Historic Affordable Housing Plan, Investments In Infrastructure; Celebrates Native American Heritage, Culture; Historic Labor Agreements Covering Capital Projects; Appointed NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch; Hosted Community Conversation; In-Person Media Availability: Mayor Adams Updates

MAYOR ADAMS ANNOUNCES MORE THAN 15,000 APPRENTICESHIP OPPORTUNITIES CREATED IN LESS THAN THREE YEARS 

More Than 15,000 New Yorkers Now Able to Launch Careers Because of Apprenticeship Programs — More Than Halfway Toward City’s Moonshot Goal of 30,000 by 2030 

City Invests $1.8 Million to Diversify New Apprenticeship Programs,  Bringing Total Adams Administration Investment in Apprenticeships to More Than $15 Million in Public and Private Funds 

NEW YORK – To mark National Apprenticeship Week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city has delivered more than 15,000 apprenticeship opportunities in less than three years — more than halfway to the administration’s moonshot goal of creating 30,000 apprenticeships by 2030. The commitment was first laid out in Mayor Adams’ 2023 State of the City address and, with this milestone, the city is well ahead of schedule.   

“The future of New York City’s workforce is brighter because of the millions of dollars in investments we are making to ensure our young people have training for permanent employment,” said Mayor Adams. “Our mission is to make New York City a safer, more affordable city, and through expanding job opportunities, we are doing just that. These apprenticeships offer on-the-job training with employment opportunities in high-demand careers, and they create a pipeline of talent for employers who are investing in our communities. We are eager to welcome these apprentices into our workforce, and together, we will continue to build a strong and vibrant New York City economy.”  

“This administration has made good on its promise to increase apprenticeship opportunities, and this milestone is a testament to the hard work of our public- and private-sector employers,” said First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer. “The range of apprenticeship opportunities ensures that New Yorkers of all backgrounds can access meaningful employment opportunities that tap into their diverse experiences and interests.” 

“The Adams administration has embraced apprenticeships because they are a proven strategy for training and equipping workers with the right skills to succeed in a variety of sectors and professions,” said Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives Ana J. Almanzar. “As we celebrate National Apprenticeship Week, I’m particularly proud of our efforts to integrate apprenticeships into our public schools, ensuring that young people can connect their classroom learning with on-the-job experiences in real time. This type of ‘career-connected learning’ is a win-win: it equips students with valuable workplace skills and provides employers an opportunity to shape the next generation of workers.”  

“Every New Yorker needs a pathway to a good job, and apprenticeship opportunities make that path wider for more and more people,” said Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom. “We see this in health care, in particular with our Nurse Residency Program, and in the sector more broadly where opportunities will expand in the coming years. Importantly, these positions are adding to the diversity of the sector’s workforce as we work to not only create more paths to good jobs, but also continue to have our industries reflect the communities they serve.”  

“Our announcement of 15,000 apprenticeships by the end of 2024 is a powerful demonstration of the city’s commitment to building on ramps to economic mobility and ensure that employers can tap the talent they need to thrive,” said New York City Mayor’s Office of Talent and Workforce Development (NYC Talent) Executive Director Abby Jo Sigal. “I am honored to join with our public-and private-sector employers, and many other partners, whose collective commitments to apprenticeships have helped us reach this impressive milestone, halfway to our 30×30 moonshot goal, ahead of schedule. Investing public and private resources into apprenticeships for the city’s diverse talent in high-growth sectors and family-sustaining occupations that power our city is a winning proposition for jobseekers, employers, and our economy, and how we will build on this momentum to reach 30,000 apprenticeships by 2030.” 

This accomplishment comes as the Adams administration celebrates National Apprenticeship Week — created by the U.S. Department of Labor — with NYC Talent and New York City Public Schools bringing together a diverse group of youth apprentices working across public- and private-sectors to participate in a roundtable discussion and networking event. The event was held in collaboration with CareerWise, which currently partners with New York City Public Schools to place high school juniors and seniors into paid three-year apprenticeships. CareerWise has placed 527 of the city’s public-school students in apprenticeships at both public-and private-sector employers since June 2022, with 151 apprentices at city agencies and 376 at private employers.   

Apprenticeship opportunities in New York City have overwhelmingly focused on the construction industry and other skilled trades. The Adams administration’s Apprenticeship Accelerator aims to expand apprenticeship opportunities into new industries and to serve diverse populations with entry points for on-demand jobs that fuel the city’s economy, including the green economy, health care, and other sectors. Of the more than 4,000 health care apprentices, 83 percent are women and 79 percent identify as people of color. The CareerWise youth apprentices are 92 percent people of color, 50 percent women, and 100 percent attend Title 1 schools. 

The amount of non-construction apprenticeship programs grew by 62 percent including new programs in health care, technology, culinary, and public service.  

Some highlights of this tremendous growth include:   

• 4,000 more health care apprenticeships now than there were in 2022.   

• A nearly 2,000 percent increase in the number of apprenticeships in technology since 2022 to 429.   

• A nearly 2,300 percent increase in the number of apprenticeships in professional services and youth grew, from 22 to 527. 

Apprenticeship takes collaboration and commitment across sectors and in partnership with both public and private partners. New stakeholders — including Fortune 500 companies, public sector agencies, and educational institutions — are stepping up to create more apprenticeship opportunities. 

“We are proud to celebrate National Apprenticeship Week by reaffirming our commitment to building bridges between education and real-world experience for students across New York City,” said Public Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos. “These programs are not only pivotal in preparing our students for future careers, but also in building a more inclusive workforce that reflects the diversity of our city. By opening doors to new industries and offering hands-on experiences in the public and private sectors, we’re setting our young people on pathways to success and strengthening the talent pipeline for generations to come.” 

In October, the Apprenticeship Accelerator launched the “Apprenticeship Community of Practice” that will come together to put forward solutions on how the city can expand apprenticeships and identify challenges, as well as how the community can address them.  

Members include:   

• Higher education  

• Non-profit and for-profit training providers  

• Employers  

• Labor unions  

• Apprenticeship intermediaries  

• State regulatory bodies  

• Social service providers  

• Community based organizations 

These recent announcements to increase apprenticeship opportunities reflect the Adams administration’s broader economic vision to build a more inclusive economy that offers robust pathways to opportunity for economically disadvantaged New Yorkers. In September, Mayor Adams and NYC Talent announced nearly 8,500 job-seeking New Yorkers were connected to employment, free training, and workforce development resources over six months through the “Jobs NYC” initiative. Jobs NYC is a multi-pronged citywide effort to reduce barriers to economic opportunities and deliver workforce development services directly to communities across the five boroughs that are experiencing high unemployment. 

NYC Talent and the New York City Department of Small Business Services (SBS) will continue holding regular hiring halls, with the next one on December 12 in Manhattan. To register for the hiring hall and to find job opportunities, free training, and employment resources, New Yorkers can visit the Jobs NYC website. 

In August, NYC Talent announced expanded workforce services for New Yorkers with disabilities and celebrated a hiring milestone for this group. Earlier this summer, Mayor Adams announced the city’s first-ever community hiring effort, which will leverage more than $1.2 billion in city contracts to create job opportunities for underserved New Yorkers.  

In February, Mayor Adams unveiled a first-of-its-kind plan to grow the city’s green economy and best position New Yorkers to benefit from the nearly 400,000 projected “green-collar” jobs in New York City by 2040. Additionally, last year, Mayor Adams announced “Pathways to an Inclusive Economy: An Action Plan for Young Adult Career Success,” an over $600 million action plan to bolster the city’s talent ecosystem.     

“Apprenticeships are a proven strategy for recruiting, training, and retaining a highly-skilled and diverse workforce that greatly enhances the NYPD’s positive presence in our nation’s largest school district, which serves nearly 1 million young people,” said New York City Police Department Interim Commissioner Thomas G. Donlon. “This avenue for expanding job opportunities and advancing careers also showcases this administration’s unwavering commitment to building a prosperous future for New York City.” 

“The Department of Finance has welcomed a talented group of young people to serve in our agency, and we are excited to continue to mentor and equip them with the essential skills for a thriving career,” said New York City Department of Finance Commissioner Preston Niblack. “This important apprenticeship program creates a pathway to public service, and we look forward to seeing these young stars grow into tomorrow’s leaders in the city workforce.”  

“Apprenticeships are a powerful lever for creating equity of opportunity for New Yorkers,” said SBS Commissioner Dynishal Gross. “Given the centrality of this mission to SBS’ work, we applaud the Mayor’s Office for Talent and Workforce Development for leading the effort to increase the number and type of apprenticeships available to New Yorkers from every community. We’re proud to deliver this work, in partnership, during National Apprenticeship Week and every day.” 

“The New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment is dedicated to creating and sustaining a local and diverse workforce to support our city’s world-renowned creative sectors, including theatre and live performance,” said New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment Commissioner Pat Swinney Kaufman. “To that end, we are proud of our ongoing support for the Theatrical Workforce Development Program, a groundbreaking partnership with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees that provides paid hands-on training and mentorship with some of the live performance industry’s top working professionals. To date, we’ve seen 114 fellows placed with theaters and on tours. We look forward to finding ways to expand and duplicate this successful model throughout the different sectors of the entertainment industry, and to support this administration’s mission to provide opportunities, apprenticeships, and good-paying jobs for all New Yorkers.” 

“We owe it to younger generations of New Yorkers to provide wide open opportunities for them to find meaningful, quality jobs in the sectors that make our city great, including the cultural sector,” said New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Laurie Cumbo. “We’re so proud of the many programs that provide pathways into good-paying jobs in our iconic creative sector for New Yorkers from diverse backgrounds, and we applaud our partners in government and the private sector for making these amazing strides toward fostering a vibrant, inclusive economy that gives all residents access to the opportunities they deserve.” 

“NYC Health + Hospitals is investing in our nurses like never before, with new career pathways, mentorship programs, and fellowships,” said NYC Health + Hospitals Chief Nursing Executive and Senior Vice President Natalia Cineas, DNP, MSM-N, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, FADLN. “We are proud to have enrolled over 2,300 registered nurses in our Nurse Residency Program over the last five years, giving our early career nurses a way to develop their evidence-based practice and clinical skills, while gaining experience in our city’s public hospitals and nursing homes. New Yorkers considering a career in health care should consider NYC Health + Hospitals.” 

“My first job through the Summer Youth Employment Program helped me learn and develop the most important characteristic: a strong work ethic,” said New York City Department of Youth and Community Development Commissioner Keith Howard. “As we celebrate National Apprenticeship Week, I thank Mayor Adams for setting such an ambitious goal to create these employment opportunities, particularly among women and New Yorkers of color. It helped me — and will continue to help New York City youth.” 

“Apprenticeships are a critical component of The City University of New York’s efforts to help thousands of our students make swift, successful transitions from the classroom into the workforce,” said The City University of New York (CUNY) Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez. “National Apprenticeship Week provides an opportunity to affirm CUNY’s commitment to sustain and expand this important work, helping more New Yorkers attain their career goals and ensuring that a greater number of employers are benefiting from their talent.”   

“By investing in the city’s apprenticeship infrastructure, we can accelerate more talent into in-demand, family-sustaining careers,” said Kiersten Barnet, executive director, New York Jobs CEO Council. “Earn-and-learn models drive economic mobility forward while giving employers expanded access to a robust talent pipeline with the skills needed for the jobs of tomorrow. Our members are committed to expanding career pathways and we commend the city of New York for their leadership in creating a more prosperous city for all.”  

“We are pleased to see New York City achieve its goal of 15,000 apprenticeships by the end of 2024, a key step in creating equitable opportunities for young adults,” said Marjorie Parker, CEO and president, JobsFirstNYC. “At JobsFirstNYC, we continue to advocate for diverse approaches that break down barriers to economic mobility. This milestone not only marks significant progress but also opens doors for thousands of young New Yorkers to gain valuable skills and experience. By connecting young talent with career pathways, we’re transforming lives and strengthening New York City’s economy. This achievement reflects our commitment to ensuring all young adults have the resources and opportunities to build successful careers.” 

“As a large organization with over 15,000 employees reporting to our U.S. headquarters here in New York City, we are thrilled to embrace, support and champion these apprenticeship opportunities,” said Alysia Renee Steinmann, managing partner, Ernst & Young (EY) Americas Greater New York. “Our talent pipeline has broadened to include college students from numerous community colleges within CUNY who have successfully aligned to this model and joined EY full-time in various roles that they previously would not have been eligible for.”    

“Alternative career pathways like apprenticeships create opportunity and more equitable economies,” said Francheska Feliciano, director, the Aon Apprenticeship Program. “Forward-leaning companies across America need to recognize that talent exists outside the standard pool of job applicants. By offering an earn-while-you-learn mix of education, work experience, and mentorship, the Aon Apprenticeship Program removes financial and other barriers and attracts experienced people that may not have previously seen us as an option.”  

“Nurse Residency Programs are the foundation of a thriving nursing workforce, and providing new nurses with the skills, support, and confidence to transition into clinical practice, these programs help shape compassionate and capable caregivers,” said Beth Oliver, DNP, RN, FAAN, chief nurse executive, senior vice president, Mount Sinai Health System Cardiac Services. “Programs such as the Nurse Residency Program, not only foster professional development but also create a strong sense of community, teamwork, and commitment to excellence in patient care.” 

“As we celebrate National Apprenticeship Week, the commitment made by Mayor Adams to create 30,000 new apprenticeships is a powerful example of how workforce development can drive opportunity and innovation,” said Brent Parton, president, CareerWise. “Apprenticeships are a key solution to equipping young people with the skills they need to thrive in the modern economy, and this ambitious pledge is a step toward creating a more inclusive and resilient workforce for tomorrow. By expanding access to apprenticeships, we are building a future where opportunity is within reach for all. Apprenticeships give opportunity to not only our young people, but also employers looking for young talent like New York City Ferry, New York City Presbyterian, and Ralph Lauren that just signed on this year to grow their talent pool through youth apprenticeship.”  

“I believe in youth apprenticeship,” said Chris Grant, New York City Public Schools graduate. “My own apprenticeship has given me so much, that I want to tell all high school students about the opportunity whenever given the chance. I went from a kid interested in graphic design to a full-time product designer working for a Fortune 500 company in New York City.” 

“Theatre is ingrained in New York City’s DNA—it drives tourism, creates jobs, and strengthens businesses and communities in all five boroughs,” said Roundabout Theater Interim Artistic Director Scott Ellis. “Thanks to our industry partners, and especially the steadfast commitment of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the Theatrical Workforce Development Program creates meaningful job access to the industry for our fellow New Yorkers and connects arts organizations across the city with skilled and experienced technicians. We are deeply grateful for the support of our partners in local government and proud to work alongside the city to promote opportunity and keep the arts strong through this essential program.”  

