Mayor Adams Lays out Ambitious Agenda to Make New York City Best Place to Raise a Family in Fourth State of the City Address

January 9, 2025

Watch video here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?FxLA7l9prnI

Speech Outlines Multi-Year Initiatives to Tackle Street Homelessness,
Keep Young People Safe, Build More Housing and Family-Friendly Neighborhoods Through New “City of
Yes for Families” Plan, Teach Students How to Save and Spend Money,
Expand Access to Playgrounds, and Save Working-Class Families Millions of Dollars 

Advances Mayor Adams’ Vision for Safer, More Affordable New York City for Families 

Follows Landmark Year of Safer Streets and Subways; 
Record Amounts of Jobs, Small Businesses, Housing Construction; 
Passage of Most Pro-Housing Zoning Proposal in City History; and 
Expansion of Early Childhood Education System 

NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams today outlined a bold vision to make New York City the best place to raise a family in his fourth State of the City address, delivered at The Apollo Theater in Harlem, Manhattan. After driving crime down, passing historic housing legislation, and helping New Yorkers save billions of dollars through tax relief, child care, free internet, and more in 2024, Mayor Adams used today’s address to unveil new initiatives that will create a safer, more affordable city for working-class people, especially those raising a family, all across the five boroughs. 

“In the past year alone, our administration passed historic housing legislation, shattered the record for the most jobs in city history, drove major crimes down, and did so much more to build a family-friendly city. As a result of all these efforts, the state of our city is strong,” said Mayor Adams. “But there is no denying that many New Yorkers — especially our families — are still anxious about the future. We have to make sure that the greatest city in the world is also the greatest place to raise a family. From keeping young people safe to tackling street homelessness, from building more family-friendly neighborhoods to saving New Yorkers millions of dollars, the initiatives we laid out today will make New York City the safest place to raise a family, the most affordable place to raise a family, and the best place to raise a family. My mother never stopped fighting to provide her family with a better life, and that is why I will never stop fighting to do the same for you.” 

Keeping New York the Safest Big City in America to Raise a Family 

Under Mayor Adams’ leadership, America’s safest big city has gotten even safer. Overall crime continued to fall in 2024, including a 7.3 percent drop in shootings, a 3.6 percent drop in homicides, and a 5.4 percent drop in transit crime. Since coming into office, the Adams administration has seized nearly 20,000 illegal guns and over 80,000 ghost cars and illegal motorized vehicles, like ATVs and mopeds. The administration has also successfully cracked down on illegal smoke shops, shutting down more than 1,300 illegal shops this past year; tackled car theft, helping deliver 12 straight months of declines in 2024; and reduced dangerous lithium-ion battery fires, implementing strategies that led to a 72 percent decrease in lithium-ion battery fire deaths since introduction of a new plan in 2023. The administration has remained focused on keeping families safe and improving New Yorkers’ quality of life. 

Additionally, the Adams administration has made smart, upstream investments to prevent crime in the first place, launching a $485 million blueprint to keep communities safe from gun violence that invests in mentorship, mental health, and job training for young at-risk New Yorkers. In 2025, the Adams administration will build on that work and pursue new investments that engage young people. Following an expansion of the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development’s (DYCD) Saturday Night Lights program that gives families a safe place to send their children and teenagers, the Adams administration will open a $9 million transformation of the 133,000 square-foot Brigadier General Charles Young Field in Harlem. The investments will replace dirt and grass with a synthetic turf field, as well as add new dugouts, backstops, fencing, and lighting for use year-round. In addition to renovating the existing baseball, softball, and football fields, the new field will also accommodate lacrosse and soccer. The field will welcome hundreds of young people at expanded hours and host programming by Saturday Night Lights, the Harlem Children’s Zone, Youth on the Move, and more. 

Moreover, Mayor Adams announced that New York City will invest $163 million over five fiscal years to expand five of its most successful programs — Fair Futures, College Choice, Career Choice, GirlsJustUs, and Assertive Community Engagement & Success — that engage at-risk youth and other young people; reach a total of 8,000 participants; and help connect more New York City youth with counseling, careers, college opportunities, and more. 

Subways, Serious Mental Illness, Shelters: A New Commitment to Addressing Street Homelessness 

From day one, the Adams administration has pursued a bold, new approach to getting New Yorkers living on city streets and subways the help, health care, and housing they deserve. Since the launch of Mayor Adams’ Subway Safety Plan in 2022, the administration has moved over 8,000 New Yorkers from the subways into shelter while, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, the New York City Department of Social Services (DSS) helped a record 18,500 households transition from shelters into stable homes. The Adams administration has also doubled the number of outreach staff working with unhoused New Yorkers, recently launched a new Partnership Assistance for Transit Homelessness initiative, and expanded its Subway Co-Response Outreach Teams with New York state to connect more New Yorkers to care. 

Mayor Adams announced today that New York City will invest $650 million to bolster that work and expand support for New Yorkers living on subways, wrestling with serious mental illness, and at risk of entering city shelters. 

To help move more New Yorkers off subways, as well as city streets, and into shelters, the Adams administration will add 900 new Safe Haven beds that offer a more flexible, personalized option for New Yorkers experiencing unsheltered homelessness and have proven a highly-effective tool for moving New Yorkers from homelessness into permanent housing. To help break the cycle of homelessness and hospitalization, the Adams administration will open an innovative facility specifically to support unsheltered New Yorkers with serious mental illness, offer psychiatric care and substance use treatment, and help secure permanent housing. Finally, Mayor Adams today set a new goal: No child should ever be born into New York City’s shelter system. To make this goal a reality, the Adams administration will launch a pilot program to connect soon-to-be parents applying for shelter with services that help them find permanent housing and prevent homelessness before their child is born, moving new families into stable homes more quickly and preventing lifelong cycles of poverty and housing instability before they begin. 

