the Council.
The mayor and the NYPD have publicly feuded with the Council and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams over the “How Many Stops” bill, which would require officers to log more details about interactions with the public.
Williams, who is next in line to be mayor should something happen to Adams, took no immediate issue with anything said in the State of the City speech, but rather released a statement afterwards bashing the veto and public relations campaign against the bill.
“While the mayor included some promising proposals in his address, including recognizing the harm of social media on public health and safety, what was left unsaid was his attempt to pit the city against itself over a basic data reporting bill that strengthens public safety,” he wrote.