“The hospital community is grateful to New York City for developing the Citywide Nurse Residency Program, and to Mayor Adams for his strong continued support of it,” said Tim Johnson, senior vice president, Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) and member, New York City Workforce Development Council. “This important program helps newly graduated nurses embark on a career working in hospitals and has made the transition to hospital-based nursing much more successful. GNYHA applauds the city for its commitment to the Nurse Residency Program and is proud to have been a part of its development.” 

“I was deeply honored to have had the opportunity to attend the Nursing Residency Program alongside our incredible team of nurses,” said Gary Terrinoni, president and CEO, The Brooklyn Hospital Center. “As a healthcare leader, I recognize that our nurses are the backbone of our organization, and their commitment to patient care is truly inspiring.” 

“We’re excited to be offering New Yorkers healthcare career pathways,” said Daniel Bustillo, deputy executive director, 1199SEIU Training and Employment Funds, and member, New York City Workforce Development Council. “Apprenticeships are one of the innovative earn and learn models that increase opportunities for education and good-paying jobs.”  

“Reaching the milestone of 15,000 apprenticeships is a testament to the power of collaboration and the city’s commitment to expanding equitable pathways to economic opportunity,” said Gregory J. Morris, CEO, New York City Employment and Training Coalition (NYCETC). “At NYCETC, we envision a New York City where every individual—regardless of background—has access to the skills, training, and opportunities needed to thrive in our economy. Apprenticeships are a cornerstone of this vision, serving as a vital bridge between talent and opportunity while fostering diversity across industries. This achievement not only reflects progress toward the 30×30 moonshot goal, but also aligns with NYCETC’s mission to strengthen the workforce ecosystem, ensuring that all New Yorkers can actively participate in and benefit from our city’s economic growth and innovation.”  

“New York City’s achievement of creating more than 15,000 apprenticeship opportunities is a testament to the power of collaboration and vision,” said Plinio Ayala, president and CEO, Per Scholas. “Per Scholas is honored to partner with the NYC Talent Apprenticeship Accelerator to help drive this success by equipping New Yorkers across all five boroughs with the skills they need to thrive in tech careers. We look forward to continuing to work alongside employers and community partners to create equitable pathways to opportunity and strengthen the city’s workforce.” 

“Apprenticeships are essential to building an inclusive economy and equipping New Yorkers for the jobs of the future,” said Pursuit CEO Jukay Hsu. “As the first NYS Department of Labor Registered Apprenticeship provider in software development serving low-income New York City adults, we’re proud to support the city’s ambitious 30×30 moonshot goal by expanding tech apprenticeships. Tech sector jobs pay more than 1.5x the average NYC salary and accounted for 25 percent of the city’s job growth over the past decade. Tech apprenticeship pathways not only provide underserved communities with life-changing career opportunities but also help drive long-term economic resilience.”

MAYOR ADAMS AND GOVERNOR HOCHUL CELEBRATE AGREEMENT  TO ADVANCE HISTORIC PLAN TO BUILD AFFORDABLE HOUSING,  INVEST $5 BILLION IN INFRASTRUCTURE AND HOUSING  

New York City Council Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises and Committee on Land Use Vote to Approve City of Yes, Most Pro-Housing Set of Zoning Changes in City History 

Proposal Will Build up to 80,000 New Homes Over Next 15 Years, Invest Billions Towards Critical Infrastructure Updates 

NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul today celebrated an agreement on the “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” proposal, a historic zoning proposal to enable the creation of a “little more housing in every neighborhood,” and invest $5 billion towards critical infrastructure updates and housing. The announcement comes after the New York City Council Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises and Committee on Land Use’s vote to approve this proposal. As New York City faces a generational housing crisis with just a 1.4 percent rental vacancy rate, the proposal would allow for the creation of up to 80,000 new homes over the next 15 years and help lower the cost of rent for New Yorkers across the five boroughs. The City of Yes proposal alone exceeds all the housing created from rezonings during the 12 years of the Bloomberg administration and the eight years of the de Blasio administration.  

“Everyday New Yorkers have carried the burden of a generational housing crisis for far too long. Today, in partnership with Governor Hochul, Speaker Adams, and Chairs Salamanca and Riley, we are one step closer to delivering long overdue relief through the ‘City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,’” said Mayor Adams. “Thanks to our shared commitment in building critically-needed housing, we have reached an agreement on a historic plan that could open the doors to a little more housing in every neighborhood in our city — with no borough, block, or backyard left behind. If passed, New York City will, once again, serve as a model to the nation on government’s infinite ability to take challenges head-on, set forth a bold agenda, and get the job done. To my partners in the City Council, let’s say ‘yes’ to City of Yes.” 

“New York has a housing affordability crisis and there’s only one way out: build more housing,” said Governor Hochul. “That’s why earlier this year, I fought tooth-and-nail for a major package of reforms and investments that will build thousands of new homes for everyday New Yorkers. We got it done, in part, because of strong partnerships with our colleagues in New York City, and I’m proud to stand with them as they move forward with their plan to build a little more housing in every neighborhood. Now, we’re adding a $1 billion state commitment to support affordable housing in New York City. We need all hands-on deck to build more housing and make New York more affordable for all of us.” 

City of Yes for Housing Opportunity invests $5 billion towards the city’s housing and critical infrastructure updates. Mayor Adams is committing $1 billion for housing capital. He is also investing $2 billion in infrastructure projects — to be reflected in upcoming financial plans — that will support investments in sewer and flood infrastructure, street improvements, and open space. Finally, Mayor Adams will spend $1 billion in expense funding over 10 years in tenant protection, voucher assistance and combatting source-of-income discrimination, flood monitoring, and neighborhood planning. Additionally, thanks to her strong leadership and shared commitment to building housing, Governor Hochul is committing another $1 billion to housing capital over the next five years, subject to state budget approval.  

Mayor Adams and New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams have made historic investments toward creating affordable housing over the last three years. In June, City Hall and the City Council agreed on an on-time, balanced, and fiscally-responsible $112.4 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Adopted Budget that invests $2 billion in capital funds across FY25 and FY26 to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the New York City Housing Authority’s capital budgets. In total, the Adams administration has committed a record $26 billion in housing capital in the current 10-year plan as the city faces a generational housing crisis. This past spring, the city celebrated the largest 100 percent affordable housing project in 40 years with the Willets Point transformation.  

MAYOR ADAMS APPOINTS JESSICA TISCH AS NYPD COMMISSIONER 

Tisch Will Be Only Second Female to Serve as NYPD Commissioner, Both Appointed Under Mayor Adams’ Leadership   

NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams today announced the appointment of Jessica Tisch as commissioner of the New York City Police Department (NYPD), effective Monday, November 25. Tisch will be the second female to serve as commissioner of the NYPD in its 179-year history; the first, Commissioner Keechant Sewell, was also appointed by Mayor Adams.  

Tisch — a 12-year veteran of the NYPD and the current commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) — will take the helm of the nation’s largest police department as overall crime continues to drop across the five boroughs for the 10th straight month, as of October 2024. As DSNY commissioner, Tisch has led the successful execution of the Adams administration’s “Trash Revolution,” which has containerized 70 percent of the 44 million pounds of trash that New Yorkers set out on the curbs each day.  

“The people of this city have been clear that they agree with what our administration has been fighting for since day one in office: a safer city where they don’t need to worry about walking down the street or taking the subway at night. To ensure New Yorkers have the ability to thrive in our city, we need a strong, battle-tested leader who will continue to drive down crime and ensure New Yorkers are safe and feel safe, and I cannot think of a leader more up to the task than Commissioner Jessica Tisch. As one of the most successful managers in our administration, I am confident that Commissioner Tisch will effectively lead the greatest police department in the world and continue to deliver the safety and peace of mind New Yorkers deserve,” said Mayor Adams. “I also want to thank Interim Police Commissioner Thomas Donlon for serving our city over the last two months, after a lifetime of serving our state and this country. We appreciate his willingness to quickly come on board and dedicate day and night to this city. I look forward to having him serve in his new role.”  

“For 12 years, I cherished the special privilege of serving alongside the brave women and men of the New York City Police Department. I’ve seen firsthand the profound nobility of the policing profession, and I was proud to work shoulder-to-shoulder with both uniform members and civilians to propel the NYPD into the next century of technological advancement,” said Incoming NYPD Commissioner Tisch. “I thank Mayor Adams for the tremendous honor to now lead the NYPD, and I understand the solemnity of this great responsibility. It is now my distinct honor to advance Mayor Adams’ vision of fighting crime and disorder; keeping our great city safe and vibrant; protecting all New Yorkers, including our officers who put their lives on the line every day, so they can live free of fear; continuing to build the most nimble municipal counterterrorism apparatus in the world; and implementing the most forward-thinking law enforcement training and technology. We will do all of this with integrity as we continue to build public confidence and trust in the police.” 

About Jessica Tisch 

Jessica Tisch is a 17-year veteran of city government who has dedicated her professional life to serving the people of New York. Tisch was appointed DSNY commissioner in April 2022, managing the city’s waste collection, recycling, and disposal, as well as cleaning and snow removal for approximately 6,500 miles of city streets. Under her leadership, New York City has seen generational change in sanitation service, including the launch of the “Trash Revolution,” which, to date, has placed 70 percent of trash in New York City under container mandate, as well as the rollout of weekly universal curbside composting service to all 3.5 million residences in New York City.  

Previously, Tisch served as commissioner of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) and citywide chief information officer from December 2019 to January 2022. As commissioner, she ran the largest municipal IT organization in the country, with a wide portfolio ranging from public safety to human services to economic development as well as New York City 311. She also rolled out the city’s first text-to-911 capability. While at DoITT, Tisch additionally served as a core member of the team that managed the city’s COVID-19 pandemic response — building and managing critical programs that tangibly served New Yorkers, including the city’s vaccination system.  

Prior to joining DoITT, Tisch spent the majority of her career at the New York City Police Department, where she served as deputy commissioner of information technology and oversaw the NYPD’s 911 operations. She spearheaded efforts to use technology to transform the NYPD’s fundamental business processes, including how officers are dispatched and respond to 911 calls, take crime reports, investigate, and search for wanted or missing persons. 

She also managed the development and implementation of the flagship Domain Awareness System, which is at the heart of the NYPD’s crime fighting and counterterrorism operations. Under her leadership, every officer was equipped with a smartphone, giving them access to real-time information in the field, as well as improving their accessibility to the public. Tisch also managed the implementation of the NYPD’s body-worn camera program and drove additional efforts to improve transparency and public access to the NYPD, modernizing CompStat by prioritizing democratization of data to precincts. She began her public service career in 2008, when she joined the NYPD as a counterterrorism analyst.  

Tisch is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School and is a lifelong New Yorker. 

TRANSCRIPT FROM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2024: MAYOR ADAMS HOSTS COMMUNITY CONVERSATION

Commissioner Fred Kreizman, Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Fred Kreizman, commissioner of the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit. It’s a pleasure to be here at the Mayor’s Community Conversation. This is our 33rd Community Conversation. It’s a pleasure to be here in Jamaica in the 12th Community Board at the 103rd Precinct.

I want to start off by thanking local police officers who are here today at every single table with members of the Mayor’s Office, but especially I want to thank the police officers who are here. On Tuesday, an officer for the 103rd Precinct as well as a bystander were shot here in Jamaica Avenue by an armed suspect. Both will be okay, but I just want to thank the extraordinary efforts of the police officer to neutralize the situation, and thank God, both the bystander and officer will be okay. I just want to give a round of applause for all officers who are here.

We also just want to thank our host school, P. S. 182, and Principal Andrew Topol.

We’re hosting these community conversations in all five boroughs. As I said, this is the 33rd that we’ve done because the mayor believes in equity, ensuring that every neighborhood, their voices get heard. I just want to go through quickly the runner show. We’re going to have Senator Leroy Comrie say a few words. I just saw him. We’ll have Jenifer Rajkumar, then the mayor will speak.

Deanna is here with us tonight. Will be joined by the chief of staff for the first deputy mayor, Nate Bliss. We have the chief of staff for deputy mayor Strategic Initiatives, we have Chief of Staff Jason Parker. deputy commissioner of NYPD, Mark Stewart. Will be joined by the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Manny Castro. We have ACS, Commissioner Jess Dannhauser. We have NYCHA, Dan Greene, executive vice president.

We have DYCD, Deputy Commissioner Darryl Rattray. We have DSS, HRA Administrator Scott French. H&H, the Population Healthcare, Dr. Ted Long. Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Toni Eyssallenne. Office of Community Mental Health, Executive Director Eva Wong. MOCJ, Director Deanna Logan. Department of Finance, Director of Outreach, Kieran Mahoney. We have New York City Emergency Management, Deputy Commissioner John Grimm. EDC, Senior Vice President Jennifer Cass.

To my left, actually, Senator Leroy Comrie. We have Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar. We have Department of City Planning will be joined by Edith Hsu-Chen, but right now, we have Lin Zeng, the borough director. Small Business Services, commissioner Dynishal Gross. Department of Consumer & Worker Protection, Commissioner Vilda Vera Mayuga. Parks commissioner, Sue Donoghue. Probation commissioner, Juanita Holmes.

DOB, First Deputy Commissioner Kazimir Vilenchik. DOT, Borough Commissioner Nicole Garcia. HPD, Assistant Commissioner Nicole Simmons. New York City Public Schools, Deputy Chancellor Simone Hawkins. Office of Rodent Mitigation, Director Kathleen Corradi. Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice, Executive Director Elijah Hutchinson. Molly Schaeffer, the Office of Asylum Seeker Operations director. CCHR, Human Rights Commission, Chief of Staff, Jose Rios. DEP, Queens Borough Commissioner, Alfonso Lopez, a graduate of this school. Sanitation Commision– Alfonso. Yes. Sanitation Chief, Robert Cavanaugh.

[Crosstalk.]

FDNY, Deputy Chief Daniel Brown. We have NYPD as well, Borough Chief Kevin Williams. We have the 103 Precinct Commanding Officer, Deputy Inspector Ralph Clement. We’re joined by the 102 CO, Deputy Inspector Jeremy Kivlin, 107 CO, Captain Mo Tsang, 113 CO, Inspector Ray Jenkins, Transit District 20 CO, Captain Steven Hyland, Community Affairs Bureau, Assistant Commissioner Foster, and the Chief of Community Affairs Bureau, Chief Richie Taylor. Again, thank you very much for everyone being here. We’ll hand it over to Senator Leroy Comrie.

State Senator Leroy Comrie: Good evening, everyone. I’m going to be brief. I’m going to get out the way. I just want to say good evening. I want to thank the mayor for allowing me to sit next to him. I look forward to a spirited discussion from Southeast Queens and go from there. Thank you all for being here. Thank you.

State Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar: Good evening, Jamaica. I’m State Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar. We made history when I became the first South Asian American woman ever elected to a New York State office.