These new investments — which will take place over several fiscal years — will help New York City tackle street homelessness by supporting New Yorkers living on subways, helping connect individuals with serious mental illness to care, and keeping families out of city shelters. 

Additionally, Mayor Adams today reiterated his calls for Albany to pass the Supportive Interventions Act in an effort to give those experiencing severe mental illness the care they deserve and provide assistance to those who can no longer care for themselves, potentially posing a danger to themselves or others. 

Helping More Families Find Homes in the Five Boroughs by Turning New York Into a “City of Yes for Families” 

Since 2022, the Adams administration has made historic progress creating new affordable housing, connecting New Yorkers to affordable housing, and keeping New Yorkers in the homes they already have. The Adams administration has shattered affordable housing records two fiscal years in a row; financed the construction and preservation of over 79,300 housing units since 2022; and connected a record number of New Yorkers to affordable housing through City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement and the city’s housing lottery.  

Additionally, to bring long-overdue change to New York City’s zoning code and build a little more housing in every neighborhood, the Adams administration introduced and passed “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,” the most pro-housing zoning proposal in city history. This historic legislation will create up to 80,000 new homes and invest $5 billion in housing and infrastructure over the next 15 years. Coupled with significant new housing production tools secured in Albany in 2024, the administration has focused on building more housing to address the decades-long crisis. To further tackle the city’s historically low housing stock, this year, Mayor Adams announced New York City’s first-ever Charter Revision Commission focused specifically on solving the city’s generational housing crisis and tasked the commission with examining the City Charter to determine how to create and preserve more affordable housing. 

Despite these landmark achievements, too many families still struggle to make rent or purchase a home in New York City. Mayor Adams today unveiled “City of Yes for Families,” a multi-pronged approach to housing, zoning, and public space that will create more family-friendly neighborhoods and build new housing. Under City of Yes for Families, the Adams administration will work within agencies to build more family-sized housing units and multi-generational homes, as well as work with its partners in the New York City Council to introduce new tools to build more housing alongside schools, playgrounds, grocery stores, accessible transit stations, and libraries. 

As part of City of Yes for Families, the Adams administration and the New York Public Library will move forward with the largest co-located library project in New York City history, bringing over 800 units of mixed-income housing and a new facility to the Bloomingdale Library location in Manhattan Valley. City of Yes for Families will also include new tools to support homeownership, help families make a downpayment on a home, add an additional dwelling unit to their property, and count rental payments towards credit history.  

At last year’s State of the City, Mayor Adams launched “24 in 24,” an ambitious initiative to advance 24 housing projects on public sites in 2024 that will build 12,000 housing units. Last year, Mayor Adams surpassed his goal and advanced 26 housing projects on public sites. This past summer, Mayor Adams also issued executive order 43, requiring city agencies to review city-owned and controlled land for potential housing development. In 2025, the Adams administration will continue that work and advance the first sites for development, including 100 Gold Street, where over 2,000 new homes will be created just steps away from City Hall. The Adams administration will also advance housing projects at 395 Flatbush in Downtown Brooklyn, on the waterfront at Coney Island West, and in St. George on Staten Island. Collectively, these housing projects and others are expected to produce over 8,700 units, with additional public sites to be announced later this year. 

In 2024, the Adams administration not only passed its Bronx Metro-North plan, but also advanced four other additional neighborhood-specific plans to create 50,000 housing units over the next 15 years. Mayor Adams today announced that his administration will unveil additional neighborhood plans throughout 2025 and — as part of City of Yes for Families — launched “The Manhattan Plan,” an initiative to review zoning across the whole of Manhattan, unlock potential housing sites for development from Inwood to the Financial District, and add 100,000 new homes to the borough, bringing Manhattan to a total of 1 million homes over the next decade. The Manhattan Plan will include the Adams administration’s Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan, public sites, and more. 

Finally, Mayor Adams announced today that the New York City Department of Veterans’ Services (DVS) has begun collaboration with DSS to enhance housing support and resources available to veterans. DVS and DSS will work together to streamline the use of data systems and improve the overall experience for veterans across the city. This partnership will help veterans and their families receive seamless assistance and create a stronger safety net for those who have served the nation.  

By implementing new rules within city government that encourage more family-sized units and multi-generational homes, working with the City Council to create new tools that build more family-friendly neighborhoods and foster homeownership, creating more housing across New York City, and more, Mayor Adams’ City of Yes for Families initiative will help more families find and afford a home in the five boroughs. 

Putting Money Back Into Families’ Pockets 

From day one, the Adams administration has focused on creating a more affordable city for working-class families, saving New Yorkers more than $30 billion through city, state, and federal programs as part of its “Money in Your Pocket” work. After successfully expanding the “New York City Earned Income Tax Credit” and returning more than $345 million to over 1.7 million New Yorkers in tax season 2023, Mayor Adams is now calling on Albany to pass his “Axe the Tax for the Working Class” proposal that will eliminate or cut city income taxes for working-class families and put $63 million back into the pockets of over 582,000 New Yorkers.  

The Adams administration has already helped more than 25,000 New Yorkers reduce their debt by over $37 million through the city’s financial support services, but too many families and young New Yorkers still struggle with student loan debt. To help even more New Yorkers, Mayor Adams today announced that the city will partner with a leading private-sector firm to enroll public servants in the federal government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program and help wipe out nearly $360 million in student loan debt for 100,000 city employees and their families. As part of the initiative, public servants will be able to extend invitations to family members who independently qualify for PSLF to use the service as well and help get their student loan debt forgiven too. 

