Transcript: Mayor Adams Hosts Community Conversation

April 8, 2025

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, the Adams administration is excited to be here in East Flatbush. This is the mayor's 38th community conversation. This is besides all the other town halls we've had with the older adults, and the youth town halls.

This community is such a diverse community and a bustling Caribbean community. We are excited to be here in the P.S./I.S. 109, and we want to thank the school's principal, Kerdy Bertrand, and of course, the Superintendent Bove. Of course, I want to acknowledge Community Board 17 District Manager Sherif Fraser and the Chair Rodrick Daley.

This community conversation started at six o'clock. There are three parts. The first part from six to seven o'clock, we really had a conversation with members in the mayor's office and community affairs office at every table. The reason being, the administration recognizes the value of your time. In case your questions are not asked, the folks at each table take down notes to bring it back to policymakers at City Hall to ensure your topics are discussed thoroughly. 

The second portion, we ask the folks at each table to formulate your independent questions so you could ask it to the dais, to the mayor and the agency representatives. Also, you have a card in front of you. In case your question is not asked we ask you to write down your question, submit it to the facilitator at the table. We'll make sure to track each question and make sure you get an agency representative reach out to you that's monitored and tracked by the mayor's office to ensure we get you a timely response.

The run of the show this evening will be the Councilmember Farah Louis will speak. We will give it over to the mayor, but I just want to go through quickly the DA and who we have here this evening. We're asking everyone to hold your applause.

First person we have is the mayor of the City of New York, Eric Adams. Afterwards, we have the first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro. We have deputy mayor of Housing, Economic Development, Adolfo Carrión. We have deputy mayor of Public Safety, Kaz Daughtry. Deputy mayor of Health and Human Services, Suzanne Miles-Gustave. Deputy mayor of Operations, Jeffrey Roth. The deputy mayor of Strategic Initiatives Chief of Staff, Jason Parker. NYPD deputy commissioner, Mark Stewart. New York City Public Schools deputy chancellor, Christina Foti. DYCD commissioner, Keith Howard. Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, Commissioner Manny Castro.

Health and Hospital CEO, Dr. Mitchell Katz. Department of Health and Mental Hygiene deputy commissioner, Dr. Leslie Hayes. Office of Community Mental Health deputy executive director, Laquisha Grant. Department of Social Services, Department of Homeless Services administrator, Joslyn Carter. ACS General Counsel, Commissioner Joseph Cardieri. EDC assistant vice president of Brooklyn Borough Director, Gregory Vayngurt. New York City Emergency Management deputy commissioner, John Grimm. Department of Finance Director John [inaudible]. CCHR Human Rights commissioner and chief of staff, Jose Rios Lua, and Gender-Based Violence deputy commissioner, Tesa Arózqueta.

Of course, to my right, we have our councilmember, Farah Louis. We have our Small Business Services commissioner, Dynishal Gross. HPD acting commissioner, Ahmed Tigani. DFTA Department for Aging commissioner, Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez. Department of Probation commissioner, Juanita Holmes. DOB Deputy commissioner, Gus Sirakis. Department of Consumer Worker Protection, Assistant Commissioner Carlos Ortiz. Parks Borough Commissioner Martin Maher. NYCHA EVP, Daniel Greene.

DOT chief of staff, Ryan Lynch. Mayor's Office of Climate Environmental Justice director, Elijah Hutchinson. Mayor's Office of Non-for-Profits, Executive Director Michael Sedillo. DEP Borough commissioner, Mario Bruno. Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice COO, Candice Julien. Office of Asylum Seeker Operations director of External Affairs, Daniel Henry. Department of City Planning Brooklyn Office director, Alex Sommer. Sanitation Borough chief, Joseph Rainone. Fire Department, Deputy Chief Peter Irish. Rodent Mitigations director, Kathy Corradi. We also have Patrol Borough Brooklyn South, the new chief, Frank Giordano. 67 Precinct CO Inspector, Rachael Kosak. 71 Precinct CO, Captain Ronald Perez. 63 Precinct XO Captain Hussein. We want to thank all the members of the mayor's office and community affairs sitting at each table. At this time, I'll hand it over to Councilmember Farah Louis.