Today, I want to say thank you to Mayor Adams for coming back to Queens again where he grew up. I think often of his motto, which is stay focused, no distractions, and grind, not just words, but a way of life. I’d like to report to you on a lot of the initiatives I’ve been taking to improve quality of life in our city. The first is a huge victory we had this year, the great Senator Leroy Comrie and I got through our SMOKEOUT Act, which allowed the city to now close down all the illegal smoke shops that have been plaguing our neighborhoods. I want to thank the mayor for already closing down, I believe, over 1,200 illegal smoke shops right now. We are on our way.

Along with quality of life, we all have almost been hit by an e-bike. I know I certainly have. We need accountability, which is why I have introduced a package of reforms to make sure that these e-bikes have license plates, registration, and insurance. That way we can keep our streets safer for all. Finally, there’s been the phenomenon of ghost cars. Ghost cars are ghosts because you can’t trace them because the license plates are covered up, concealed, or fake, and so I have introduced the Ghostbusters Act, which is going to crack down on these vehicles by giving our law enforcement the tools they need to get the job done.

I want to thank you for having me tonight. It’s always great to be among you. Finally, I want to invite you all to my Thanksgiving turkey giveaway, which I host annually. It’s this Saturday at 2:00 PM, not too far away, at my office on Woodhaven Boulevard. Thank you all so much, and happy Thanksgiving.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thank you. I thank just all of you, and particularly the principal, for allowing us to use the school. It’s good to be back here in Southeast Queens. Southside, we outside, as we always like to believe. It’s good to see you, Erica. Things going well. We want a good lively discussion as we talk about the topics that’s impacting all of us in the city. At every town hall, I like to go back and tell us where were we, January 1st, 2022 when I became the mayor of the City of New York.

One of your own, grew up on 167th Street and the 111th Avenue. Went to P.S. 140, ISA, and then Bayside High School. My mother was betrayed by this city in so many ways. Having to work three jobs, raising six children. Even when she needed food from the city, they gave us that hard-assed cheese filled with salt and led to her high blood pressure. My sister lost her childhood because she had to be the mother for the six of us while mommy went back and forth. I was committed to dedicate my life to one day becoming the mayor so we can reverse some of those betrayals.

When I became the mayor, January 1st, 2022, we had a 40 percent increase in crime. We were not invested in foster care children, NYCHA residents didn’t have access to high-speed broadband, their children could not do tele learning and their mothers could not do telemedicine. Jobs were hemorrhaging. Unemployment was high. Black unemployment was four times the rate of white unemployment. Those who had learning disabilities were not getting the support that they deserved. 30 percent to 40 percent of the people in Rikers Island right now are dyslexic.

We saw the lack of investment in foster care, we saw the inability to build housing in this city, we saw COVID. Then in the midst of our economic recovery, what happened? We had 220,000 migrants and asylum seekers. People used to stop me all the time and say, “Eric, what are you doing to us?” They didn’t realize that I had no authorization to stop the buses from coming in. It was against federal law. Had no authorization to allow people to have a job and work. That was against federal law.

I was required by city law to give three meals a day, educate 40,000 children, house individuals, and I couldn’t even take those who are committing serious crimes, violent crimes, I couldn’t even deport them. City law did not allow me to do that. In spite of that, out of those 220,000, 170-something thousand have gone on to the next leg of their journey because we get their intense training and we were committed to not one child or family sleeping on the street.

Two years and 10 months later, I know you hear a lot of noise, you pick up the paper and you think, “Oh my God, this city’s in disarray.” No, it is not. If you go back, that’s the same game they try to play when Dinkins was elected. Two years and 10 months later, we have more jobs in the City of New York in the city’s history. City’s history. More small businesses are operating right now in the city history. Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer and her team, we financed and renovated in year one and year two more housing in those individual years in the city’s history. We move more people out of homelessness into permanent housing in the city’s history in year one and year two.

More people that needed subsidized housing with vouchers, we allowed the use of that in the history of the program. We’re now paying the college tuition of foster care children, giving them a stipend and a life coach until they’re 21 years old so they can be productive in society. We’re doing dyslexia screening for all of our young people so they don’t think they’re dumb, they just learn differently so that one day they can be like Eric Adams who’s dyslexic and can become the mayor of the City of New York because of opportunities.

The independent bond raters have raised our bonds. Close to 20,000 illegal guns, we removed off the street. Put money in the crisis management team so they can get on the ground and talk to our young people. 100,000 summer youth employment jobs. Never has been done before. 110,000 summarizing all year-long school learning for our children.

NYCHA residents, our babies now have free high-speed broadband in every NYCHA resident in this city. Dropped the cost of child care from $55 a week to less than $5 a week so parents can go back to work and have quality childcare in the process. You looked at what I ran on and then looked at what I’ve done, I kept my promise. Kept my promise. Every item that I ran on, we focused on and we were able to accomplish.

Do you know August? August is one of the most highly number– Erica, you know. Highly number of gun shootings in this city. Do you know, last August, we had the lowest number of gun shootings in our city in the history of the city? Do you know robberies on our subway system is the lowest in recorded history of this city? You don’t read that, do you? You don’t read any of that because they want to give you the impression the second mayor of color to run this city cannot run it in a sufficient way.

This is the greatest city on the globe, and we have created one of the greatest administrations and we turned this city around and no one thought we can do it. We did it in 2 years and 10 months. They told me we were going to take me five years to revise our economy. We did it in 2 years and 10 months. With all that’s going on every day, the attacks, their criticism, I wake up every day, put one feet in front of the other, and do my damn job, and I’m doing it every day. Every day.

We got a lot more to do. Got a lot more to do. Yes. There are some things we can do differently, yes. We got a lot we have to work on, but we stood 30-something town halls, 17 senior town halls, 7 youth town halls to hear directly from you. That’s what I want to do tonight. I want to take mayor privilege by starting with you, brother, because you had a video that I saw, and I didn’t understand it all. I know you were saying a lot, so I said, let me see if you’re going to come tonight. I’m going to give you the first mic so that you can– Don’t drop the mic. Just share the issues that’s facing you, okay? Introduce yourself.

Question: Good evening. I’m James Johnson. I am the Southern Queens Park Association chair of the advisory council. It’s a pleasure to be here, Mayor Adams. I don’t think you was aware of what was going on with Southern Queens Park Association, so I wanted to come here tonight to let you know that we need your help. You just got here. You just got here. The things that’s been happening in the park’s agency has been spewing for decades. It’s tough to say, “Come fix this,” but this park, this is the only community center in Southeast Queens. We’re talking about Roy Wilkins Park, the only one. It’s Black men since 1976.

Nothing else in the city is like Southern Queens Park Association, and we need your help. Parks is literally cutting our legs from underneath us, and we want full control permitting access through the park like we had since 1970 so it could be community-led. That’s what we’re asking. Complete community-led. We’re not asking for much, but we just need access to outside the park. We don’t need to be doing a seven-page document to Central, then Central comes and says, “We never got the permit a day before the event,” or they might say, “Seven page? We have to do again. Oh, we need a million dollars for insurance, for a car show. Oh, we have 30 cars, so that’s $30 million for insurance.”

These attacks have been happening under the new executive director. We’re on the right page. We got a young brother that’s doing his thing. He’s from Southeast Queens. We all grew up in that park. We are seeing time being shut and cut down from the nonprofits that’s been here for 20, 40 years in that park. We need your help. We’re with you. We never turn our back on you. You look like me, all right? This park needs to be Black-managed. No compromising, no negotiations. Let’s do this thing the right way since 1976.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Listen, let me tell you something. I am not pleased, and I have never been pleased how whenever we want to do something, the game changes. I’m not the choir. I wrote the song. Even when you look at what we’ve been doing down in Bowling Green with flag raisings, we have been raising flags for communities, immigrant communities and other communities in the city. We just did the whole African diaspora. Their flag was never raised at Bowling Green. Only certain countries were allowed to raise their flags there. We opened Gracie Mansion to do cultural events from Diwali and others where they never had events at Gracie Mansion.

Being mayor is not only substantive of the things that we do successfully, but they’re also symbolic. I must show the symbol that this city is not just for some, it’s for everyone. That has never been in place. Tomorrow, there’s supposed to be a meeting around this issue. I have the parks commissioner here who I knew from Prospect Parks. She was in charge of the Prospect Park Alliance, and she brought so much innovation in parks. Sue, can you help me understand this issue? I only got a tidbit when I saw his video.

Commissioner Sue Donoghue, Department of Parks and Recreation: Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Mayor Adams, and thank you for raising the issue. I saw the video as well, and I said to Mr. Johnson, “I wish he had reached out first before the video.” We are about partnership and collaboration. It is the history of the Parks Department. We know our parks are stronger and better by having great community groups and partnership in our parks. We also know, and I deeply know how important SQPA has been to Roy Wilkins Park and the incredible partnership that there has been there over the years.

As Mayor Adams said, we do have a meeting there tomorrow to address these issues. We want to, and we’ve been working closely on moving forward in agreement. The existing agreement expired back in 2022, and so we absolutely want to work forward and create and sign a new agreement. You have had great support from your elected council member, Nantasha Williams. I’ve talked to here extensively on this. Senator Comrie has been involved.

We appreciate the importance of this issue, and we are completely committed to making sure that we can get to an agreement here, but it does need to be an agreement that reflects the city’s priorities, the mayor’s priorities. We are thinking about equity and access, and it has to be consistent across the board how we run all of our parks, how we engage with all of our community groups. There are regulations around permitting and events, and there does. The mayor and I have talked about this directly. We do need insurance for our events.

For the safety of your organization, if something happened when there was a big event, you need to be protected and the city needs to be protected. There is no doubt that there are very specific things that the city requires and that are legally required in things like events and it’s for the safety of all park users. We want to work through those issues. The mayor has great expertise on his team that we’re bringing to bear to that meeting tomorrow. Definitely, we want to sit down, roll up our sleeves, and get this figured out.

Mayor Adams: What we’re going to do, you’re going to meet tomorrow. You’re going to be in that meeting? Someone needs to be there to update you on what’s going on. You’re going to be there senator?

Commissioner Donoghue: Senator Comrie, yes.

Mayor Adams: I’m sorry? Okay.

Commissioner Donoghue: The head of SQPA, Jermaine, is going to be there, absolutely.

Mayor Adams: Let’s make sure the place at the table. Immediately after the meeting, team is going to update me. We have examples of communities running parks. We have the Prospect Park Conservancy, we have Prospect Park Alliance, we have the Bryant Park. They’re examples, and we’re going to use those as the models to give you what you need here. This community is very competent. This is some of the highest level of professionals. You have held down this community for many years. Whatever way we can duplicate what others are doing, we’re not going to give you anything less.

We got to follow the law because we’re restricted on some rules. That’s why it’s important to have– I think Adrienne Adams, the speaker, is going to be there also. The speaker is going to be there, the councilperson is going to be there, our team is going to be there. We’re going to walk out the room where we’re going to use everything within our legal authority to make sure you get the representation that you’re looking for. My understanding, this is the only park that Black folks are running. We want to maintain that, but we’re going to maintain a standard at the same time, because the last person that was running it, think he—

Question: [Inaudible.] We have a guy that went to [inaudible] he went to NYU [inaudible].

Mayor Adams: Okay brother. I’m not concerned with schools he went to, he could have gone to P.S. 140, long as he does the job.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: Right, that’s all I want. Long as he’s doing the job. Some of the things that you ask for, it has to be within the law. If it’s within the law, we’re going to do it. It has to be within the law because we can’t violate the law to run something. The team is going to be there, your lector is going to be there, and we’re going to land the plane, okay? Alright.

Question: Good evening. My name is Rana Epps. I’m from the King of Kings Foundation. A hospital responder manager for CMS. We at table one have a question about the shared scooters, and how do we resolve the issue of them being around the community, just laying around in front of buildings, Rochdale, all the way down to the end of [inaudible]?

Mayor Adams: Who else from DOT? Okay. I’m with them on this one.

Nicole Garcia, Queens Borough Commissioner, Department of Transportation: Hi. Good evening, everyone. I’m Nicole Garcia, and I’m the Queens borough commissioner for New York City DOT. The first thing that I’d like to share with you and the audience, is that we have been in touch with a lot of the residents in Southeast Queens and heard from a lot of the elected officials, including Senator Comrie, Speaker Adams, the councilmember, and some of the civics. We heard about the issues of organization and also about enforcement.

We’ve been talking with the local elected, the community board, and we’re working very quickly to install corrals. These are going to be designated parking spaces. They will help organize the system, but at the same time, they’re going to help with enforcement because you have to take a picture after you complete a ride. All riders need to take a picture of where they deposit the bike. If they’re not doing it correctly, they’re going to get a warning, and then it escalates, and it could ultimately end up being a fine, or if they keep doing it, they could be banned from the system.

Another thing that we’re working on is rebalancing the system. Based on the direct feedback from the community, the companies have hired a team of 12 people that is covering their on-the-ground, responding to complaints. They’re visiting sites across the service area, including Southeast Queens, to respond to if a user dropped it off in front of someone’s gate, they’re on the ground to respond to those complaints.

Mayor Adams: Thanks a lot, Nicole. Listen, they got to step up their game, plain and simple. When I drive through South Jamaica, Queens, and I see those darn scooters all over the place, just in front of people houses, etc, we’re going to put them on probation. They have to step up their game. I don’t know if it’s a fit in a community like Southeast Queens, so we’re going to give them a few days to correct their action.

It’s a privilege to work in New York City, to sell your product in New York City. This is the place where your products are tested and determined if they can go national, if not international. I’m not happy with what those scooters are doing. If they can’t correct the problem, they have to bounce. They got to get out of our city.

I spoke with a Ydanis Rodriguez, the commissioner. I spoke with him the other day. He stated that when I drove through, I’m seeing these scooters all over the place, thrown in front of the streets. Listen, that’s disorder. I’m not about disorder. I’m about order. We’re going to give them an opportunity to correct their problem. If not, they need to find another city somewhere to do their duties. We’re going to give it a 30-day and take a look at the corralling and all the other stuff, but I’m not pleased with it. I’m going to be honest with you. I’m not pleased with it. Let’s see what happens in about 30 days.

How are you?

Question: Good. How are you doing?

Mayor Adams: Quite well.

Question: Welcome back to Southeast Queens.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Question: Thanks for bringing the team along. I’m a long-life resident of Southeast Queens. I’ve been here all my life. I love it. I’m a single-family homeowner. I’m here to represent–

Mayor Adams: What high school did you go to?

Question: August Martin. What, what?

Mayor Adams: We used to beat y’all down in ball, man.

Question: Oh, come, man. Which high school did you go to?

Mayor Adams: I went to Bayside, commodores. My brother went to August Martin. He didn’t have any game.

Question: You got a good point there. Alright. Let me get to my question. In regards to the City of Yes, how are you ensuring that the following quality of life issues are addressed: That housing is truly affordable and not just market rate, that you have the right funding to support the infrastructure that’s needed to support this type of growth, like parking, schools, sewage, as such? I know you’ve worked out some $5 billion things that you could maybe speak to.