In 2022, the Adams administration launched Big Apple Connect to bring free internet and cable to 150,000 households across 220 NYCHA facilities, save working-class families hundreds of dollars, and close New York City’s digital divide. To build on that work and help connect more families to jobs, housing, and health care, the Adams administration will partner with the New York Public Library and launch “Neighborhood Internet,” an innovative program to bring free internet to over 2,000 Section 8 households and other low-income homes in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan starting in 2025. 

Additionally, to make child care more affordable for working-class families, the Adams administration lowered the cost of child care for a family of four earning $55,000 from $55 per week in 2022 to just $5 per week today, increased the number of children enrolled with a low-income voucher from fewer than 8,000 in 2022 to over 50,000 in 2024, and saved New Yorkers more than $1.9 billion through child care vouchers since the start of the administration. Finally, in 2024, for the first time in New York City history, every family who applied for a 3-K seat on time received an offer, while the Adams administration enrolled over 150,000 children across the entire early childhood education system. In partnership with the New York City Council, Mayor Adams also launched a $100 million, 10-point plan to address systemic issues, boost enrollment, and connect families with more pre-K and 3-K seats.  

Delivering a First-Rate Education for New York City’s Students 

As a proud graduate of New York City’s public schools, Mayor Adams has committed to making sure every single student gets the first-rate education they deserve. In 2024, Mayor Adams expanded his signature ‘NYC Reads’ initiative to every K-5 school in the five boroughs and New York City’s early childhood education program, as well as launched both ‘NYC Solves’ to overhaul how students learn mathematics and a new Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning in New York City Public Schools.  

The Adams administration also opened up 24 new school buildings and added over 11,000 new seats in 2024 — the most new seats added by the New York City School Construction Authority since 2003 — and, again, secured an extension of mayoral accountability in Albany for another two years. Additionally, the Adams administration has connected New Yorkers to over 15,000 apprenticeships since 2022 and launched FutureReadyNYC to give thousands of students work experience in 21st-century industries like decarbonization and finance. Today, Mayor Adams announced that Memorial Sloan Kettering will join FutureReadyNYC as an anchor partner and offer hundreds of New York City Public Schools students work-based experience in health care every year. 

To lay the foundation for a lifetime of healthy financial and consumer practices, Mayor Adams today set a critical new goal: New York City will ensure that every public school student can learn how to save and spend money by 2030. The Adams administration will deploy financial educators in every single school district to provide counseling, lead workshops, and help develop curricula; open 15 innovative bank branch pilots in underserved schools to give students real-world exposure to safe banking; and build a bold new initiative to incentivize financial education and give students hands-on experience learning about saving and investing. Mayor Adams called on financial institutions — from banks to credit unions to philanthropic organizations — to join the city in this cause and ensure the financial success for New York City youth for the decades to come. 

Outside of the classroom, the Adams administration has continued to keep families safe at city pools and beaches, hiring 930 lifeguards last year alone and announcing a historic $1 billion investment in city pools. To lay the foundation for a lifetime of water safety, New York City Public Schools and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation currently offer free swim classes to over 13,000 young people. Mayor Adams announced today that New York City will expand those programs to reach another 4,800 second graders — bringing the total youth served to nearly 18,000 — in underserved communities, teaching more students how to swim, and saving working-class families $1.3 million with this expansion alone. 

Finally, DYCD's Fatherhood Initiative helps fathers reconnect and build stronger relationships with their children through counseling, conflict resolution training, mediation, and mentoring. It can help fathers develop an individual service plan focused on parenting and co-parenting skills. To help strengthen more families and support more children’s emotional and economic futures, Mayor Adams today announced that New York City will double the size of the program to reach 3,000 fathers in the coming years. 

Creating Good-Paying Jobs for Parents and Young People 

Thanks to investments in public safety, working families, and 21st-century industries like life sciences and artificial intelligence, New York City’s economy has made a powerful comeback. In 2024, the Adams administration broke the record for the most jobs and small businesses in city history while welcoming nearly 65 million tourists to the five boroughs — the second most in city history. Additionally, Black and Latino unemployment has dropped by over 20 percent since the start of the Adams administration while storefront vacancy rates have dropped for four consecutive quarters.  

Following last year’s State of the City address, the Adams administration continued to unveil and advance generational projects to turn New York City’s waterfront into a “Harbor of the Future,” including a Science Park and Research Campus in Kips Bay in Manhattan, a $700 million climate research facility on Governors Island, the country’s largest offshore wind port at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, a modern maritime port and vibrant mixed-use community hub at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Red Hook, a revitalized North Shore of Staten Island, the Willets Point Transformation in Queens, and a cleaner, greener Hunts Point Terminal Produce Market in the Bronx. 

Additionally, to bolster the city’s cultural economy, the Adams administration invested a record $254 million in the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs through the FY25 Adopted Budget to support thousands of cultural organizations across the city. Today, Mayor Adams announced that New York City will invest more resources into the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG), adding up to five additional organizations in order to ensure that the CIG network reflects the rich diversity of the city’s creative sector. 

Creating Cleaner, Greener Streets for Families to Enjoy 

Public spaces are an essential part of New York City’s fabric, providing families with a fun, accessible place to take children and build community. Mayor Adams has made transforming the city’s public spaces a central focus of his administration, creating over 85 football fields of new public spaces since 2022 for families to enjoy. The Adams administration has also issued rules to move 70 percent of trash bags off the streets and into containers through its “War on Trash,” torn down over 310 long-standing scaffolding sheds through its “Get Sheds Down” initiative, and expanded curbside composting to the entire city — fulfilling a 2023 State of the City commitment.    

To ensure that more families have safe, supportive places to play in their own neighborhood, Mayor Adams today announced New York City will open more schoolyards in underserved neighborhoods for use during the summer, after school, and on the weekends, and put another 20,000 individuals within a 10-minute walk of a park.  