City Councilmember Farah Louis: Thank you, commissioner. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. I'm Councilmember Farah Louis, representing Council District 45. I want to thank Mayor Adams for organizing the first town hall meeting right here in the East Flatbush, held by the mayor's office. I also want to thank Principal Bertrand for opening his doors and for offering this space to the community for tonight's conversation.

I want to thank Superintendent Bove for being here as well. Tonight is an opportunity for me to sit back and listen, but a opportunity for you to share with the mayor and his entire team some of the pressing issues that are happening here in our community. There's many, many issues happening in our community, but they are here to support and help us. This is not just about a conversation, but proactive approach to ensure that your issues and your concerns are being heard tonight. Thank you for the opportunity, Mayor Adams, for being here.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you so much, councilwoman. It's good to be back in Brooklyn after eight years of being your borough president, now to be back here to talk about what we have done and what we continue to do. Go back to January 1st, 2021. Running, I had a series of things that I stated I wanted to do as the mayor. I really challenge everyone to go and look at what our wins have been.

We have accomplished and ensured that our city will move forward and I think one of the first indicators is to look and see who's up here. This is one of the most diverse administrations in the history of this city. The most diverse in the history of this city. 

January 1st, 2022, when I became the mayor of this city, crime was surging through the roof. We were dealing with the affordability and housing issue. We were not invested in foster care children, jobs were hemorrhaging, Black and brown communities, unemployment was high, Black community was four times the rates of White community in unemployment. Bond ratings was not giving us the bond ratings that we wanted and deserve.

NYCHA residents, when I was borough president during COVID, we would go door to door and learn that families did not have high-speed broadband. Children were not able to do remote learning. Parents were not able to do telemedicine. We were watching our foster care children slip through the cracks because they were not getting the support that they deserved. MWBEs, people talked about the program that David Dinkins put in place, but MWBEs, the dollars were not going to Black and brown businesses in this city. You look list after list after list. Where are we now?

We built more affordable housing in the City of New York in year one and year two, and we're going to do it in year three, in the history of this city. More people moved from homeless shelters into permanent housing in year one and year two in the history of this city. More people were able to use FHEPS vouchers, about 32,000 in the history of the program. We invested in foster care children paying their college tuition, giving them a stipend after graduating from college. We have more jobs in New York City in the history of this city.

We just announced this quarter, we have the least amount of shootings in a quarter in the history of this city. Second lowest homicides in the history of this city. All of our major crime categories have decreased. Subway system, continuous crime, five quarters in a row, every quarter is three months, five quarters in a row we saw a decrease in crimes in this city, and we continue to do that.

100,000 summer youth jobs. We tried for years to get 100,000 summer youth jobs. Finally, we came into office. We did that. 110,000 summer rising programs. Invested in justice-involved children. $19 billion in M/WBE to women and minority-owned businesses in this city. Record after record after record. Bond raters has raised our record.

We did this coming through COVID, remember COVID? Coming through COVID and coming to 230,000 migrants and asylum seekers that hit this city without any support on a federal level. I couldn't stop the buses from coming in. It was against federal law. I could not allow people to work. It was against federal law. A group of migrants came to me and said, "Can we remove graffiti, clean the streets, and just get a stipend?" Federal government said, "No, you cannot do that. That's against the law."

I had a requirement to feed, clothe, house, educate 40,000 children, and my north star was one thing, not one child or family was asleep on the streets of the city of New York. 180,000 of them have now taken the next step on their journey. We turned this city around. You won't see it by what you're reading. You're reading total disorder. Nothing is happening. Nothing is getting done, but the numbers speak for themselves, what we have accomplished in this city.