Also, how are you going to ensure there’s proper code enforcement and that their agencies are going to be properly funded to deal with basement apartments and things of that nature, ADUs, when DOB today is vastly understaffed and can’t keep up with the stuff today? The other thing is, why isn’t Mitchell-Lama model or co-op model mandated in the City of Yes. Where you talk about generational wealth and everything like that, but these types of programs are just creating rentals and things that don’t inspire or support generational wealth. Thanks.

Mayor Adams: For those who are familiar with City of Yes, our zoning in the City of New York was racist. Going back to Robert Moses days, we created places in the city where you couldn’t build. We created places in the city where they wanted to maintain the communities. Folks, we’ve got a 1.4 percent vacancy rate. 1.4 percent. For low-income, it is functionally zero.

As I moved around the city, there’s not one elected official that’s here that won’t tell you the number one issue people talk about is public safety and housing. Our elders, when I go to my senior centers, some of these elders are in tears because they are afraid they’re going to be moved out of this city. They can’t afford to live in the city.

We have 59 community boards. Out of the 59 community boards, 10 build more and finance more housing than the 49 combined. Combined. Jordan came home from school from Washington, he can’t afford it and he doesn’t have a place to stay. The inventory is so low that those who have the inventory, when you have a lease or something, what do you do? You drive up the cost. We had to come up with a place, a way of how do we build a little more housing in every community, not in some communities, but every community. That’s what City of Yes is.

Did we have to talk about ADUs? Yes, we did. Did we have to talk about parking? Yes, we did. Did we have to talk about all these other issues and negotiating and come up with money to build the infrastructure? We allocated $4 billion to building the infrastructure that you’re talking about, and another billion dollars, we were able to talk to the governor who said, “This is so important, we’re going to put in another billion dollars,” because of the advocacy of our elected officials in getting it done.

We just signed the agreement. We’ve been up all night to talk about those issues that you’re talking about, brother. That people, the local electors say, “These are the issues that are important to our community because it’s not a one-size-fits-all,” but all of us had the same mission in mind. We got to build more housing for everyday New Yorkers so New Yorkers can have a place to sleep and stay. I have a home. I have a home. I have not bumped into one homeless person and said, “Don’t do more housing.” I don’t think anybody in this room is homeless.

Now, 1 of the 60,000 people that are living in homeless shelters say, “Don’t find another way to build more housing.” Not one. If a child is raised in a homeless shelter, he’s less likely to graduate from high school. If you don’t educate, you will incarcerate. The only common denominator we have on Rikers Island and in our state prisoners is education. They just put out a report of the number of children who are housing insecure.

I got you. We don’t want to disrupt Southeast Queens. We don’t want people building towers in their backyard. We sat down with the council people Selvena Brooks-Powers, Speaker Adrienne Adams, Nantasha Williams. They drove a hard bargain based on what they heard from their communities, and that is why this program is not a one-size-fits-all. They’re different carve-outs based on the neighborhoods and based on what was advocated. The speaker and her team said, “If you’re going to build more housing, you have to put the capital dollars into the infrastructure.”

We are putting $5 billion into that so we can get it right and we don’t disrupt the community, but we got to build more housing. If we don’t, you are going to see many of our seniors unable to stay in our community. Your children when they come home from school and college, they’re not going to be able to have a place to live in this city. Those who are expanding in families, they’re not going to have a place to live in this city. That is what we did, and we did it in a very humane way. Senator Comrie talks about it often. We do need to go to the Mitchell-Lama model. That was a good model.

My first property was a co-op, and I was able to move to buy a brownstone. We need to get back into home ownership. That is some of the stuff we’re looking at. How do we even be creative like Rubén Díaz Jr did where you go in and you rent with the eventual option to be able to purchase a home? We got to get home ownership. If people don’t have home ownership, you’re not going to build wealth. That is what we want to focus on. She’s not here to speak for herself, but we are zero focus on home ownership, housing. How do we build economic wealth for people?

Your question is dead on. It’s dead on. There were too many communities in this city that was doing nothing for the housing crisis, and they refused to, and we had to make sure that everyone plays a role in dealing with the housing crisis. Thank you for your question.

Question: [Inaudible] from you that you will build a unit in your residence as well?

Mayor Adams: My family house is here in South Jamaica, Queens. My brownstone is in Bed-Stuy. 14 years ago, probably even longer, when my tenants moved in, I gave them a piece of paper, the lease, and I said, “If you look at that last line on the lease, it is the commitment that as long as you live here for how long you live here, I could never raise your rent.” They never had their rent raised since they’ve been in my building. There’s a lot for human need, there’s not a lot for human greed. I’m committed to not only talking about it, but being about it. I’m committed to that every day in a real way.

Question: Good evening, everyone. I’m Reverend Thorbs, I’m the chairperson of CB12. Thank you, Mayor Adams, for having this event.

Mayor Adams: You’re quite welcome.

Question: As the chair, everything that’s being said from every table touches home for us because this is my district. The question I have here is in regards to quality of life, but I have to say, I would be remiss. We have built up downtown Jamaica. There was a 580-block rezoning, and that was to protect the homeowners. Now with the City of Yes, which is threatening us again, there’s more building that is intended to take place.

We don’t need that in our blocks. We have the buildings down here that aren’t all the way filled. We prefer to not have to build anymore. We’ve done our share. We’ve more than done our share. What’s being threatened, St. Albans and other areas that are by the Long Island Railroad, those are one and two-family homes. I had Department of Planning’s come into one of our meetings and tell us, because we’re one and two-family homeowners, it’s our fault. It’s our fault that we’re in the situation that we are in here in South Jamaica.

I don’t think that is fair. I know it’s not fair. This is our American dream. No one has the right to shuffle us around and remove us for somebody else to have their American dream on our backs.

Getting to the question, can you please tell us what are you going to do to ensure your agencies are responsive and adequately operating in our district in regards to quality of life, including the homeless situation in the district that is also impacting our school safety, and we need more police?

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you for that. A couple of things. I want to peel back what you said because there’s a couple of things. First of all, I want to thank you for the work you have been doing. I come across your conversation a lot. I could never do my enough as long as there’s somebody that’s homeless. I’ll never say I did my share. My share is making sure everyone can have access to this city. There’s never time in my life that I want to be at a place that I can say, as long as someone is without, that I’ve done my share. My share is when it’s completed. That’s when I’ve done my share.

It’s important for us to realize that there are people in the city, folks, that are hurting, hurting. Hurt people not only hurt themselves, they hurt others. They hurt others. We have three New Yorkers who were stabbed. One is a mother of an eight-year-old. She’s gone because we had a person who was hurting. He was dealing with severe mental health issues. He was suicidal and homicidal. Many people beat this administration up when we stated in January 2022 that we need to do involuntary removals to take people off the street who are hurting themselves and hurting others and not wait until they commit a crime and put them on Rikers Island.

51 percent of the people on Rikers Island are dealing with mental health issues. We wait until someone do something, and we say, “You know what? That’s not my issue.” It is our issue because that person who’s hurting is going to hurt one of our family members.

Our quality of life pursuit of dealing with those quality of life from scooters to homelessness to garbage problems, the 70 percent of New Yorkers are now going to containerize their garbage because [these] garbage plastic bags [were] created, the rodent issues, the spiraling effect of ignoring these qualities of life issues, particularly in areas like Southeast Queens, it has impacted us for years. We’re on board with this, and particularly partnering with our community board leaders and those who are the chair of the community boards to address these very real issues.

The problems we’re facing that you mentioned, it is hard for us to believe, but they didn’t start January 1st, 2022. It’s been going on for a little while, but this administration is making impact. How are they going to be responsive? Look who’s here? You got my whole crew. I didn’t come here with one or two people. You got representatives from every aspect of government that’s sitting up here at this table here tonight because we’re not a 9:00 to 5:00 operation. This is showing you the respect that you deserve right up here.

Every piece of my administration is up here represented to hear your questions and respond to you. That’s responsive government. That is what you’re going to get from me as long as I’m your mayor. You have access to all of them. If they don’t do right, you have access to me. You have access to me.

Question: Hi.

Mayor Adams: How you doing? I saw you when I walked in. I knew you were going to be trouble.

Question: Hello. I don’t even think I need the mic. Do I need the mic?

Mayor Adams: Go ahead, you need the mic. They got to hear you over there.

Question: I do have a teacher voice, but I’ll try my best. Thank you so much for being here.

Mayor Adams: You’re quite welcome.

Question: So you did mention a couple of things about how you’re committed to helping and supporting, and I am a teacher in this building, and in the last few years, our migrant community has increased a lot. I’m just curious, what are some ways that our city has effectively worked with the state and the federal government? Because we do understand that your hands are tied in many situations, but how are we providing support for our migrant communities? If you’re having this kind of trouble working with the city and state, what are ways that we can collaborate so that way we can ensure success for all? Because the kids, they’re struggling, the teachers are struggling, and it’s becoming really hard, and it just seems a little unfair at this point.

Mayor Adams: 100 percent. Listen, we were getting 4,000 migrants and asylum seekers a week, 8,000 every two weeks, 16,000 a month that we had to house, we had to clothe, we had to educate. I think we had over 40,000 children were incorporated into our school system, and we had to come up with a real plan. You looked at with Dr. Long and what he did over our HERRCs, and we had to, one, advocate. I went to Washington 10 times to say the number one thing migrants and asylum seekers are saying. They say, “We don’t want anything free from you. We want to work. We want to work.”

That’s all they want. They want to work. You don’t travel thousands of miles on foot. When I went down to the South America, to the Darién Gap, watching people walk here. They came here to pursue the American dream, like all of us did, and they want to find their way, and that’s what we provided for them. We provided them the educational opportunities for their children. We provided them with an opportunity of 30 days for single adults to be able to stabilize inside our shelters, and then we gave them intense information on how to make your way inside the city like many immigrants have done.

This is a city of immigrants. It’s a country of immigrants, and many immigrants have come here and started out and made sure that they could get access to information so they can find their way, and that’s what we did, and we continue to do that every day. When you go down to the National Immigrant Leaders, national, came to the city, and they stated that we hear that you’re anti this, anti that, and then we gave them a whole day of watching what we’ve done, and know what they said at the end of the day when they had dinner with me at Gracie Mansion, they said no one in the country is doing what you’re doing. New York is the model for the country to put people on a pathway to pursue the American dream and not the nightmare of sitting around.

You go to Randall’s Island, you have 3,000 people, roughly, on Randalls Island that are sitting around all day doing nothing at all. That’s a recipe for disaster. Same in Creedmoor. Same in Floyd Bennett Field. We wanted to move folks in areas that won’t disrupt communities, but those areas had overflowed. Now, folks, we’re reticketing who said, I never wanted to come to New York in the first place. We’re allowing them to go to where they wanted to go.

This team of Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom, Dr. Long of the shelters, folks who are working in the shelters for the migrants and asylum seeker folks, you know who they are? They’re the same folks that had to deny their families because of COVID. Many of them couldn’t even go home. When you leave from one traumatic experience, and then you have to go directly into another traumatic experience, we owe those social service workers a debt of gratitude because they went through the trauma of COVID.

Many of them lost loved ones, lost family members. Many of them lost so many. They were sick themselves, but instead of throwing up their hands, they said we got these thousands of people coming into our city, we have an obligation to live up to them. I cannot thank them enough for seeing them all night long holding down this crisis. Think about this for a moment, 4,000 people a week, 8,000 people every 2 weeks, 16,000 a month.

I’m getting calls 2:00 AM in the morning, “Eric, we got another bus here that’s here, and we got to find a place for them to stay.” This is what we navigated, and we did, and gave people the dignity and respect that they deserve in the process, and we’re still doing that. We dropped that 220,000 to something like 64,000. We continue to have people cycle into being self-sustaining.

You’re right, but the real question is, federal government fix the immigration problem and don’t have New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Denver. We should not be fixing a national problem, and it should not be $6.4 billion of our tax dollars to fix the national problem. They did nothing for us. They gave us $200 million out of a $6.4 billion price tag that we had to experience. Thank Senator Comrie and the state lawmakers that fought to give us the state, put billions of dollars into assist us as well. This has been a real struggle that we were able to overcome in the process.

Question: Good evening, everyone. My name is Kenya. I’m currently the program manager at 100 Suits, which is part of the New York City Crisis Management System. At table 5, our question was surrounding mental health support. If you look at mental health, it has… every problem that we suffer in New York City stems from some sort of mental health. Support in real life looks like what to you? All the young people I deal with, their family members, they come from some sort of mental health, and I don’t truly see mental health support for them. If we had more mental health in real life, right, I think that we would have a little less problems in our community.

Mayor Adams: Eva, can you– or either one of you, you chomping at the bit because you know we’ve done so much, so you want to respond to that.

Eva Wong, Executive Director, Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health: Thank you for your question. I’m from the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health. I’m joined by my colleague from Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Youth mental health is absolutely a priority for the mayor and for this administration. We put out a plan that really talks about valuing young children, young people, and families as one of the special population.

I hope that by now you are aware of Teenspace that is available for 13 to 17-year-olds. Through an app, they can get free access to mental health care. What we need to do is make sure that these type of resources that are completely available to young people is known to you. Another thing that I have to make sure that everybody here is aware of is the 988 number. Sometimes there are resources, but our community is not aware of it and they can get access.

The starting point I want to make sure everybody’s aware of is 988. That’s the number you call 24/7, a hotline. Anybody can call. It is a suicide hotline, but it’s also a referral line. You speak to a life crisis counselor when you call anytime of the day, and you get referral and you find out about what is available in your neighborhood, even including wait list and things like that. That’s only the starting point.

We hear you that– Dr. Tony and I were talking even right before this, that we need to make sure there are more resources, and we want people to get to help before they’re really suffering. This is something that we’re completely dedicated to. If there’s specific things that you want to speak about where you’re not seeing the integration of health services, that’s what DYCD and we work on that as well to make sure that whether it’s after-school program or even in school, we have teams are talking about how do we make these liaisons and people who are equipped with checking on people and even for young people to have the skills to cope. All these things are things that we talk about.

We converse. We meet all the time. I am available to talk to you more, but want to make sure you know Teenspace is through an app. You can just Google and look the Teenspace completely free and also 988. Is there anything else that you want to add? I’m available to give you my contact if you wanted to speak more.

Mayor Adams: I don’t know if you have it in front of you, but the numbers that we got from Teenspace, how many young people have— Teenspace is the new app because our young people are on their phone all the time. You get 24-hour service to speak with a mental health professional and the numbers that we just came out— If you don’t have it, don’t worry about it. Don’t give a shit.

Wong: Yes. I knew that it was those people who I think in the first six months, thousands of young people decided up to it and a higher part percentage that said that because they were able to tap into it, they did feel better but we want people, I think for a lot of time, for young people these days, stigma is not the issue for them.