Additionally, to keep New York City parks cleaner, Mayor Adams announced that New York City will add a second cleaning shift to 100 new hot spots across 64 parks throughout the city, ensuring they are cleaned each afternoon between Thursday and Monday. As part of the second shift, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation staff will also keep restrooms open, on average, for another two hours each day, five days a week. This investment builds on the 62 parks that received a second cleaning shift earlier this year as part of the FY 2025 Adopted Budget and will help allow more families to enjoy safe, clean, accessible parks. 

Finally, Mayor Adams touted El Centro Kingsbridge, a sweeping plan for the future of the Kingsbridge Armory unveiled earlier this week by Mayor Adams, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and U.S. Representative Adriano Espaillat. Following a request for proposal process launched in the summer of 2023, the winning proposal will include event space, sports fields, and affordable housing, as well as cultural, commercial, and community spaces. 

The full text of Mayor Adams’ remarks, as prepared for delivery, is provided below: 

My fellow New Yorkers: thank you. And welcome to the heart of Harlem. 

If we could stand on these streets exactly one century ago, we would see a new community of New Yorkers building their lives all around us: Black Americans from deep in the South who loaded their lives into suitcases and rode the railways north.  

They came for their freedom, for their families, for their children, for their future. 

New York City was the promised land; it did not promise them an easy life, but it promised them a better one.  

In time, Harlem came into its own: a place where the Black community grew strong, Black businesses opened, and Black culture took center stage. 

Families went to Abyssinian to hear Adam Clayton Powell; strolled on what was then Seventh Avenue to shop for clothing; and, eventually, flocked to a theater on 125th Street to hear the blues, jazz, and more: The Apollo. 

They heard legends like Duke, Billie, and Smokey perform and witnessed stars being born on the world-famous Amateur Night.  

But here at The Apollo, it was not just about the performers. It was about the audience who held their fate: couples on first dates, grandmothers dressed up in their finest, and families out for a night on the town. 

At The Apollo, you don’t just watch the show. 

Like New York City itself, you are part of it. There is no Apollo Theater without the Apollo audience. We are joined in that audience today by so many leaders who are working hard for our families and our city.

[INSERT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

All of us — elected officials, labor leaders, public servants — owe a debt to the leaders who came before us. 

Today, we mourn and honor one of those leaders: President Jimmy Carter. 

President Carter was a true public servant, a leader and humanitarian full of hope and compassion for his fellow man. We send prayers to all who knew and loved him and salute his dedication to serving others across our nation and around the world. 

Thank you, President Carter, for your service and leadership. 

Three years ago, I took the oath of office at a time when our city was facing serious setbacks and tough challenges. COVID and chaos had thrown New York into uncertainty and pushed too many families away.  

Crime was surging, our economy was tanking, and our housing crisis was growing worse by the year. 

I told you then that there was no easy solution to these challenges, but with steady hands and bold leadership, we wouldn’t just bring New York City back; we would make it better than ever. 

We started with public safety, the cornerstone of our city’s success. To keep New Yorkers safe, we put thousands of new officers onto our streets and took nearly 20,000 illegal guns off them; supported law enforcement with new training and benefits; and unveiled a $485 million action plan to prevent gun violence. 

These efforts have paid off. Over the past three years, we have driven murders and shootings down by double digits; padlocked more than 1,300 illegal smoke shops; and seized over 80,000 ghost cars and illegal vehicles like mopeds and ATVs. 

But we have not just driven crime down; we drove jobs up. When I think about our administration, the word that comes to mind is “record.” That means record jobs, record small businesses, record investments in minority- and- women-owned businesses. 

We opened the country’s largest outdoor dining program, tore down hundreds of scaffolding sheds, and launched the ‘Trash Revolution’ to move every single trash bag off our sidewalks and into containers.  

We brought home $2.3 billion in federal money to transform our infrastructure and created a record amount of public space for pedestrians across the five boroughs. 

We put over $30 billion back in your pockets; delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in tax relief; and unveiled our “Axe the Tax for the Working Class” proposal to tear up city income taxes for the working-class families who need it most. 

For the first time in city history, we extended a 3-K offer to every single family who applied on time and enrolled a record 150,000 young people in our early childhood education system last year alone.  

We transformed the way our students learn to read and do math, connected 15,000 New Yorkers to apprenticeships, and opened up the most new school seats in over two decades. 

We shattered affordable housing records for the second year in a row; unlocked billions of dollars for public housing; and after decades of inaction, passed the most pro-housing zoning proposal in city history.  

Thanks to our administration and our partners in the City Council, New York is finally becoming a “City of Yes.” 

My fellow New Yorkers, the state of our city is strong. 

I always say there are two kinds of Americans: those who live in New York and those who wish they could. 

Where else can you find thousands of parks, hundreds of museums, and food from every culture all just a train ride away? Where else can you catch a parade, watch a baseball game, and ride a free ferry all in the same day?  

Where else can you raise such smart, savvy, global citizens? 

The freedom and opportunity that drew families to this neighborhood and this city have kept New York going strong over the years and still define our city today. 

But there is no denying that New Yorkers are anxious about the future. Extreme costs are forcing too many people, especially working-class families, to make hard choices: between groceries or child care, medicine or clothing, making the rent or moving out. 

I know because I have been there. 

My mother worked several jobs just to raise six kids by herself. Too often, we had to eat one meal a day because we could not afford three. 

But even though the odds were stacked against us, Dorothy Mae Adams never stopped fighting to provide her family with a better life, and that is why I will never stop fighting to do the same for you and your families. 