You go back to 30 years ago when David Dinkins was mayor, that's the same thing that you read every day. That's the trick people want to play. This city was in a dark place. This administration with this team that's up here, we turned it around and we're going to continue to turn it around. We're going to do it by getting on the ground, and so tonight, I want to hear from you. You don't have to sugarcoat. You don't have to be kind. I'm from Brooklyn, so you can't hurt my feelings.

When you speak, I'm going to listen. When I speak, I want you to do the same. When your neighbors speak, we want to do the same. Allow us to communicate and not just get into the point that we're not listening to each other. I'm a deep listener, so I could be ja deep understander. I look forward to a nice engaged conversation this evening. Where are we going first, [Lamona]?

Lamona was a police officer with me. Now she's an assistant commissioner and liaison for the Community Affairs.

Question: Good evening, everyone. Good evening, Esteemed mayor. Thank you for giving us the time. My name is Hartwell Alleyne. I represent 671 students at P.S. 235 Janice Marie Knight in East Flatbush. I also represent the residents of East 42nd Street between Lenox and Linden. I'm the block association president there, and I'm the PTA president at P.S. 235. I'm coming to you this evening representing those children. I am their voice tonight.

In our neighborhood, a block and a half away, just a block and a half away, there are three men's shelters that were opened. As far as I know, it's not supposed to be the case. Our children have been subjected to vagrants wandering through the neighborhood, stopping in front of our schoolyard, mingling in with the parents that are dropping off their children in the mornings.

On one occasion, I had to ask our principal. I said, "Is this one of our parents?" Because I got to know many of the parents. I know who comes in the morning. This one individual was not a parent. When I approached him, he became argumentative. He said he had a right to stand there. I said, "Not if you're not dropping off a child." I ended up having to call 911 to have him removed.

We had a child menaced in the bodega at the corner of Lenox and Albany Avenue. When in the store, a man kept the child in there. The NYPD crossing guard, [Nyasha Gray], intervened because she knew who the children were. When she approached the individual, he said he was their uncle. She knows the family well. He was not. NYPD had to be called.

It turned out that that vagrant who was from the shelter had an open case for menacing on top of what was going to come to him that day because he was arrested. She did receive a commendation at 1 Police Plaza. You can actually look into it. Her name is [Nyasha Gray]. I am appealing to you. I don't know how this happened. You don't see this in any other community where you have homeless shelters so close to our children.

Our children should not be subjected to men masturbating on the corner of Albany and Lenox, but it has happened. I have physically gotten involved with the individual that was doing that on the corner. It shouldn't be the case. Our children are supposed to be able to go to school in peace. I shouldn't have vans parked a block away from the school, and when I stop and I look, they drive off. It shouldn't be happening.

How? I ask you. How did three shelters come into our community, come into the lives of our children? We have those men now coming up and down our blocks, locking shopping carts on the parking signs. I've had to go out with bolt cutters and cut the chains to remove the items that they're leaving, the shopping carts, the bikes. 

The shelter on Clarkson and Albany is lined with those scooters. At all hours of night, the men are out there. My wife was working the night shift, and she would have to leave at night to go out and catch the B12 and be subjected to those men out there at those hours. 

Mayor, something has to be done. It was not supposed to happen. They were not supposed to open up, not that close to a school, not so close to my daughter, our children, your children. It shouldn't have happened.

Mayor Adams: First of all, thank you for all of the volunteerism that you're doing. You listed a number of things. Let's peel this back for a moment. When we came into office, we already had an overburdened homeless system. Overburdened. Thousands of people were already in care. Then on top of that, we got 230,000 that came to our city. There was a moment we were getting 4,000 a week, 8,000 every two weeks, the buses were coming around the clock that we had to, required by law, to give a housing to.

Then when you do an analysis, when I'm on the subway system, looking at who's homeless on a subway system or street homeless, overwhelmingly Black and brown, particularly men that are coming home from correctional facilities for the most part and don't have housing when they come home. 

We have a 1.4 percent vacancy rate in the city, 1.4 percent, functionally zero. That's why we did City of Yes, the most comprehensive housing reform, because there were many communities that were saying, "We need housing, but you can't build it on our block." We had to find spaces and creativity to build more housing.