They’re willing to talk about it, talk about it in social media what the issue is the help-seeking, “Do I have someone I trust? Do I have someone who really gets my life at the lived experience?” Really valuing peer support and also professional support, balancing it both. These are things that if there are more feedback where you’re not seeing it, we’re available to talk with you.

Mayor Adams: Partnering with folks like Life Camp and Erica Ford, your camp that you move around teaching young people, meditation teaching young people aromatherapy. We now require in our schools that our young people get breathing exercises to deal with the stress. These babies are coming to school by the time we trying to tell them to multiply and divide.

They say, “Listen, I’m broken. What are you doing about healing me before you start telling me to sit down in the classroom?” We know there needs to be a holistic approach to this mental health stuff. When I talk to my educators, they say, “Eric, these kids are high all the time.” All the time, cannabis shops. That’s why we’re closing down these darn cannabis shops.

They say they walk in smelling, wreaking with marijuana, opioids, social media are just hijacking our children. We had to dig into this in a real way. Dr. Vassan, when he came on board, we believed in the clubhouse model. Has to be community care and follow-up. You can’t just give people medication one day and when they come off of what they on, put them back out in the street. We are moving away from that model. You’re right. Mental health issue is leading to the randoms acts of violence, and it’s leading to some of the attacks that you’re seeing. We need to catch people before it gets out of control.

I’m saying we have a real mental health crisis in the country, in the country. People are hurting. When you hurt, you hurt yourself and you hurt others. We have to deal with that pain. That’s how I really take my hat off to what Life Camp has been doing with these young people, identifying the pain that they experience. Alleviating that pain doesn’t mean only medication, just giving somebody medication. It is doing some of the stuff that you’re doing, Erica, around breathing. Listen, when I left the Police Department, the madness that I saw, if my son didn’t come to me and tell me, “Dad, something’s not right with you.”

You may think you laughed it off and you did those 22 years and everything is all right. My son sat down at the table and said, “Dad, something’s not right. Something is not right.” I had to just say, “Listen, you got to go inside.” Think about all the madness we’re going through. Think about all this stuff we’re going through. Stuff is just not right. We have to be honest about acknowledging that I’m hurting. That stigma, particularly in communities of color, we’ve been afraid to say, “I’m hurting.” Then you stigmatize. Listen, folks, we’re in pain, man. We are in pain, and we are going to need each other in non-traditional ways to alleviate that pain. Meditation, breathing, aromatherapy, talking to each other.

Then that age, there are times you’re going to need medication, but that can’t be the starting point. Sister, you’re right, there’s a lot of mental health. There’s a lot. You know what? These folks here up here, think about it. Think about the vicarious trauma they go through. Think about in charge of ACS. Imagine how he feels when a four-year-old child died from starvation. Think about that. Think about what they’ve been in charge of— Commissioner Holmes in charge of probation. Think about what she feels when she see these young people, younger and younger in front of her all the time.

I tell them all the time, “Man, listen, y’all going through some vicarious trauma? Don’t kid yourself.” If you see pain every day, all day, you don’t think you internalized that. God forbid of thousands of houses he goes through, his team goes through, and save children every day. Let one slip through the cracks, and everyone want to beat him up. You don’t think Commissioner Castro, a dreamer right now is not going through some form of reflection and trauma? Let me tell you something, this job is hard, folks. We owe a debt of gratitude to these folks sitting up here doing this work. I’m telling you, this job is hard.

Oh, little man. My man. See, I came over to you. I just knew you were up to something. How you doing?

Question: I’m good. How are you?

Mayor Adams: Good, quite well.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor and everybody else in the audience. My name is Aiden. I am a student at Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School. As a public school student, I’ve been told to my school administration that there is a shortage of teachers. What is being done to fix this problem?

Mayor Adams: Great question. We want to partner with our unions and all of our communities to recruit our teachers because we do have a shortage. That shortage can even grow because we have to change, because of the class size mandate, we’re going to need thousands of more teachers. We need to encourage people. It’s a noble profession. It’s a great profession. We need to encourage people to go inside the classrooms. Teachers inspire. I know you have a favorite teacher. I think about my teacher, Ms. Pasternak, I was dyslexic. People used to call me the dumb student, and I never wanted to read. She always encouraged me.

We want to encourage good people to go into the profession of being teachers. We’re recruiting to do that. That’s our goal. We need help from the UFT. We need help from communities. It’s unfortunate that in other countries, teachers are treated with the level of dignity they deserve. We don’t give them that support here. I did as the mayor. I gave them a good union contract. I actually allowed additional days off from school during the holidays, because a young person wrote me and said, “Why do I have to come back to school in the middle of the holiday?” We changed that.

We have been extremely, extremely receptive to creating an environment in our classrooms where our teachers want to be teachers and they get the support that they deserve. I’m sure they’re proud and happy to have you talk about how we going to do better for teachers? Thank you for that. You going to be a teacher one day? What you going to do?

Question: I would like to be a basketball player and a scientist.

Mayor Adams: A basketball player and a scientist? Love it.

How are you?

Question: Hi, good evening, Mr. Mayor and everyone here. As I looked at your New York City accomplishments, and my name is Elizabeth and I used to be homeless, like a year and a half ago. I stayed in the New York City shelter system. Prior to that, I used to work for ACS, 29 years and then 6 years in teaching. However things happened, went through a journey, had to go into the shelter system, that’s another subject. However, due to the loss of income, I lost housing. I had to result in going into the shelter. Something that I didn’t expect it, something I used to always tell my clients I wouldn’t go in the shelter, but never say never.

I experienced the one year in a shelter. First I want to thank you for changing the 90-day rule. When I came in the shelter and I was like, “90 days. I got to be in here for 90 days to get a voucher, to get assistant.” Like, “What is this?” Because I serve a good God, within three weeks of me going into the shelter, March 16th, 2022, I received my first voucher by the end of the month of March. Then I received another voucher, the Section 8, the emergency housing voucher within April. I stand on what the Word says. I confident prayed and he opened up the door.

Here I am now a community leader in a homeless union, a Vocal New York, based in Brooklyn for a year and a half because during my time in the shelter, I had to network with organizations because I couldn’t understand that system. I couldn’t understand what being in a shelter was like and what was I seeing and what the people was doing. I looked at your data. You said 63,800 plus affordable housing unit. Even though that I was in a shelter, even though I got that first voucher within a month and a half, two vouchers, it still took me a whole year that I actually found housing.

When you based on that look at the data and amount that for one individual with the shelter that I live close to $5,000 a month, no services, no housing specialists, none of that. Thank God, because I worked for ACS, so I had to navigate and did my outreach and everything. I was advocating for myself. I became a voice of the people. My question is, Mr. Mayor, as of today, we have over 131,000 people still residing in the New York shelter, and that’s not even— We’re not touching the migrant crisis. We talk about people that really now is in the shelter system. Then you have 45,000 children.

That’s a lot of children in the shelter system. Either they have vouchers or they’re still waiting on vouchers and then your administration is not telling these shelters that they don’t have to wait 90 days to get a voucher. Is this a revolving door, waiting and waiting, then waiting for the checks to get cut from HR? That takes another three months, but the money is there. I would like to know, why haven’t you not implement the last part of the CityFHEPS voucher passed in 2023 by the city council that would expand eligibility from, one, not getting people evicted from the apartment that they already living in, and also for those that are…

Because you have a lot of city workers in your shelter system. Understand what I’m saying? Then because they work and they have a certain amount of income, they can’t even get a voucher. What can you do to better that? Because shelters is temporarily. That’s what it’s supposed to be, and then you’re supposed to move into your permanent housing. I understand this housing prices units, but based on what you said here, right here, if you have affordable housing and we have over 131,000 people that’s in a shelter, how can that be possible that we still have so many people in a shelter?

Mayor Adams: Yes. First of all, your story is a powerful, powerful, powerful story. It’s a powerful story. It just goes to show you there by the grace of God, go high, ACS employee, city employee, all of a sudden, because of the changes in life, you found yourself in a shelter and you turned your pain into purpose. You didn’t say, “Woe is me. You say, why not me?” You came out and you became an advocate on behalf of others. Because no matter who we are, we’re going to find ourselves in dark places. It doesn’t have to be a burial. It could be a planting. You just have to believe.

We open up housing in certain area through the lottery system. You will have 800 units that’s available, and you will have 100,000 people applying for it. That’s what I talk about when I say we have an inventory problem. We have an inventory problem. When you talk about, why we don’t open up the voucher for anyone. If they’re behind in their rent, why don’t we just give them a voucher? We right now have thousands of people who have vouchers in their hands and can’t find housing because there’s not enough units for it.

To aggravate the problem more, for people who have housing but may have fallen two months back in their rent, now you give them a voucher where, “We going to pay X number of dollars for the rent,” when that should be going to building more housing. I’m sorry?

Question: Not shelters.

Mayor Adams: Not shelters.

Question: Housing.

Mayor Adams: Exactly. That’s what we’re doing. We need to increase the inventory. That goes back to my question and my statement about we got to bill more, and that’s what City of Yes was for so that we could have housing. I know Vocal New York so much because I put a ton of money in by our president into the building that they acquire, and I slept out with them in Albany to talk about homelessness in this city. We got to be vocal, and we got to stay focused. Thank you.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: No one gets it done better than this administration. History has shown that. Thank you so much. Where am I?

Commissioner Kreizman: Oh, table number eight has a question.

Mayor Adams: I’m sorry, go ahead. What did you say?

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: Yes. You get a twofer. We’re not going to forget you, Erica. We’re coming right back to your table.

Commissioner Kreizman: We got a question, table eight.

Mayor Adams: I just saw Chief Macintosh here. This is one of my cops in the 88th precinct. Congratulations.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: I did. I did give him a raise. Go ahead, this table here.

Question: Quick question. One of these other town halls might not have been under your leadership, and it might have been under your leadership. There was a question raised about the Baisley Projects Community Center. It opened up and then it never opened up. Then on top of that, they closed a senior citizen center. There’s no community center. There’s no senior center. They’ve stated at one of these meetings that they were going to open up.

De Blasio did a whole big thing that they were given money after the little boy got killed, but it’s still Mayor Griffith, correct?

Commissioner Kreizman: Dan Greene.

Question: There’s still no community center here, and we really need it.

Mayor Adams: Who? I have NYCHA?

Commissioner Kreizman: Dan Greene.

Dan Greene, Executive Vice President, Property Management Operations, NYCHA: Good evening. Thank you for asking that. We have had some challenges with our community centers recently due to some capital funding issues, but we are trying to get those started again. I’ll talk to you after the meeting to try to talk about what the deadlines are for those with and also bringing our capital team into the conversation about reopening those centers. I understand how critical are the centers are to our NYCHA communities.

I go to a NYCHA property every single day, and I see the amazing work that they do for our residents and also the broader community. We absolutely want to get them open, but sometimes due to the age of our building and some of our funding issues, the community centers sometimes suffer those long delays. I will meet with you after, and we’ll try to get you more details to talk about what we can do there.

Mayor Adams: Do we know the capital dollar amount? Do we know what it is?

Greene: I don’t know, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: Okay, can we look into that?

Greene: Yes, absolutely.

Mayor Adams: I was there, Erica, when Bill came and we did that park opening and we were talking about opening that center. We need to look at that. The senior center is close? All right. Can we–

Greene: Yes, sir.

Mayor Adams: Let’s just find out. Alright, Fred? Okay. All right.

Greene: Mr. Mayor, we have our vice president for Queen Staten Island and our neighborhood administrator here tonight. We’ll meet right after this meeting to talk.

Mayor Adams: Okay. All right. Good, good. Yes, we need to get it work— NYCHA has an $80 billion capital problem, and that’s why we’re doing the NYCHA land trust and we’re doing other things because everyone is talking about the cavalry is coming. That’s not the cavalry, man. That’s taps, those bugles. We need to really find a different funding stream for NYCHA. We need a different funding stream. How are you, ma’am? You taking off? Okay. We finally got rain. You did a rain dance for us? Yes, ma’am.

Question: Good evening–

Mayor Adams: Good evening.

Question: Thank you for the opportunity.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Yes, talk into the mic, or you can hold it for her, either way.

[Crosstalk.]

Mayor Adams: You got it?

Question: Well, thank you again, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Question: My name is Carol Hunt, and I am here to ask this question on behalf of concerned citizens for downtown Jamaica. We represent a relatively small area, and it concerns shelters. This question I’m asking concerns the philosophy behind shelters. Since I’ve been there a little while, I could show my heritage to prove it, it was easy to interact with the staff of shelters, to have collaboration to solve problems that would occur.

Presently, that doesn’t seem to be the case. You really confront two cultures come together when there’s a shelter population and a co-op population or a rental population trying to solve just living in the same space. The question is really how can shelter staff be encouraged to work with local community residents who are organized to work with them so that the cultures do not clash and other issues arise that do not have to?

Mayor Adams: That’s a great question, and I am disappointed to hear that we’re not doing that because that is one of our primary goals. Who could answer that for me?

Scott French, Administrator, New York City Human Resources Administration: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Scott French, I’m the administrator at HRA. I’m here on behalf of my colleagues at DHS. I definitely want to follow up with you afterwards because every shelter is supposed to work with the community, every shelter is supposed to have a community advisory board specifically to address issues around what might be happening in the community.

We’d like to get information on the specific shelters you’re talking about so that we can specifically talk to those providers and get everyone together and make sure that they understand what their responsibilities are because we certainly don’t want it to seem as if the communities and the shelter staff aren’t going to be engaging with you. That’s not our purpose at all.

Mayor Adams: Because that’s a huge win for us when we could collaborate with the community to create this environment of a family setting. Because people want to help and give back, so let’s do that. Identify that location that you’re talking about. Our goal is just that, go into communities and create this symbiotic relationship of how do we work together and help each other. Particularly now during the period of Thanksgiving. A lot of people think it’s called thanks receiving, but it’s called Thanksgiving.

Folks should be adopting a shelter, dropping off some socks. Every Wednesday just about I go and do this feeding late at night with a group called– The name escaped me. We do feeding, and I saw the line continue to grow. Everybody in that line, they’re not homeless. They’re just struggling New Yokers. If we can organize with communities, that’s a huge win for us, and so I want to make sure we do that, and thank you for raising that. PCNY. Thanks, TJ.

Commissioner Kreizman: Before we go to the last table, I just want to thank Kevin Morris, our Queensborough director, for helping organize this event.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, Kevin.

Commissioner Kreizman: Appreciate. The last table, table 10.

Mayor Adams: Yes, ma’am.

Question: Good evening, Mr. Mayor Adams.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Good evening to your entire team, and we thank you at table 10 for being here to engage with our community. My name is [Sonia Margaret Morales,] and from Table 10, our question to you is what unique initiatives or policies, accountability do you plan to implement that will set your administration apart from previous ones that address economic development and social equality in New York?