But, despite all we have accomplished, I won’t stand here and try to tell you our work is complete. Now is the time for renewed dedication and continued action, because no matter what challenges we face, I promise you this: No one will fight harder for your family than I will. 

It’s what you elected me to do. When others wanted to defund the police, we defended them, putting more officers on our streets to keep New Yorkers safe. When too many places pushed back on new housing, we stood up for working-class New Yorkers; never letting the voices of NO drown out the voices of need.  

When it was clear that people on our streets and subways needed help, we stood up to get them the support they deserved, making their lives and our subways safer. And when Washington refused to take action on a broken immigration system; I stood up for our city and pushed back while still caring for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers.  

But we know we still have more work to do and more people to help. Too many families are still facing the same struggles my family did. 

So today, I want to talk about how we can make New York City the best place to raise a family: the safest place to raise a family, the most affordable place to raise a family, the most welcoming place to raise a family. 

Our city must go further to get you the health care and housing you need; the parks and playgrounds you deserve; the education that sets your child up for success; and the chance to make the best possible life for yourself and your family. 

How can we make sure that the greatest city in the world is also the greatest place to raise a family? 

That starts with keeping families safe. 

I patrolled New York City as a police officer in the 80s and 90s and saw firsthand what crime and chaos can do to a city. 

When we came into office, we made it clear that we would not slide back into those decades, and we would not tolerate an atmosphere where anything goes on our streets. From putting more officers on the beat to tackling the quality-of-life issues that families care about, we have stayed true to that mission and driven down crime. 

The good news is that these strategies are working. Last year saw the lowest amount of gun violence in the history of Brooklyn, while overall crime plummeted by 15 percent in December across the entire city. 

But we all know safety is about more than just crime stats; it is about being comfortable riding the subway; knowing you can send your kid to play in the park; and feeling safe walking home at night. 

People need to be safe, and they need to feel safe. 

In the last few weeks, we have seen random acts of violence that have shaken many New Yorkers. That is why I am tasking the police commissioner to work across our city agencies to double down on our commitment to keep riders safe and help ensure more New Yorkers feel comfortable riding our subways. 

We’re starting by adding hundreds of new police officers into our subway system later this month and getting our officers out on patrol to tackle crime wherever it occurs. 

But it also means continuing to make the smart, upstream investments that prevent crime in the first place; that includes mediators who resolve conflicts on the street before they escalate into violence and programs that give young people a place to play sports and build trust with law enforcement. 

This spring, we will build on that work and cut the ribbon on the new Brigadier General Charles Young Field, or, as Deputy Mayor Chauncey Parker likes to call it, the “Harlem Field of Dreams.” 

What was once a dilapidated field will reopen as a vibrant place for young people to play baseball, football, soccer, and lacrosse. It will host programming by Saturday Night Lights, the Harlem Children's Zone, Youth on the Move, and more; and it will help tell the story of Brigadier General Young. 

Born into slavery in 1864, Charles Young rose up to become the first Black colonel in the U.S. Army. One hundred years later, Charles Young was finally promoted to brigadier general. 

With this $9 million investment in Harlem, we will honor his legacy and give hundreds of families a safe place to send their children to play. 

All across New York City, we’ve brought a new approach to public safety by investing in our young people. We know that if we do not educate, we will incarcerate. 

That is why we’ve connected thousands of at-risk youth with counseling and mentorship and helped set them on the path to college and careers. 

This year, we will begin a $163 million expansion of five of our most successful programs that engage young people who need extra help — programs like Fair Futures and College Choice. 

This investment will help us reach 8,000 young New Yorkers, and build a safer, more equitable city for all. 

Our entire administration — from our police officers to our youth counselors, from our firefighters to our health care workers — will never stop fighting to keep New Yorkers safe.   

Building a better city also means addressing the housing crisis that affects our entire nation and has led to far too many people living on our streets.  

I have seen both sides of this issue, from living on the verge of homelessness as a child to patrolling our subways as a transit officer.  

When we came into office, we said the days of letting people languish on our streets and subways were over. It was not safe; it was not humane; and it was not going to continue on our watch. 

Thanks to the dedication and drive of Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom, we doubled the number of outreach staff working with unhoused New Yorkers and created new teams that brought together law enforcement and nurses. 

We helped more than 8,000 New Yorkers move from our subways into shelter and committed to helping those who could not care for themselves. 

These efforts were not always popular. But they were the right thing to do. Three years later, they are working.  

Ask Antonio Durham. Antonio first entered our city’s shelter system when he was just 14 years old. Unfortunately, it was not a good fit for him, and he slipped into chronic homelessness and drug use, sleeping in subway stations in the Bronx for several years. 

After connecting with our outreach teams in December of 2022, Antonio agreed to try a Safe Haven bed, one that offered him his own room, personalized support, and more flexibility than a traditional shelter. 

It worked. 

Six months later, Antonio moved into a supportive housing apartment in the Bronx.  

We will not walk away from New Yorkers like Antonio; and we will not give up on keeping our subways safe. Instead, we are going to double down.  

This year, we’ll begin an ambitious $650 million investment to tackle street homelessness in New York City and answer three crucial questions: how can we help people on our subways? How can we help people with serious mental illness? And how can we keep families out of our shelters? 

When it comes to our subways, we know what works: Safe Haven beds. Safe Haven beds like the kind that supported Antonio are one of the most effective tools we have for helping people on our subways and streets. So, we are going to add 900 new Safe Haven beds and get more New Yorkers the help they deserve. 

Second, we must do more to help people struggling with serious mental illness. We know that too many New Yorkers cycle between the hospital and homelessness, so we are going to build a new housing facility just for unsheltered New Yorkers with serious mental illness to give them the health care and specialized support they need. 

And finally, how can we keep families out of shelters in the first place? 

Having a child should be the greatest day of your life; it was for me. 