When I first came into office, I brought all the city councilmembers together and I said, "Why do we have certain communities where you'd have no shelters?" You go up to the Bronx, they got 30-something shelters. You go out to Queens, they got 30-something shelters. We have overburdened certain communities with shelters, and now we are equalizing. There's some folks we open one shelter, they want to protest and say they shouldn't have any at all. It's imperative for your local elected to talk to their colleagues and say, "You got to share this burden. Can't be just in one community." Our goal is to find the best places and give the best services to make sure we deal with a serious homeless population. 

You know what's aggravating this even more, folks? I was just sitting down to DSS Commissioner Molly Park. We are now getting people from outside other cities that's overburdening our shelter system. Everyone is moving to New York, and that's adding to the already shelter population that we have. Now someone tell me about these three shelters that was just mentioned. Who do I have here from DSS?

Commissioner Kreizman: Joslyn Carter.

Joslyn Carter, Agency Administrator, Department of Homeless Services: I'm here, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor Adams: Okay, good. Good to see you.

Carter: Oh. Good to see you too.

Mayor Adams: Even before you speak, what she accomplished, what Molly Park's accomplished, what Zach Iscol accomplished, folks, we were having people come into this city nonstop that we had to house. They were up all night coming through COVID, and they were up all night fulfilling the law and the obligation. Those same folks that handled our COVID crisis and couldn't take care of their family, they went right into the migrant asylum seekers crisis. That's what these city workers did. Can we talk about these three shelters?

Carter: Sure, Mr. Mayor. I think one of the things that we know is that, like you said, people who come to us need shelter. I know that definitely the one in Albany is one that definitely run by us DHS, I'll follow up with that immediately. I do know that our outreach teams are out multiple times per week. Out really seeing who's experiencing homelessness on the street. I will check in to see how often they're coming to that area so they can engage those folks who are out around the school just to make sure that we are doing the work that we need to do.

I will be following with that immediately as soon as we– during this meeting, actually to make sure that our teams are out there, but we are making sure that our teams are out 24 hours a day with the outreach teams. We'll make sure to do that piece.

Mayor Adams: So what I'm going to do tonight, I got to run to another meeting, but I'll meet up with you in the next day or so and go to the exact locations you're looking at and see the conditions over there. 

Let me tell you something folks, I have never had one elected official that when we state we need to open a shelter somewhere and they raise their hand. Everyone says the same thing, "Not here. Not on this block. Not in this area." It has to go somewhere. What I have to do is make sure it is evenly distributed so it's not overwhelming one community.

When I speaking with Councilman Salamanca. Councilman Salamanca have over 30 shelters in his community. Councilwoman Won has I think 35 shelters in her community. We can't overburden communities. Everyone must share this. Again, when you do an analysis, everyone, they're open to women and children shelters. Do you know what no one is open to? You try to open a men's shelter anywhere, no one wants men's shelters, no one. They got to go somewhere, and that's the obligation I have to fulfill.

DJ, connect with him. I'll meet up with you. I want to see the conditions there. We can't put it in your community and have deplorable conditions at the same time. No one should have to watch someone public urination, defecating on the street, injecting themselves with drugs. You shouldn't have to live through that. You should not have to live through that, and that's why I fight hard to do it in spite of everyone yelling at me for doing it. I want the same quality of life for my block and for my children as you want for yours.

Question: My name is [Hazel Martinez]. We want to know what are the plans to improve the quality of life in this community? We have a lot of event spaces, particularly one on Farragut Road, XXXL Event Space which is causing a lot of pain to the residents that live there. Our sewers need upgrading, some of our parks are dismal. We have a lot of dollar buses abandoned, and trailer homes, people living in trailer homes next to residences, and the residents are not happy. There's plenty more but we can tell you those.

Mayor Adams: I want to pull out of the park for a moment, particularly the trailers. We saw that on 3rd Avenue was it, Kaz? We saw it on 3rd Avenue. People were lining up with trailers and living in them, that can't happen. I just need for you to zero in and tell me where the locations are that we could address it.