Mayor Adams: Thank you. A couple of things. SBS Commissioner Gross is here. She took over after Commissioner Kim left, and we knew the first order of business for economic development is to look at the low hanging fruit that we saw. We were over-penalizing small businesses. We were going in and finding ways to give them citations. Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, she took off the books a lot of these penalties that were hurting small businesses. Then we had an amazing person go over to the Department of Buildings for our small businesses.

People were opening their small businesses and waiting months just to get somebody to come in and give them the CFO. We saw just a real heavy-handed approach to small businesses, and we changed that dynamic. As I stated, we have small, small businesses operating in this city, in the city’s history right now. More small businesses in the city history, but we did something else. We never were able to get to 30 percent of M/WBE. Mayor Dinkins put the program in place over 30 years ago. We now under our Chief Diversity Officer Michael Garner, we announced about, I think last week, I don’t know if it was last week or this week.

Mayor’s every day is dog years, you know, but we announced for the first time over 30 percent going to M/WBE. Billions of dollars are going to M/WBEs, and he’s on the ground showing people how to get access to the resources and the goods and services of procurement in the city. Economic development is crucial and we knew by using governmental contracts, it was a platform that others could build on in the process. The combination of our amazing SBS commissioner– I thought I saw her. Oh, Commissioner Gross that’s here. Talk about what you just did last– Was it last week or the week after when you did the procurement fair that you did.

Commissioner Dynishal Gross, Department of Small Business Services: Yes, mayor, we did it on November 4th. The day before Election Day. We connected I believe 1300 M/WBEs in the room that day with city agencies and non mayoral agencies who want to do business with them. Mayor, the number that we announced last week for the OneNYC number, so that’s awards from mayoral and Department of Education, NYCHA, School Construction Authority, EDC, and Health and Hospitals was $6.4 billion.

Mayor Adams: $6.4 billion. Billion dollars, and making life easier for– Is anyone here from Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer’s team.

Nate Bliss, Chief of Staff, First Deputy Mayor: Yes.

Mayor Adams: Nate, what was the dollar amount we saved on businesses because we took– If you don’t know it, don’t worry about it, but because we took all of those fines that were hurting small businesses. Do you know what the dollar amount that we saved?

Bliss: Couldn’t tell you exactly the dollar amount, but we took over 20 regulations and we took them off the books or we reduced the fines so they were not punitive. That was your first executive order, EO2.

Mayor Adams: Listen, we cannot change the price of bread, but we can put bread in your pocket, and $30 billion we have put back in the pockets of everyday New Yorkers. We are paying billions of dollars in medical debt. Number one cause of bankruptcy is medical debt. We’re getting ready to pay billions of dollars, take billions of dollars off of medical debt. We decrease the cost of childcare in the process. We raise earned income tax credit for the first time in almost 20 years. You look at all of these ways that we say, “Hey, New Yorkers, we can’t deal with inflation, but we can find ways of putting money back in your pocket.”

Reduce fare MetroCard, paying the college tuition for foster care children, paying for NYCHA high-speed broadband. We are creative. All of these agencies are coming together and saying, “What are creative ways we can put money back into the pockets of New Yorkers?” We’re getting ready to roll out some stuff for New Yorkers or low-income New Yorkers on taxes that is going to be completely unique on what has been done in this city.

Folks, we’re doing it. Let me not kid you, we are doing it. I’m proud of this administration during difficult times and tough times. Other people would have thrown up their hands. They would have surrendered through COVID. They would have surrendered with 220,000 migrants and asylum seekers. They would have surrendered going through these hard times, we’re showing the resiliency of the city and what makes us. And why?

My mother was a good-looking lady. She had six children. My mother was a good-looking lady. She has six children. She didn’t have to stay. Mommy could have said, “Listen, why am I giving up my life?” She didn’t. Mommy stayed, and because Mommy stayed and nurtured me and care for me, I’m the mayor of the City of New York. We’re never going to give up. We’re in New York. Thank you for coming out tonight.

Commissioner Kreizman: Mr. Mayor, senator– He has [a] question. Senator Comrie has one question.

State Senator Comrie: Yes. Mr. Mayor, I want to just echo everything you said and congratulate you and your staff. Just one quick thing. The DEP lead pipe program, there’s a new issue that’s coming out from DEP. It’s scaring a lot of my seniors because if they have to replace their pipe, it’s $7,000, $8,000.

I just want you to be aware of it. I don’t know if anybody from DEP is here. They started a pilot program in the Bronx, hope that they can expand it through Southeast Queens because we’re getting a lot of mail, a lot of people that are concerned about what that is, and a lot of folks are acting like they’re contractors and they’re not. I need some help with that.

Mayor Adams: Who’s—

Commissioner Kreizman: Alfonso Lopez from DEP is here.

Mayor Adams: Come and speak with the senator. Let’s do a program in it. Let’s do something in the area, okay?

State Senator Comrie: Alright. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Come speak with the senator. Thank you. Thank you all for coming out tonight.

TRANSCRIPT: MAYOR ADAMS HOLDS IN-PERSON MEDIA AVAILABILITY 

Mayor Eric Adams: Good afternoon. Something must be going on, it’s a little more crowded in here than normal. Great to be here. Before we do a few off-topic questions, I just want to go over a few items.  

And again, yesterday, as you know, I issued a drought warning for our city. First drought warning we’ve had in 22 years. Who would have thought we would be praying for rain here in November? But the reality is that we need rain. Not only here in the city, but up near our reservoirs. It’s important. We have an eight-inch drop in the amount of rain that we normally have to be at full capacity. So it’s imperative that we take the necessary steps.  

And not only is the lack of water something we should be concerned about for just drinking, everyday use. But we’re seeing a lack of rain. We’ve had over 300 brush fires in our city. And that’s up to the FDNY, the Department of Parks, and others who are responding to these brush fires to minimize the damage. And I want to thank Congressman Espaillat as he’s looking at the fire we had up in Inwood. How do we come together to sort of restore the land that was impacted?  

FDNY, they have been extremely busy in fighting these fires across the month. And so, again, we’re reminding New Yorkers that if you’re dealing with breathing or respiratory issues, to be conscious of it. Stay indoors if possible. Use air conditioner and other ways of filtering the air. Grilling is banned in the parks at this time. And there really shouldn’t ever be any open flames in our parks area. So we can all do this together to prevent the fires, the brush fires. But also conservation. New York City, we’re asking you to shower. Don’t run the water while you’re shaving. And just the normal, common-sense tips to really— conservation of water.  

Public safety, important. New York City continues to be the biggest, the safest big city in America. And for the last 10 months, we’ve reduced crime citywide. Last month, our subways— of crime was down by 26 percent. Remember January of 2022, where just about every day, we had a front-page story talking about subway crime. We should start writing about how safe it is in our subway system. And we continue to do a great job. And I want to thank the NYPD and the Transit Bureau and the passengers who are really responding. And, when you add that to the fact that we’ve taken over 19,000 guns, illegal guns off our street, and, using the technology such as drones, I am really excited about the initiative we’re doing with drones as first responders. This is going to lead the entire country on how we can patrol from the sky pennies on the dollars. The amount of money it takes to put a helicopter in the sky is thousands of dollars. And here we’re using pennies on the dollars to keep New Yorkers safe, to search for missing people, to respond to emergencies, and to be proactive, so police officers, when they respond, they would know what they are responding to.  

Lastly, affordability, we have really focused on changing how we’re hiring New Yorkers. That’s why we were able to drop unemployment around Black and Brown New Yorkers by 20 percent. The numbers were high when we came in office. We’re doing the hiring halls. But we’re also reaching out and looking at the archaic ways that we hired people. And one way we saw that we were charging $47 per exam for the law enforcement exams. We’re now combining several law enforcement agencies where you would do one exam and it would cover each one of those agencies.  

We have about 900 available positions for school safety agents, traffic enforcement agents, special officers, and sanitation enforcement agents. One exam, $147, and it allows you to take and be available for any one of those law enforcement agencies. So we’re continuing to change how we go about not only saving taxpayers’ dollars, that’s a 78 percent application fee decrease, but also how we become more efficient in carrying out our responsibility of staffing and hiring New Yorkers.  

We also just really want to thank Chief Diversity Officer Mike Garner, who for the first time, David Dinkins’ vision of an M/WBE and making sure that we have those who have procurement contracts from the city look like the residents of the city. And that is not what I faced when I came into office. But we finally hit over 30 percent for the first time in this city’s history. Over 30 percent of the M/WBEs, 30 percent of our contracts are going to M/WBEs. We’re talking about in 2024, $6.4 billion. That is part of our overall employment plan. That is how we’re able to drive down unemployment, empower our local businesses, and make sure we have diversity in our city contracts.  

And I’m really excited about what Chief Diversity Officer Garner was able to accomplish when I brought him on board. My mission was clear. That was our North Star. People who are doing business with the city should look like the residents of the city. And we’re getting closer and closer to accomplishing that. So why don’t we open to a few off-topics questions? 

Question: Hi, mayor. Yesterday at a news conference, you mentioned that the stabbings were an example of the city’s health system, mental health system, failing New Yorkers. As the leader of the city, what are you doing to help with that problem in the city with mental health? 

Mayor Adams: Let’s go back to January 1st, 2022. I came into office with a clear vision on how do we deal with, not only public safety, housing. My plan was clear. And what we have witnessed from the beginning is each time we implement these long-term, successful ways of addressing these issues, we had push back by a host of people who are the loudest.  

Remember, I talked about involuntary removal. We walk past people every day that we know they do not have the ability to make the right decisions to take care of themselves. This is a problem that was created when we closed the psychiatric facilities many years ago. We closed them without giving people the support that they deserved. And because of that, you’re seeing it. All of you are seeing it. You’re seeing it on the subway. You’re seeing people walk the streets. You’re seeing it in your neighborhoods, where people are talking to themselves, yelling at themselves, walking around with no shoes on in 20 degrees weather. And what I said was, listen, we have to be honest about the ability that someone that’s gone through a severe mental health issue is not aware that they’re not on their medication, that they’re not receiving the support and family that they deserve. 

And when we rolled that out, you know how we would treat it. Everybody said I was inhumane, that we just want to institutionalize people. Well, this is the result of that. This is the result of not taking actions and ignoring people who need help. Just this morning, I got a call this morning, we had a person with an ice pick trying to stab people in Manhattan. We have a real problem that we have to be honest about. And I’m willing to be honest about it.  

So, what we have done, we have taken thousands of people off our subway system that are dealing with this issue, and many of them are still receiving the care that they deserve. We’ve been back and forth to Albany to say, let’s codify in law and give real clarity around the authority we have of dealing with people with severe mental health illness. We have partnered with [Mitchell] Katz from H&H to tell even the clinicians and others who have been really reluctant to hold people with severe mental health illness. They give you medicine for one day. They place them back into the street. They wait until they do something dangerous, and it’s recycling until the person commits an act, and then they go to Rikers Island. Fifty-one percent of the people on Rikers Island have mental health issues. 

Question: How do you ease the fears of New Yorkers, though? They were all unprovoked attacks, and now people are walking around looking over their shoulder. You know, how do you ease the fears of New Yorkers now? 

Mayor Adams: I’m asking New Yorkers to join me. We’re getting ready to go up to a new legislative session in Albany. Let’s finally deal with— we have to take those who can’t take care of themselves off our street and give them the humane care that they deserve. You know, that is what we need to do. We’re doing our part. Under the leadership of Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom and her team, we have removed thousands and tried to put them into care. Dr. Vasan, when he was here for the commission of Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, put a real plan together, from the clubhouse model to other models.  

We’re doing our part. But we have to move away from which, I believe is wrong, to state people have a right to live on the streets when they are dealing with severe mental health illness. It’s a public safety issue, and we have been leaning from the front on this. And if you go back and look at the story, some of you wrote stories saying that I was inhumane for doing so. This is the result of denying that people who can’t take care of themselves as a society, we have to make the determination of giving them the care. And so my heart goes out to all those families, the family.  

But just think about it for a moment. One person is just fishing on FDR Drive and he’s stabbed. Another person is on his way to work. A mother of a 8 year-old child, you know, that child came here, that family came here to pursue the American dream. And now that child—how do you explain to that child what happened? This is the failure of our unwillingness to face the problem, address the problem, and don’t be so idealistic that we’re not realistic. People need care. And I just refuse to act like it doesn’t exist.  

And all those who are against me doing involuntary removal, you should be asking them. You say the mayor should not do involuntary removal. What is your question to these families? I have to go speak to these families. I’m the one that’s going to the hospital. I’ve got to reach out to that young child, 8 years old. I’ve got to speak to the families who are going through this. So everybody who wrote those articles and all the advocates who attacked me, ask them, what should we be doing with those who can’t take care of themselves? 

Question: Okay, so as you give shelter to hundreds of thousands of immigrants, as you know, the elected president Trump, he declared that he’s going to deploy the army, he’s going to use the military for mass deportation. What is your policy? What is the policy of the city if we start the mass deportation? How the city will be?  

And number two, if the mass deportation happens, then there’s a lot of family will be—separation, family separation will be happening. What is the plan if that thing happen? Then kids are—American born father and mother, they reported. How you are going to protect the city and what will be your role? What is the plan? 

Mayor Adams: Listen, I don’t think— we spoke about this last week and probably a week after. We spoke about this over and over again. I can’t be any clearer. Our laws are clear. And I think misinformation and fear is really hurting people. You know, people stop me on the street every day and say, oh, I read this, I read that. You know, we need to stop all the misinformation.  

We have this scenario, meetings and conversations. We are going to make sure that people who need city services, educating children, hospital care, public safety care, that is what we do in this city. And as the scenarios come in front of us, we’ll address them. You know, that’s what we do as a city, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do as a city. This is a country of immigrants. 

But let’s not ignore the fact we have a broken immigration system. Broken. The American public, they have communicated they want it fixed. That’s what we need to be talking about. So, all of these little small items that we’re talking about is not getting to the heart of the problem. New York City should not have had to address 220,000 migrants and asylum seekers with no money from the federal government. $6.4 billion out of our budget that is going to impact this city in the long-term things that $6.4 billion should have given us.  

Only $200 million, roughly, from the federal government, from a broken system that they ignored. And it’s time to fix the system, and it’s time to make sure, like what happened in that homicide and the double rape that we saw, those who are committing crimes should not be in our country. It’s a right to be in this country, and if you are a violent offender, you should not be in our country. 

[Crosstalk.] 

Question: Hi, mayor. Going back to Jen’s question with involuntary removals. Hearing everything that you had to say about the advocates who opposed your policies, we obtained some video from about two and a half years ago as you began the involuntary removal program. It appears to be the same gentleman who did the triple homicide yesterday. So you’ve moved forward with the involuntary removals, pushed back against the advocates, but we’re seeing this guy out there for so long and cycling through the system so many times. What does that say about the efficacy of what you’re doing to clean up the subways and streets? 

Mayor Adams: I’m not understanding the question. 