You should not have to worry about where you and your baby will sleep after leaving the hospital. You should not have to worry about whether your child will grow up on the verge of homelessness. 

Right now, we have too many expecting parents entering our shelter system. 

So today, we are making a new commitment to our families: No child should ever be born into our shelter system. 

This year, we will launch a new program to connect soon-to-be parents applying for shelter with services that help people find permanent housing before their child is born. 

We must stop the cycle of poverty and housing instability before it ever begins and ensure mothers and babies do not go to a shelter after leaving the hospital. 

Subways, serious mental illness, and shelters: that is how we make a renewed commitment to tackling street homelessness. 

We can do this, New York City. But we need Albany’s help as well. We have seen the tragic consequences when severe mental illness on our streets and subways goes unchecked, which is why we must pass the Supportive Interventions Act. 

This crucial legislation will help us get those in need the care they deserve, provide assistance to those who can no longer care for themselves, and keep all New Yorkers safe. 

I want to thank Governor Hochul and all our elected partners who are fighting to get this done. 

The housing crisis is real, and we know how to solve it: by building more homes. This will help New Yorkers from all walks of life, from those who need a second chance to families who need a place to grow. 

Making New York City the best place to raise a family means helping even more people find and afford a home. When I was young, there were days when my siblings and I had to carry our clothes to school in trash bags because we were worried that we might be evicted before the day was over. 

My mother worked job after job to save up enough money and move us from a tenement building to a small house in Queens, but the struggle to keep a roof over our heads continued.  

My mother was afraid she would lose everything she had worked for. Too many families still feel that way today. 

Our administration brought an ambitious new approach to housing right from the start. First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer describes it well: “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.” 

That means building on every block and every borough; working with every agency and every office; and using every tool, at every level of government, to give families the homes they deserve. 

Since the start of this administration, we have created, financed, and preserved nearly 80,000 units of housing, and connected New Yorkers to record amounts of affordable homes as well — not just one, but two years in a row. 

Thanks to the partnership between the Department of Veterans’ Services and the Department of Social Services, we are breaking down silos within government to share data so we can make it easier for veterans to find housing and create a stronger safety net for those who have bravely served our country.  

But we knew that tackling our housing crisis meant going deeper and finally revitalizing our outdated zoning code. 

Thanks to an unprecedented coalition of advocates, councilmembers, and city agencies, we passed landmark changes to unlock new housing and finally turned New York City into a “City of Yes.” 

Previous administrations talked about it. This administration got it done. 

We said “yes” to 80,000 new homes, “yes” to $5 billion for housing and infrastructure, and “yes” to making sure more families can afford to live all across New York City. 

These are already historic achievements, but we want to go even bigger. 

We’ve seen too many families leave for the suburbs once children are on the way. So today, we are launching “City of Yes for Families,” an expansive new approach to housing, zoning, and public space that will change the way we build across the five boroughs and create more family-friendly neighborhoods. 

We will work across our housing agencies to build more family-sized units and more homes for multi-generational families so that parents, grandparents, and grandchildren can stay together. We will also work with the City Council to build more housing alongside schools, playgrounds, grocery stores, and libraries. 

With “City of Yes for Families,” we’ll build 800 units of housing alongside a brand-new library on the Upper West Side, creating what is known as a “Living Library,” the largest in city history. 

We will also roll out new initiatives to help more people buy a home in the five boroughs. If you are paying rent every month, it should count towards your credit score; with our new initiative, it will. 

We will help more New Yorkers build up credit and eventually secure a mortgage for their first home. 

From top to bottom, we are rethinking how we use land and how we build housing in our city.  

That’s why for the first time ever, we called a Charter Revision Commission to focus on housing and propose changes to our city charter that will help create more homes for families for generations to come. 

When I spoke to you last year, I promised to advance 24 housing projects on public sites that would build up to 12,000 new units. But in 2024, we went even further, advancing 26 sites to build the homes families need.  

We also issued a landmark executive order requiring every agency to see where we can build new housing on city-owned land, and, this year, with City of Yes for Families, we’ll move forward with the first sites, including over 2,000 new mixed-income homes at 100 Gold Street, where many of our City Hall staff work today. 

We’ve already introduced five neighborhood plans to build up to 50,000 new homes from Brooklyn to the Bronx, and this year, we will go even bigger and start bringing a new generation of housing to Manhattan. 

Over the decades, housing prices in Manhattan have gone up while working-class families have been pushed out. 

So, we’ll start to use the new zoning tools we secured from Albany and our City of Yes plan to add 100,000 new homes in Manhattan and reach a total of 1 million homes in the next decade.  

We call it “The Manhattan Plan,” a tribute to this borough’s long history as a place where families from all over the world could come to start their American Dream. 

From the brownstones in Harlem to the high rises in Midtown, we will say “yes” to more housing and “yes” to a more family-friendly city. 

Helping families make rent or buy their first homes means helping them save money — and we are determined to do just that. 

Our city’s economy may be booming, but the cost of living here is still too high, especially for our working-class families. 

That is why we launched our “Money in Your Pocket” initiative, an all-out, across-the-board effort to make sure the dollars you earn can be the dollars you spend. 

We passed a first-in-the-nation minimum pay rate for our delivery workers, boosted pay for 80,000 human service workers, and reached contracts with 100 percent of our city’s uniformed workforce. Good job, Chief Counsel Allison Stoddart. 

And thanks to the leadership of Intergovernmental Affairs Director Tiffany Raspberry, we went to Albany and successfully expanded the New York City Earned Income Tax Credit for the first time in two decades to give more than $345 million back to 1.7 million New Yorkers this past tax season. 

But we know that working families need more relief, and they need it now. 