Kaz, let's make sure we get over there, look at those locations with trailers, we knock on them, tell people you can't live there, don't even try to start that. We were able to clean up 3rd Avenue, that was the same problem. We had about 15 trailers where people were sitting inside there. It's not acceptable. If you pinpoint the location, we'll deal with that. DEP? Who I have for DEP?

Commissioner Kreizman: We have Mario Bruno.

Mayor Adams: Hold on, one moment, just let me finish answering her question and then you can come back and do your thing. Talking about the sewer issues over here, it's going to take a while for us to build out the sewers. Our sewer system was not made to handle the rainfall that we are receiving. 

We have to find different ways now to deal with the water that we're experiencing, the level of rainfall. Our sewer system, it was not built to handle the flow of water that we are receiving, but we're doing a lot of things to do water mitigation. You want to go into some of that?

Mario Bruno, Staten Island Borough Commissioner, Department of Environmental Protection: Thank you, mayor. Mario Bruno from DEP. In the community, we actually have a lot of investments in this area. Chief among them is a water maintenance sewer project, BED834. It's a $43 million project, and we're building new water and sewer mains on Nostrand Avenue from Dean Street to Prospect Place, including 32,000 feet of water and sewer mains.

We've built a lot of rain gardens, green infrastructure over 1,043. What those do to serve, to reduce flooding in the community, and also clean up our waterways. Then we also have a special GI project on Kings Highway between Farragut Road and Avenue D. We're going to be doing green infrastructure in the median, but if you have any specific issues, I can talk to you after the event, and we'll get whatever help you need.

Mayor Adams: That's the goal. The goal is to pinpoint. Some of the other tables when you speak, if there's specific areas that you pinpoint a problem that allows us to utilize our resources better. I don't want to just say in this esoteric way that everything is bad, everything is bad. No, we're having a problem on Kings Highway. We're having a problem on Nostrand Avenue. If you pinpoint, then we can zero in. There are some major sewer projects that are happening here as was just explained. 

Department of Parks, someone talk to me. No one loves their job more than you, man.

Borough Commissioner Martin Maher, Department of Parks and Recreation: Sure, Mr. Mayor. For the first time in my 41-year career, we have a brand new $144 million recreation center, the Shirley Chisholm Center, thanks to our great councilmember over here and thanks to you for funding that. It's going to have an indoor pool. It's going to have a gym. It's going to have classrooms, fitness center, dance, all kinds of programs that's going to open this coming fall. We're very excited about that.

Also, down the block on Foster Avenue, Paerdegat Park is getting a brand-new cricket and baseball and softball field. Also, funded by the councilmember, $6 million. That work starts this coming fall. That'll be finished a year later. Our ratings in the parks are 98 percent for cleanliness, 91 percent for overall condition, and we're getting it done, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Listen. Listen. Did y'all miss that? Every community I go in, they ask for a community center, this councilwoman delivered one. She delivered one. That's deserving, a state-of-the-art, ground-up construction. When did we did it, in two years? Two years. She delivered. When we were on the campaign trail, she says, "Eric, I need a community center." I'm not in one community that they don't raise that, and she delivered it. 

She also delivered $6 million for the park. This is what we send people to the council for. This has been a solid, solid councilwoman, and so when she brings home something, we got to show her some love. Got to show us some love.

Borough Commissioner Maher: We also spoke with Ms. Martinez. We're going to be doing some flowering and greening up with some volunteers on Kings Highway.

Mayor Adams: Love it. Love it. Love it.

Question: Good evening, everybody. My name is [Aminatu Noah]. I'm the mother of my only son, [Elijah Chandler], and his friend [Christian Perkins] drowned last year at Riis Beach. My question is to you, what can we do to bring swimming education in the school system, and what about getting more lifeguards intact?