Question: So you’ve pushed back against the advocates that say no involuntary removals, and you’ve moved ahead with involuntary committals, and you’ve pulled people off the subway you say shouldn’t be there, but we still see instances like yesterday. So what do you say to critics that say your policies, we don’t just disagree with them, we’re not so sure they’re working? 

Mayor Adams: First of all, people dealing with severe mental health illness didn’t start showing on our streets January 1st, 2022. The system has been failing for a long time. Administration after administration, I can recall stories and reading about people with severe mental health illness harming themselves and harming others. It didn’t start January 1st, 2022, pushing people on the subway track. It didn’t start January 1st, 2022, of assaulting people. 

What I was willing to do and will continue to be willing to do is to confront it. Too many people were afraid to step up and say people who are dealing with severe mental health illness need to get the care they deserve, and even if it means involuntary removals. No one wanted to say that, because they were afraid to be yelled at, called names, and said that they were inhumane. And I was not willing to sit back and allow this to continue to happen. And the thousands we removed off the streets prevented incidents like this.  

Is there more work to do? Yes. We need more psychiatric beds. After COVID, we closed down a lot of psychiatric beds. We need to get them back online. Everyone needs to be on the same page. And I can’t even tell you, even when I was back in law enforcement, you bring someone to the hospital and the hospital staffs did not want to keep them outside to give them the medication for the day.  

We have to change our mindset. People need community. They need care. They need to be stabilized. Just because you get your meds and the next day you’re stabilized, no, there’s more. We need to get in the serious business of dealing with those, as you stated, the same people we’re seeing over and over and over again to make sure they get the care they deserve. Hundreds, I think we’re in the area of about 800, who we have put in permanent houses. Some of them are dealing with severe mental health issues and some of them long-term are homeless people. And so we have confronted this issue, but we need help on all levels of government. 

Question: Mr. Mayor. How are you doing? 

Mayor Adams: Good, and yourself? 

Question: Good. So on outdoor dining, you know, we’ve seen a big drop off between the number of sheds that were around during the pandemic,, at the height of the program. And then, the new program that people are opting into. Do you feel some responsibility for the drop off there in approving the new program?  

And then separately, we’re seeing these wildfires in the city, whatever we want to call them. You know, you’ve linked this to climate change. So has Rohit and others in your administration. President Trump is a climate change denier. Are you concerned about the president being a climate change denier, considering what we’re seeing right here in New York right now? 

Mayor Adams: No, I’m not. The first part of your question was dealing with I was focused on the climate change. [Crosstalk] I’m not concerned about that. What was the first part of your first question? Because it’s not. I mean, what does that concern me?  

We’re going to put out the brush fires. We’re going to continue to lead the way and doing what is to improve our climate, everything from electrifying our vehicles to all the other actions that we’re doing. We’re leading the way here. And so national leaders have their opinions. Agency heads have their opinions. We believe that climate change is a real issue and we’re leading the way in what we’re doing here. We’ve been rolling out our initiatives over and over again. You don’t hear about them because for whatever reason, they don’t get any coverage. But what we’ve been doing to be a leader in climate change from the wind farms, we’re getting ready to do, what we’re doing in new schools we’re building. So we’re not concerned about that. We have a job to do. Let’s do our job here. And that’s what we’re doing. So I’m not concerned about what other people’s opinions are on it. 

Question: [Inaudible.] 

Mayor Adams: I don’t understand why you said that we’re responsible for the drop off? I don’t understand. 

Question: You feel responsible for it. Because you signed off on the new program, the opt-in program, where it’s seasonal. 

Mayor Adams: Yeah. And you know that was a bill, right? Okay. Does the City Council pass the bill? 

Question: And you signed it, right? 

Mayor Adams: Right. So should we break the law? I’m not sure– It was the city council passed the bill. They did their research. 

Question: I’m asking if you feel some responsibility for it. You signed the bill. There have been other bills that you’ve disagreed with and haven’t signed. 

Mayor Adams: So why would I— City Council. Okay, we’re on the same page that the City Council passed the bill, right? Okay. So they passed the bill. So your question is, should the City Council and the Mayor’s Office feel responsibility? But whenever anything is not what people want it to be, should I just feel responsibility? Is it a partnership or not? 

Question: I don’t really understand the question. We’ve asked the City Council.  

Mayor Adams: I understand the question. Listen, the city council passed the bill after doing research. I think it was Councilwoman Velázquez, passed the bill after doing the research. We wanted to make sure that it was done correctly. Hats off to Mayor de Blasio for—we were dealing with an industry with 100,000 people. No one wanted to eat inside. And our restaurants are more than just places where people go to eat.  

When I go inside there and I walk inside and I talk to the busboys, the waiters, the cooks, when I speak with them, these are everyday, working-class people. So, what Bill did—and really kudos to him and his team. He said, listen, we’ve got to get people off. People are afraid to go inside restaurants. And that was a major economic hit. So, he created the outdoor dining in an emergency. We came back, partnering with the city council. They said, okay, now we’ve got to do it so it’s safe, because some of these structures were not safe. And some of them have—they became places where rodents were located. People were sleeping in them. We started dismantling them.  

But the City Council, very thoughtfully, came up with a way to do it. We agreed with what they produced. They introduced a bill. It passed in the City Council. We signed it into law. And now it’s being executed. Anytime you execute something new, there’s a slow start-up. Some people are still getting through the application process. Some people say, do I still want to do the outdoor dining? Is it still profitable, etc.? And then it moves forward. But to all of a sudden say, well, okay, it’s a drop-off, so now you have to take the blame. No, no, I don’t. Thanks to the former mayor. Thanks to City Council. And thank Eric for signing the law. 

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. 

Mayor Adams: Yes. How are you? What’s happening? How are you doing? 

Question: I’m good, thank you. I just wanted to follow up on the serial stabber. You’ve only highlighted one issue that needs fixing. Are you saying if you had the power to involuntarily commit people that this wouldn’t have happened? And then I’ve got one more question. 

Mayor Adams: Ask me them both. 

Question: Okay. And then the second one, you and the governor have developed a more amicable relationship with the incoming President Trump. A stark difference with his first term, the Dems, with the goal of getting projects like Penn Station done. How do you think the city and state’s relationship with the President-elect will be affected given the governor is now trying to push through congestion pricing at the 11th hour? And do you think this will affect Penn Station funding similar to what happened with the Gateway Tunnel? 

Mayor Adams: First, the stabbing, which was just horrific. I cannot express, when I first got that first call and the NYPD said, listen, we have a stabbing, and then they called me right back and said, no, we have another one. And right away, I said, something’s going on. Then I get a call, we got another one. And they did an apprehension plan and hats off to that officer. If that officer did not take action, we would have had more casualties. That officer did an unbelievable job, 19 years in the Police Department, did not lose his desire to still protect the people of the city, and just really hats off.  

He ran towards danger and not away from it. And I believe he saved lives and that cab driver, I think, also saved lives at the same time by—he saw something, he said something, he did something. But there isn’t a one-size-magic-pill to solve the mental health issue that we’re facing. There are many rivers that feed that dam, and we have to dam each one of them.  

Number one, we need more psychiatric beds. Long-term psychiatric beds. Two, we have to build community. And I go back to giving the support to the clubhouse model, which Dr. Vasan talked about. And voluntary removal is another one. Training our hospital staff, the reluctancy of those in our hospital facilities of keeping people in until they are stable and get the support that there is. There’s a culture we have to change. And I saw that culture back—even back when I was in law enforcement, where you immediately want to—the person come in with an episode, a psychiatric episode. The person comes in. You give them medication for a day. It could be bipolar. It could be schizophrenia or whatever. And then, the next day, since they calm down, we just put them back out in the streets.  

No, there’s—we need a real system of follow-up care. We need to connect with family members and giving them the support. There are family members who are seeing their loved ones going down this spiral of negative behavior, and there’s no real support. And they’re afraid. And so, there’s a combination of B-HEARD, rolling that out, and having people responding to that more, training our law enforcement officers of what we’re doing with SCOUT and what we’re doing in our subway system to be proactive. So, there’s a large picture. There’s not one.  

But we do need Albany to pass a supportive intervention act. It clearly clarifies the standards for holding a person for care in a hospital, because clarity allows people not to feel reluctant to make the decision. And that clarity is not there. And if you speak to mental health professionals, even police officers, when I’m walking the subway system and I’m at a station and I see someone laying on the platform and it’s cold and they don’t have any clothing on, I say, have the police officer come here. Why is this person—this is your pose? You know, they’re like, you know, ma’am, like, I don’t know what we are allowed to do and can’t do. There’s a lack of clarity, and there’s a lot of fear, because the people who yell the loudest have intimidated those who want to do the right thing. And we have to stop being intimidated by people who just because they yell the loudest.  

Question: [Inaudible.] 

Mayor Adams: Yes, yeah. You said the governor and I have— No, that’s not true. We don’t have a good relationship. We have a great relationship. We have a great relationship. I like the governor. I like the governor a lot. I think she’s a real leader. And, you know, when you’re a leader, you make tough decisions. She did an analysis of the $15 for congestion pricing, and she hurt the public. I mean, you know, people normally, in this game, you get dug into, you know, your position, and you don’t want to listen to the public. She hurt the public. And she said, listen, we’re going to drop down the cost.  

Now, no matter what cost it is, are you going to get 100 percent of the people happy? No. I mean, it’s New York, 8.3 million people, 35 million opinions. You know? So even if you said it was 25 cents, people would say, 25 cents? You’re trying to take my George Washington away from me? You know, that’s just life. You know? But she made that decision. Now, do I believe, because she did congestion pricing, that all of a sudden the president is going to say, okay, we’re going to take away all the other stuff that we’re willing to do, Penn Station? No, I don’t. No, I don’t. You know? I’m sorry? 

Question: I mean, the gateway tunnel. He has done that before. 

Mayor Adams: Yeah. Listen, I think that it’s imperative. And you said something that’s very important, by the way. Communication. We weren’t communicating before. We were engaged in warring and not working together. And so, what happened when I was here two weeks ago? I think it was two weeks, you know, being mayor is dog years, so it could have been longer. What happened?  

I said I reached out to the president. Right? What happened after that? The governor reached out to the president. Senator Gillibrand reached out to the president. Morning Joe reached out to the president. You know? So, what happened? When I said that, listen, let’s turn down the temperature and let’s work together for the City of New York, all of a sudden we got a different energy. You know? None of them, not the governor, not the senator, not Morning Joe, did you say, are you doing it because you want something? How about we’re doing it because we love New York? This is the president. And it’s time for us to stop yelling at each other and working with each other. 

Question: Mr. Mayor, just pulling back a bit, according to the U.S. drought monitor that NOAA keeps, close to half of the country’s lower 48 states are in drought, which much of the eastern U.S. reporting worsening conditions for the second week in a row.  

The Times Union is reporting that drought could delay a $2 billion project. The city has to fix a major leak in New York City’s upstate Delaware aqueduct that was shut down on October 1st for the final phase of the project. You have worked effectively with other mayors around the country on issues related to gun violence, to immigration. Are you still, like Mayor Bloomberg did, willing to work at least, because this is an economic issue here. New York City’s water is key to everything from bagels to everything else we rely on. 

Mayor Adams: That’s what makes our pizza great. Our water. No, and you’re right. This drought issue is a real issue. And, you know, we’re hoping we don’t have to go to the next level of the emergency level. And the goal is to collaborate with the mayors across the region, through U.S. Conference of Mayors, African American Mayors Association and others, to really, you know, see and how we work together to address this issue.  

But it does also come down to everyday New Yorkers. Conservation. You know, we have to get out of the habits that we used to. I know I would have the water running while I’m shaving or brushing my teeth. You know, so we really have to make sure that we do what is right. And so, we’ve come through the government crisis before, and we’re going to do it again. And so, when we put in place this citywide drought warning, we did it because it was important.  

So, listen, these are simple steps that—because you got to—you want to keep it simple. You [don’t] want to [overcomplicate] things, because there’s—trust me, everyone is saying, listen, if I stay in the shower as long as I want, this is not going to impact us. But they don’t realize everybody in the block is saying that. Everybody in the neighborhood is saying that. And everybody in the borough is saying that.  

So, it starts with doing these simple items. You know, repair the leaks, install water-saving appliances, fixtures, their fire hydrants. And we—it’s amazing. We have a large number of folks who are calling in with fire hydrants leaks now, because people are starting to respond. People understand how serious this is. But it’s going to take a collaboration. And I agree with you. We need to—we’re going to attempt to do that. 

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. 

Mayor Adams: How are you? 

Question: Good to see you. Good. Back to the stabbings yesterday. We can all agree that the healthcare system failed this man. But the justice system failed all of us. It failed we, the people. And it’s wonderful. You have a great relationship with the governor. You’re talking about going up to Albany and advocating. But I’m wondering, you, as the mayor of the greatest city in the world, what tools do you need to fix the justice system? What can you do? And how can we, the people, help you? 

Mayor Adams: I like that. And that’s a great question. The tools that are within my disposal, one of the tools, the New York City Police Department, that officer did his job. The tool of telling everyday New Yorkers, you see something, say something, do something, that cab driver followed the person. When he saw the individual assault the woman, he didn’t just turn around and say, let me go pick up my fare. He followed him until he came upon a police officer.  

So our message to say to New Yorkers, see something, say something, do something, is part of the tools. But we need to really look at the, as I stated, the Supportive Intervention Act. Advocating to get that passed is imperative. Advocating to get more psychiatric beds online is imperative. Making sure that we communicate with the advocates and tell them we need to take a real look at this. The street corner is not a psychiatric ward. It’s not a psychiatric bed to sleep in the parks. We have to change our mindset.  

And I said from the time that we started this, you know, idealism collides with realism when you have three innocent New Yorkers that are stabbed and murdered. That is, that’s a wake up call for our criminal justice system and our psychiatric system. And I’m hoping that we get to respond. We have three New Yorkers who were murdered in our city by a person who was betrayed by the health care system. And that should trouble us all.  

Question: Question about your drones. Were you able to put them up yesterday during this crime spree? And would that have worked, having the NYPD put up a drone yesterday while this guy made his way around the city? Was it used? 

Mayor Adams: Great, great, great question. No, we did not use the drones. But what we did, Deputy Commissioner of Operationa Kaz Daughtry, he instituted this emergency notification system. Once we had a photo of the person, it is now deployed to every cell phone that police officers are carrying. So we mobilize the entire law enforcement apparatus, which was an amazing idea that he created some, I think, sometime last year.  

Because all the officers carry devices now, smartphones. So immediately when we got the—I think it was the second incident. It could have even been the first. It was immediately deployed to every phone. So now every officer on patrol is able to look at it. It was a brilliant idea on his part. And it helps us in apprehending, you know, when we have these type of incidents.  

I remember we had a person who was doing random shootings in Queens, and we were able to do a faster apprehension. So we didn’t use the drones, but he used another form of technology. Let me tell you, Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry, you know, you don’t realize how much this young man has really changed the game of policing in this city and how he’s constantly finding different ways of making it better for our city. But, no, we didn’t use drones, but we did use that. 