That is why we put forward an ambitious proposal to eliminate city income taxes for working-class families making 150 percent of the federal poverty line or less. 

It is time to get rid of city income taxes for a single mother making $31,000, a family of four making $46,000, and other New Yorkers making do with less. 

It is time to “Axe the Tax.” Our “Axe the Tax for the Working Class” proposal would eliminate and lower city income tax bills for over 582,000 New Yorkers and their dependents, 

And give over $63 million back to families to help them afford rent, groceries, child care, and more. 

So, let’s get it done, New York. Axe the Tax. 

Good job, Budget Director Jacques Jiha. 

We are cutting taxes, raising wages, and helping New Yorkers eliminate burdensome debt. 

Our city’s financial counselors have already helped more than 25,000 New Yorkers reduce their debt by over $37 million, but one in four New Yorkers are still saddled with student loan debt, including many of our public servants; that is why we are launching a new program to help public servants enroll in the federal government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. 

We will help wipe out nearly $360 million in student loan debt for 100,000 city employees and family members who qualify. 

They give their time and their career to their fellow New Yorkers, and now, we are going to give some money back to them. 

From our financial counselors to our free tax prep specialists, New York City’s public servants fight every day to make life more affordable for working-class families. 

Through our Money in Your Pocket initiative, we have saved New Yorkers billions of dollars in free summer programming, free transportation, and free internet. In the 21st century, the internet is essential for finding a job, filling a prescription, and applying for child care. 

But when we came into office, the digital divide was leaving too many New Yorkers behind. 

We launched Big Apple Connect to bring free internet and cable to 150,000 households across 220 NYCHA facilities and help New Yorkers like Karen Davis, the secretary of the Marlboro Houses Tenant Association. 

Karen is a proud member of the South Brooklyn Royals Drumline and Dance Team, and she is a Big Apple Connect user. The money Karen saves on high-speed internet goes towards rent, supplies, and food. 

She uses the internet to promote her small business making centerpieces for weddings and baby showers and to share photos of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 

Karen, we are proud to help you save money, stay connected, and keep dancing. 

Big Apple Connect has been a resounding success, but we want to go further. 

This summer, in partnership with the New York Public Library, we will launch “Neighborhood Internet,” a new program to bring free internet to 2,000 Section 8 and other low-income homes in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan and save families hundreds of dollars. 

New York City is already a great place to raise a family, but as every parent knows, it’s not always easy. 

Working families sacrifice every day for their children, and our city must be there to help them meet their needs, especially when it comes to child care; that is why we extended thousands of new offers for early childhood education and lowered the cost of subsidized child care. 

What once cost working-class families $55 a week when we came into office now just costs $5 today. These are big savings for our hard-working families. 

We have also worked with the City Council to unveil a $100 million investment in our early childhood education system. 

Because of Deputy Mayor Ana Almanzar’s leadership and vision, more kids have a safe place to spend the day, and fewer parents have to choose between using the iPad as a babysitter or earning a living. 

Child care is an essential part of our education system, a place for our children to learn and grow. 

Our children make us proud every day with their energy, creativity, and ambition, and we need an education system that helps them succeed every step of the way. 

Growing up in Queens, I was left behind at school. I suffered from a learning disability and the support I needed did not exist. I was called the D student, the dumb student, and dreaded going to school most mornings. 

I didn’t discover that I suffered from dyslexia until I was in college. 

But the experience of seeing how government can fail our students stayed with me; it never left. That is why from day one, we focused on making sure our public schools worked for every student, in every district. 

We launched new programs like New York City Solves and New York City Reads to bring science-backed curricula into our classrooms and created the Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning to support our multilingual students, students with disabilities, and other young people who have too often been left behind. 

The Department of Education’s FutureReadyNYC program has given thousands of students work experience in everything from building trades to finance, putting more young people on the path to good-paying careers. 

Today, we are proud to announce that we are adding the Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital to the FutureReadyNYC network, offering hundreds of high school students work experience in health care. 

Preparing our students for success is about more than just the ABCs; it’s about the 123s. 

Terms like interest, credit, and debt will determine our students’ success in the 21st century — but too many young people still don’t know what they mean. 

It is time to change that. 

Today, I am setting an important new goal: We will make sure that every single New York City student can learn how to save and spend money by 2030. 

We are going to put a financial educator in every single school district to provide workshops, counseling, and curriculum; open up 15 bank branches in our city schools to give students real-world experience opening accounts, saving, and investing; and begin work on a new program to teach students how to manage real money and encourage them to build financial skills. 

But we cannot do this alone. I’m calling on everyone — our banks, our credit unions, our private sector partners, and more — to join us in this cause and help set our children up for a lifetime of financial freedom. 

There’s no more exciting, adventurous place to be young than New York City, and we want to make sure our children can be both safe and successful here. 

We are working to keep our kids safe on our streets and at our world-class pools and beaches, too. 

That is why we will expand our free water safety and swim classes to reach nearly 18,000 students, saving families over $1 million on swim lessons with this expansion alone. 

We want to make sure more families can spend safe, quality time together and give more parents the chance to watch their children swim a lap across the pool without floaties. 

As a father myself, I know the importance of teaching and uplifting the next generation. I want to make sure every family has a chance to build those strong bonds.  

Our Fatherhood Initiative helps fathers do just that with free parenting programs, mediation, and mentorship. Today, I am proud to announce that we are going to double the size of our Fatherhood Initiative and help us reach another 1,500 fathers and families. 

From our Fatherhood Initiative to programs that help reconnect LGBTQ+ youth with their parents, we are keeping families strong, and we are keeping families together. 

A robust economy is one of the best ways to support families, which is why we are fighting to ensure that every New Yorker can find a job and share in our city’s success; that means jobs that help families buy a home, pay for college, and save for retirement.  