Mayor Adams: My condolences. I remember that like it was yesterday. I have one son, Jordan, and words cannot even express the pain to experience something like that. It kicked into gear. A lot of things happened. The governor started doing a major swimming program. You know, and I know that our community, our children were not getting access to swimming programs. With all this water around, it was a real problem. That incident really put us in gear, and we're doing some amazing things. 

Department of Parks, who I have from Parks? Do you know the swimming program that you guys are doing?

Borough Commissioner Maher: The swimming program actually starts registration this coming week. Riis is a federal park, but we have been doing lifeguard recruiting and training, not just in one location but in all five boroughs. This coming season at Coney Island, Rockaway, all of the city beaches, we should be in much better condition than we've been.

Mayor Adams: I think the number is, I believe we put– I don't know the exact number, but I think we put $5 million into free swimming programs. I was at Flushing Meadows Park with two and three-year-olds teaching them how to swim during school hours. They come to the pool for recreation. 

Our goal is to make sure all these children know how to swim. That's crucial that they do because you're right. What happened at Riis, we had some things, I remember when I was borough president in Prospect Park, we lost a child. Just take one minute to go through something like that. Really, my condolences. To lose your babies like that is just really unfortunate.

Matter of fact, we're going to name the swimming program after them. We're going to name it after them to always have people remember. To remember. We're going to always remember them. Always remember. There's nothing more devastating than a mother losing their child. 

You know what? I can't even tell you. In my first week in office, I had an 11-month-old baby that was shot in the head. Thank God that baby lived but sitting in that hospital– When I leave these events folks, I sit in the car, my drivers say all the time, "Mayor, are you alright?"

Night after night, Officer Mora and Rivera, seeing their family members, this case here, that's that vicarious trauma. All night, every night, the hours I spend in hospitals. I don't just send my team up there. I'm in those hospitals. That tore me up when those babies, we lost them, tore me up. 

When you lived through this experience, folks. Let me tell you something. You just don't go home. I feel this vicarious trauma, and I can't bring back the children, but I could do everything possible to eradicate it. That's why we have this swimming program, where we're teaching our young people how to swim.

Commissioner Kreizman: Before we go to the next table, Councilmember would like to ask.

Councilmember Louis: Mayor Adams, I just wanted to remind you, you are going to have an announcement at Brooklyn College for funds that you've allocated for swim safety here in the district. Just to add to that.

Mayor Adams: First Deputy Mayor, we want to name this program after this family because that reminds people over and over again.

Deputy Mayor Kaz Daughtry, Public Safety: Also, just wanted to let everyone know in regards to the swimming programs that the city is going to be offering. We're going to be bringing back again the drones, which is going to be on each beach and extra officers along with the fire department, with OEM, with the Parks department, where actually, the NYPD, I believe, is training some of your personnel in regards to how to fly the drones in the park. 

What does that mean? Officers will be responsible for a certain area along the beach as well as the fire department, as well as OEM, as well as Parks. They are going to have the Parks department radios so in the event that one of the officers does see an anomaly in the water, whether it be a shark, whether it be somebody that's trying to stay above water, they are going to radio into the lifeguards. 

Also, the drones are going to be equipped with what's called a Restube. This tube will be dropped from the drone. As soon as it hits water, it opens up into a 6-foot flotation device. There's a lot of technology that we're putting on the beaches this year. We don't want anyone to suffer what you suffered too, mom. 

I don't know if you remember me, I was at the beach with you and that was probably one of the most painful days in my career, working for the city. I'm so sorry for your loss. I don't have any words to explain, but I'm really sorry. We're going to do our best so that this doesn't happen again to anybody.

Mayor Adams: We kicked in gear. I remember Kaz calling me from the beach. We just kicked in gear. He put that whole program together of monitoring the beach, going up and down the beach with the drones and the drones had cameras attached to the drone. You are able to identify it. Then he came up with a flotation device that's attached to the drone. You could go out in the water, drop the flotation device. This impacted us. This impacted us.