Question: We hear all of your suggestions about reforming mental health. We’ve been covering them for years. The question I have, though, is what have you learned internally about the specific breakdown in this particular case?  

So, for instance, have you asked your team what interactions your outreach teams, the city outreach teams, had with this man? How many times did anybody ever ask from the city that he be hospitalized involuntarily or that he receive mental health treatment? So where was the breakdown based on what you understand? And also, if we could just ask you to tell us a little bit about your ringside chat with President-elect Trump over the weekend. 

Mayor Adams: We’re doing a complete analysis, because I’m a big believer in case studies. And when you do these case studies, like we’ve done on a couple of them, you’re able to see where the gaps, you know, because being fair to these mental health professionals, listen, they’re inundated. And they say thousands. I think we moved six or seven thousand off our subway system. And all it takes one.  

And then when one happens, everyone goes back. And we almost beat up these mental health professionals who are living through vicarious trauma themselves of having to deal with people with severe mental health illness. So we’re going to do a case study and analyze it, not in the desire of now we want to point fingers and say, well, why did you miss? Why did you miss that? Why did you miss that? But say, how could we be better at this? You know, those mental health professionals, if they were in contact with them, they are feeling bad about losing three New Yorkers also.  

And I think far too often we beat up the mental health professionals who do this work every day. Many of them do it because they feel it’s a calling. And like you look at a Norman Siegel, those volunteers that Norman Siegel put together to go into the streets and talk to those who are dealing with mental health, they took a substantial number of people off the street because they felt it was their calling. And so we need to support those who are doing this work. This is hard work. It’s restrictive legally for them. You know, there’s times, I think I went out with NBC one day and we tried to talk with a person who was clearly unable to take care of himself. He didn’t have any shoes on. His clothing was unkempt. He was— human waste all over him for the most part. And he was like, I don’t want any help. Leave me alone.  

You have to constantly go back over and over and over and over. And so this is challenging work. We’re going to look, we’re going to do a case study and see where our interactions, what could we have done differently? How do we show up or what we have to do? But this is hard work.  

You know, if any of you have have interacted with a person who’s dealing with severe mental health illness, you know how hard it is. You know, I have family members who are who are dealing with it. And sometimes they disappear for, you know, extended family members. Sometimes they disappear for weeks. We don’t know where they are until one day we bump into them on the streets. And, you know, this is hard work. And so, you know, ABC went out with us on the day that we did it. But thus far, we removed 6,800 from the subways that were homeless and many of them were dealing with mental health illness. 

Question: Just anything you can share with us about your chat with Trump over the weekend. 

Mayor Adams: You know, we exchanged pleasantries and I didn’t hear— it was a lot of noise. So I didn’t hear exactly what he was saying. But it was something to the tune of that, you know, you are one of the greatest mayors the city has ever had.  

You know, the city has turned around under your leadership. You know, so I didn’t get it all. The lip syncer missed that part. What was it? The lip reader. Right. I think they missed a part of, you know, how he talked about, you know, how I brought back the economy, brought back jobs. The bond rate is ninety eight thousand nine, nine thousand guns off our streets. Improve education, high speed broadband for NYCHA residents.  

You know, so I didn’t get it all.  

Question: [Inaudible.] 

Mayor Adams: We said we would do it. The only thing we were concerned about is, you know, seeing a good fight. And, you know, I’m a fan of the sports. And, you know, so I think he as he moved to the city, he acknowledged, what a great job this administration has done. And, you know, I thank him for that.  

Question: Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, she requested statistics on how many crimes were committed in or within five block radius of city run migrant shelters last year. She requested those statistics in January. NYPD a couple of times postponed the deadline to answer that question. The last deadline was provided to be yesterday, November 18th.  

NYPD did not provide those statistics. And they just replied to me that data is not broken down to that level of specificity. But I wonder why first they said they will provide. Now they’re saying they don’t keep that statistics. What is your response to that? Would it be helpful to keep those statistics? If we talk about primary and– 

Mayor Adams: This is around migrant shelters? 

Question: Specifically around migrant shelters, it had to do with the sanctuary. 

Mayor Adams: We should we should be able to tell you based on the address what type of crime is around that address. So let me let me let me speak with NYPD and see what we can give you, because if you’re given an address, we should be able to give you a profile of what is happening in that area. So let me find out. Alright. And we will call, we’ll call you later on today and see about getting that. I thought you were going to tell me something about lighting up City Hall, the Polish colors. 

Question: Well, that wasn’t done. 

Mayor Adams: But you did you put in a request?  

Question: That was not me. I was just asking on behalf of, [inaudible]. 

Mayor Adams: Well, someone you— 

Question: [Inaudible] have found out by me that was something between Robert’s Holden’s office and your office that– 

Mayor Adams: That’s Robert. Did he put in a request?  

Question: But the press office responded to me.  

Mayor Adams: People have to put in formal requests. Same with the flag raisings. Same with a matter of fact, we’re doing an event at Gracie Mansion because of your requests. You remember that? Okay, so we’re doing we’re doing an event at Gracie Mansion to for Polish heritage. I think it’s the first time it has ever been done. You know, 110 mayors later. And finally, we acknowledge in a beautiful work of the Polish community. But Robert Holden needs to put in a request and we would love to light City Hall  

Question: [Inaudible] was established. So, okay, I know I got my answer.  

Question: In the wake of Monsignor Gigantiello doling out two million dollars in unauthorized loans to Frank Carone, the news broke yesterday. Are you reconsidering having Carone serve as the chair for your 2025 campaign? Are you still planning on having him serve in that capacity? And then my second question is, at a rally today for universal child care. Nearly all mayoral candidates were running against you, slammed you for how you’ve taken care of child care, saying that the city needs leadership. That’s going to make that a priority. Do you want to respond to that? 

Mayor Adams: Yeah. The… Frank is not only a friend. Frank is a great New Yorker. He served us as the chief of staff here. He brought his skill set and abilities here. Whatever role he would like to play on my campaign, I welcome him to him to do so. So I don’t know about unauthorized loans and other things. I know how I’ve watched him throughout the years and just the level of humanitarian response to so many issues that he has done. So whatever that other part, I’m not aware of it.  

And so when they were protesting, did they protest the fact that we dropped the cost of child care from fifty five dollars a week to less than five dollars a week? Did they mention that? Did they mention that we had sunsetting of childcare dollars from the previous administration because of COVID dollars? But we were able to find and put the money in. When you are running, you can say anything. Go look at my promises that I made on a campaign trail and see how I lived them out. That is what the numbers say.  

We’ve done an amazing job recovering the city from covid to migrants to crime. And so I have a record to run on. What more can I say? I am so pleased with what this administration has done. It has reached beyond what I thought we were going to be able to do. We’re going to continue to do. We just got started. I’m just lacing up my shoes and stretching. We haven’t even start the real run. 

Question: Councilmember Borelli told me yesterday that he had approached the administration with some carve outs for Staten Island that he says would have kept the plan mostly whole. He said that your administration rejected those trying to get a sense of why that was and how important it is to you that this plan does pass as completely as possible. 

Mayor Adams: Yes. Well, first of all, I like Councilman Borelli a lot. I think he’s a common sense thinker and he’s willing to fight on behalf of broken class New Yorkers. And I enjoy, you know, just interacting with him on different levels of and hats off to Speaker Adams, because her and her team, we have had real conversations about this. And, you know, from all readings I’m getting in my daily updates, the conversations have been healthy. They’ve been engaging. Everyone knows we have to give a little to get a little. They put out their proposal, which I’m just happy to see that we both agree on some of the common things.  

Listen, we have a housing crisis. There’s no getting around that. They understand it. We understand it. We’ve been able to do some great things. to how we have included NYCHA in our twenty six billion dollar housing plan. And over the years, the Bronx and Metro North of the Bruckner project, Innovation Queens, all of these items that we have been able to accomplish is because we were willing to sit down and come with— When we walked into the room, we came into the room with one desire.  

We had a 1.4 percent vacancy rate. We have to put people in housing. And I believe that just as the speaker and I have been able to land a plane on so many items, I think we can land a plane on the City of Yes. And they’re going to look at all of these council. We have 51 council people, you know, and all of them are talking about issues around parking, issues around accessory dwellings, a whole host of things. But dear Maria Torres-Springer and the speaker’s team, the reports I’m getting is that they’re good, healthy conversations. And we want to we want to get this done for the people of the city. 

Question: So, Mr. Mayor, I have two questions for you. My first question is regarding the specialized high school exam. Parents are very concerned because the contract is expiring. There’s supposed to be a vote about renewing the specialized high school exam. The votes, the votes being delayed indefinitely at this point. And, you know, the concern is, is the vote actually going to happen? And also, there are vacancies on the PEP with regards to your appointments. Do you plan on appointing any new members anytime soon? That’s question number one.  

Question number two, Mr. Mayor. You know, you spoke briefly about the work that this administration has done in regards to M/WBEs bringing in bringing opportunities for Black and brown businesses. And in addition to doing that, when you look around the room, Mr. Mayor, we see a number of ethnic and community media outlets that are here today.  

My question, Mr. Mayor, is Justin Brannan introduced a bill a few weeks ago to undo the Room 9 policy that allows many of us who are in this room access to Room 9. And the bill is a retroactive bill. So, in effect, that bill will evict us from Room 9. There are 19 desks in Room 9, and three of those desks are now ethnic and community media outlets because of you letting us into that room and diversifying the room. What is your position on this bill? Those are my two questions. 

Mayor Adams: And I spoke with Councilman Brannan. You know, we had a conversation around that because I was a little surprised of turning back the hands of progress and hands of time. You know, it’s almost like someone coming in and, you know, the progress we’ve made, you know, we’re turning them back. And he shared that was not his desire. And he also stated that he was going to reach out and communicate with you. And I believe he should really look at what the goal was. I thought he was giving a false impression because there was a reporter that stated we’re trying to restrict access to reporters. And that’s not not true.  

Look, Room 9 can’t look like the U.S. Senate. Has to be integrated. And we need to let in ethnic media. We need to let in diverse media, diverse opinion, diverse thoughts. And I’ve been clear on that. You know, it’s not like I say one thing and do another. We need to diversify every area of this city. When I became mayor, Mona, there were there were countries that we would not raise their flags at Bowling Green. When I raise their flags now, you hear all the time. First time ever. There were countries that were not allowed to celebrate their culture inside Gracie Mansion.  

We have been a one dimensional city and we’ve ignored groups because they did not have a voice. They got a voice now. Mayor Adams, you know, and Mayor Adams makes sure I speak on behalf of all of them, because those are the people who came together and said this non-traditional, non-mainstream. I don’t even know what the heck that is, is coming to our communities for the first time. And he sees us. And so when I looked into Room 9, I walked in and did a peep in Room 9. And I was like, what is this?  

That is why we made this initiative. And hats off to Fabien, you know, our first Sephardic, you know, deputy mayor in the history of this city that knows what it is to be denied and said we need to do this and we need to do this. We need to do this everywhere. And so I’m hoping Justin, you know, my conversation with him, I’m not going to go into the depth of it, but Justin is a decent person. I’m hoping he looks at what was the spirit of that, of that bill, of the bill that an initiative that we took.  

We need to diversify. If we diversify Room 9, we’re going to diversify opinions. We’re going to diversify thoughts. We’re going to diversify how stories are written. And people are going to get different opinions on what is happening in the city. And that’s why we have to diversify Room 9.  

Question: [Inaudible] specialized high school exam? 

Mayor Adams: The vote is where?  

Question: It’s been delayed.  

Mayor Adams: From where? 

Question: Last month. Then it was supposed to be tomorrow. Now it’s been delayed indefinitely.  

Mayor Adams: Who’s doing the vote?  

Question: It’s supposed to be the panel for educational policy. 

Mayor Adams: Okay, I’m not. Listen, I believe in I’m a supporter of the specialized high schools. I think instead of taking opportunities away from accelerated learners, we need to expand them. That’s why Chancellor Banks opened new schools. So we need to have pathways for accelerated learners.  

And so, I don’t know why it was delayed. Let me look into it and see why it was delayed. But we should always have opportunities for accelerated learners. And we need to expand those opportunities. What was frustrating that there are a lot of accelerated learners because we didn’t have enough seats. They were not… because they may have missed the scores by a fraction of a point and they were not able to get access.  

And then we need to diversify our specialized high schools. And when I was growing up in the 70s, there were these programs that clearly placed these children on pathways to be prepared to take these exams and give them the support. And that’s some of the stuff we did in Borough Hall to give that support. So we we don’t need to take away opportunities. We need to expand those opportunities.  

Question: I wanted to ask you who paid for your UFC ticket to go on Saturday night. I also wanted to get your opinion. Trump nominated somebody new for the Southern District of New York. Do you see any changes to your federal case right now?  

I also wanted to ask you about the stabbing. 

[Crosstalk.] 

But they were very long. The second part of my question is the third stabbing spree victim was a woman that we believe her address came up to a migrant shelter. Can you tell us if that was a migrant in your care? And then the 68 year old man was fishing on the East River. Was that man a New Yorker?  

Mayor Adams:  I paid for my ticket. You know, my legal team here told me what ways that I was able to attend. I could have I could have gone for free. You know, the offer was there. But I said, no, you know, I paid for my ticket.  

The question around the the migrants, you know, we have to look into that. We’re still clearing out exactly what’s going on with that and exactly what happened. It doesn’t matter if there was migrants shelter. It’s not. It was a tragedy that should not have happened. You know, we lost a mother and an eight year old child does not have their mom. I don’t even know how you explain that to an eight year old child. And I just have to find a way to speak with him and with the child and just explain what happened, to the best of my ability. 

Question: [Inaudible.] 

Mayor Adams: The… I do not know who the choice [is] that the president made. I do not know that I’ve stated over and over again. I did nothing wrong. I should I should not have been charged with this. And the attorneys are handling every role possible to bring justice to me. 

Question: Can you go back to the drought guidance real quick? 

Mayor Adams: Yes. Do we have the droughts? 

Question Third from the bottom, flush your toilet less often. Yes. People are only flushing their toilets… and like pretty specific…  

[Crosstalk.] 

I was wondering, is this guidance, you know, to like reprise the phrase that was used in the 80s to if it’s yellow, let it mellow. Is that what you’re telling New Yorkers to do? And are you are you flushing your toilet less often? 

[Crosstalk.] 

Mayor Adams: Well, first of all, I like those if it’s yellow, let it mellow, you know. But also you’d be surprised why we flush our toilet that does not have to do with personally relieving ourselves. Some people put, you know, food in the toilet. Some people drop after they floss. They would drop the string in the toilet. So we’re just saying be conscious of what you’re doing. That’s what we’re saying. Everyone be conscious. Think a second. Take a second to think what I am doing. That’s what it’s all about.