By investing in public safety, supporting working people, and bolstering 21st century industries like life science, health care, and artificial intelligence, our economy has seen a comeback like no other. 

Let’s look at the numbers: a record 4.7 million jobs and a record 183,000 small businesses. We cut Black and Latino unemployment by more than 20 percent since the start of our administration; brought nearly 65 million tourists to New York City last year alone; and can’t wait to welcome the world for the FIFA World Cup next year. 

And we are helping people find good-paying jobs in their community with “Jobs NYC.” We held hiring halls all across the city, created a new website, and connected nearly 8,500 New Yorkers to jobs and job training last year alone, New Yorkers like Kevin Cordova. 

After working as a summer camp counselor through our Summer Youth Employment Program and graduating college, Kevin visited one of our JobsNYC Hiring Halls and accepted a position with a home health firm. 

Today, he uses the teamwork skills he learned at camp to help patients schedule appointments, get medicine, and stay healthy. 

Thank you, Kevin, for all you do for your fellow New Yorkers. 

Our hiring halls are just one of the ways we are ensuring more New Yorkers can find jobs. 

Last August, we were proud to announce that we also expanded services in our Workforce1 Centers to help even more New Yorkers with a disability connect with a career. 

Making New York City the best place to raise a family also means supporting our city’s rich cultural community that offers them the best of art, music, and theater right in their backyards. 

From free days at our museums to world-class performances at our theaters, our cultural institutions bring families together and power our economy. 

To strengthen our cultural sector even further, this year we will designate five more organizations as “Cultural Institution Groups” to ensure they get the support they need to thrive. 

When we talk about helping families, we must talk about strengthening our health care system, too. Keeping families healthy is essential to keeping families in the five boroughs. 

I remember worrying about my mother as she injected herself with insulin and worrying about myself when I could no longer see the numbers on my alarm clock due to vision loss and started to lose feeling in my fingers and toes. 

My doctor diagnosed me with Type 2 diabetes, but I was lucky. I was able to reverse my diabetes through healthy eating and lifestyle changes, but too many New Yorkers have not been as fortunate. 

We know that health care costs and chronic disease have put an unsustainable burden on working people, with prescriptions, paperwork, and bills piling up. 

When we took office, we were clear: we didn’t want to keep feeding the health crisis in our city; we wanted to change it. 

So we launched a landmark campaign to raise New Yorkers’ life expectancy to 83 years by 2030; signed more than 16,000 teenagers up for free virtual therapy; and took on distributors for illegally selling flavored vapes and hooking young people on nicotine and tobacco. 

Thank you, Corporation Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant, for working to protect our children’s health. 

Our health care system has expanded in other ways, too: helping more families access doula and midwifery services and becoming the first public health system in the country to help people access abortion care through telehealth, because here in New York City, we will always defend reproductive rights. 

Our public health agencies have also helped us address another major issue over the past three years: the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers. 

Thanks to our Asylum Application Help Center and our dedicated public servants, we have helped more than 178,000 asylum seekers take the next step in their journey; that is nearly 78 percent of the people who have arrived here since the spring of 2022, a major achievement. 

Good job, Chief of Staff Camille Joseph Varlack. 

The health of our people also depends on the health of our public spaces.  

When we came into office, we knew that it was not enough to just reopen our city; we had to remake it as well. 

We brought curbside composting to the entire city; expanded our Summer Streets program to all five boroughs; and invested $1.2 billion in infrastructure and resiliency initiatives to protect against the next Superstorm Sandy. 

Thanks to the vision of Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, we are creating a more vibrant and open New York City for families to enjoy. 

From Central Park to Flushing Meadows, our city’s parks are household names across the globe. They are where we come together, build community, and take our children to play. We have to make sure every New Yorker has that opportunity. 

This year, we are going to put another 20,000 New Yorkers within a 10-minute walk of a park by opening more schoolyards in underserved neighborhoods for use during the summer, after school, and on the weekends. 

But we are not just giving families more parks; we are giving them cleaner ones too. 

Starting this year, we will add an extra afternoon cleaning shift to 100 more hot spots in our parks throughout the city to make them even cleaner and safer for our children. 

From public spaces to public safety, from health care to housing, these initiatives will uplift working-class families in the years ahead. 

But in New York City, we do not just measure our work in months or years; we think in terms of decades and build for generations to come. 

One day, when our children look around, they will see our work all across New York City. 

They will learn at a world-class research center on Governors Island; work at a modern maritime port in Red Hook; live on a new North Shore along Staten Island; cheer at a soccer stadium at Willets Point; and come together at a brand-new Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, soon to be known as El Centro Kingsbridge. 

From training troops during World War I to distributing supplies after Hurricane Sandy, the Armory has served our city for more than a century. 

With the $215 million vision we unveiled this week, we will begin work on the next great chapter in its long history. 

Out of empty caverns, we’ll build sports fields for our children, spaces for our cultural institutions, and opportunities for local businesses. We will create new jobs and affordable homes and give families a place to come together. 

After decades of disrepair, we will finally bring a powerful vision for the Armory to life. 

Possibility and perseverance: That is the story of the Kingsbridge Armory, and it is the story of New York City. 

As we celebrate over 400 years of New York City history, and the Lenape people who were here long before, we must look forward to the future as well: a city where hope and ambition create new industries and opportunities; a city that is safer and more affordable; a city has space for our families to flourish and grow. 

I am determined to make life a little easier for every Dorothy Mae Adams that’s out there, year after year, generation after generation.  

Let’s keep this a city for families: for our families who are here and for those who are on the way; for our working families, our immigrant families, our extended families. 

The greatest city in the world must also be the best place to raise a family: The City of New York. 

Thank you. 

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