People often believe these folks that sit up here at the table are just professionals. They have children. Ryan, what do you have? Two children now? I remember your son was born, and growing up. These are parents here and we take home this trauma, folks. We take home this trauma and we kick in gear. When you lost your children, we kicked in gear and came up with ways of rectifying it.

Question: How you doing? My name is Minister Chris. I serve as a minister at Alliance Tabernacle here in East Flatbush. I'm here with some mothers and a father who have family members that have dealt with gun violence and has affected their family. 

Mayor Adams, our communities are in crisis. We've lost too many of our young people and children to gun violence. [Christian Montrose] in Canarsie killed Christopher in Bushwick, [Storm Hughes] in East Flatbush, and several others whose names we continue to carry in our hearts. These murders remain unsolved and the families and communities are left without justice or closure.

On top of that, after these tragedies, the blood and remnants are not cleaned up properly, leaving visible trauma in our streets and for these families. What immediate steps are you taking to bring justice to these families, hold city agencies accountable for proper cleanup, and most importantly, will you push for stricter legislation and hold those who commit these crimes fully accountable?

Mayor Adams: Thank you. When a bullet leaves the barrel of a gun and it hits an intended target, the pathway may stop physically, but emotionally, it rips apart the anatomy of a community. That's something that we have to stop. Let's first peel that back. 

Number one, Commissioner Daughtry and DSNY, let's make sure there's a real protocol in place that if there is an instance of violence, it doesn't have to be a shooting, it could be an accident, no matter what it is, we got to immediately respond and clean it up after the crime scene carried out or the accident scene carried out.

There needs to be an immediate response because people don't want to walk past to see blood, body parts, and everything that's associated with it. Can we coordinate that and make sure we have an immediate response? 

Second, we had a press conference today with the district attorney of Manhattan. 16 people were arrested. In the precinct of arrests during that particular time, they committed 50 percent of the shootings in that precinct. We have a recidivism problem. It's a small number of people who commit the crimes over and over and over again. I have been fighting this for three years now. Of all of these reforms we are doing that protect people who commit crimes, how about protecting people who are the victims of crimes? That's what we need to be focusing on. We don't do that enough.

In many ways, you have a family member who is murdered, and they are the primary breadwinner to that family. What are we doing for them? Why aren't we paying their mortgage for a year so they can stabilize themselves? Why aren't we paying for them and give them the assistance that they need for the year? The victim service law on the state level needs to be fixed to make sure we look after people who are the victims of crime, particularly when they're the primary breadwinners in the household. We pay for funerals, but that's not enough. We got to go further in what we're doing.

Then we have to zero in on recidivism. That's the problem. We don't have a crime problem in the city, folks. We have a recidivism problem in the city. You got folks that are being arrested over and over again for gun possessions, for shootings, and they coming in and they coming out. That's the problem we have. 

Do you know in New York City, we had 575 people arrested for shoplifting? They were arrested over 7,500 times. When you look at this revolving door and some of the legislation that has come out of Albany, it's real problematic. To have these parents deal with the trauma and pain of shootings in this city is a problem.

We took over 22,000 illegal guns off our street, and some of them were ghost guns. At one time we had to worry about guns that were being made by manufacturers. Now with these kits, the 3D printers and kits, people can make guns right inside their own homes. It's a problem. Albany must catch up to what working-class people want. That stuff they passing in Albany is not what you want on the ground in your communities to allow people who commit serious violent acts to be part of a revolving door criminal justice system. That has to stop.

That is why we continue to push forward. Your voice, go into Albany and speaking one-on-one with these lawmakers and say, "This is not acceptable to us." We need to go after those dangerous recidivists that are committing these crimes. Without even knowing the cases specifically, I bet you if you look at the person who committed that crime, I bet you they have been arrested multiple times before. That's the pattern. That's the pattern that we're facing.

Now, what Commissioner Stewart is doing, we want to take kids off a bad pathway. Commissioner Stewart is teaching children golf, teaching children real estate license, teaching children how to fly planes. What DYCD is doing with our summer youth jobs, teaching children financial literacy, going after justice-involved young people. We're not saying just be reactive, we want to be proactive. We want to prevent the shootings from taking place in the first place. That's the combination that we are facing.

But those who have made up their minds that they're going to be violent in our community, we got to stop acting like we could just hug them out of their pain and turmoil. That just can't continue to happen. We are failing in Albany to deal with this crime that we're seeing on our streets.

Deputy Commissioner Tesa Arózqueta, External Affairs & Community Initiatives, Mayor's Office to End Domestic & Gender-Based Violence: Me, Mr. Mayor. Sorry. I don't want to interrupt the applause.

Mayor Adams: You could always interrupt.

Deputy Commissioner Arózqueta: Thank you. My name is Tesa Arózqueta. I'm one of the deputy commissioners at the mayor's office to end domestic and gender-based violence, ENDGBV for short. I just wanted to mention that our office oversees contracts for community programs. One of our contracted partners, Rising Ground, just opened a trauma treatment center in Flatbush. One of the things that our office does, we have a hotline, 1-800-621-HOPE. It also has a chat feature that you can access through our website, nyc.gov/endgbv. One of the things that they do is they don't only serve survivors of gender-based violence, we serve all victims of crime. After a tragic incident like this happens, there's so much to do.

To your point, there are so many expenses and so many other impacts long-term and short-term to a family, including the need for maybe mental health counselling, the need for someone just to support everything that's going on in the home after something like this happens, including connecting you to services to help reimburse the family or cover certain expenses. For example, the Office of Victim Services, the state office, we help connect you to that, help manage applications that can pay. They don't have a cap on any medical expenses, mental health supports that you might need. They don't have a cap on paying for that after an incident like this.

I just wanted to mention that as an additional support. I think there are so many things to manage, and we sometimes forget those additional things like how to just support a family mentally, emotionally, and financially through that. Through our hotline and through our community programs, those services are available.

Commissioner Kreizman: Just to add one thing with regards to the mayor's sensitivity on the issue, he wanted to ensure there was a person designated to dealing with every shooting victim that takes place in New York. We have a designated person in the mayor's Community Affairs Unit under our emergency response team that deals with shooting victims and reaching out to families and dealing with the aftermath and following up. We work with all the offices of mental health, we work with the office of end gender-based violence to ensure the services are there to provide the support needed. Whether it be burial assistance or other support that might be needed.

Commissioner Keith Howard, Department of Youth & Community Development: This amazing family has approached DYCD and we are working with them in healing circles and victim services. We've wrapped our arms around them with the investment that you have provided in the crisis management system. They're actually going to be going on a retreat this weekend with a whole bunch of other families. As you always say, take your pain and make it into purpose. Amazing family here, strong-willed family, but we got them, and they continue to have the mental health support that we're providing.

Just shout out for the strength of the family sitting down, meeting with us, having their young people part of the healing circle as well. We don't like to be able to have a survivor's group. That's nothing that we encourage. When it's here, we want to make sure that we fold into the services that are offered with your $131 million of investment in the crisis management system. I just wanted to say that. The family is just magnificent. We're working with them, and we're meeting with them on a regular basis.

Mayor Adams: So important. I'm glad you raised what we doing, both of you. Listen, it doesn't dissipate. When you lose a loved one like this, it doesn't dissipate. Parents are not supposed to bury their children. Being able to bury Mommy was my– I didn't want to see her leave in her '80s, but I'm supposed to bury her. You're not supposed to bury children. We are going to do the things we have to do to eradicate the problem, but at the same time, if the problem happens, we need to be here to support it.

Pastor, I want to thank you for what you are doing as well, and all the pastors that are here. Some of the pastors stand up. There's a couple of faith-based folks that are here. Give them a hand for what they're doing, going beyond the call of duty. Thank you so much. 

Before we go to the next table, I want to talk to this brother in this sharp uniform. Stand up, brother. Good to see you. Commissioner Stewart, talk about this captain that's here. This is the stuff that Commissioner Stewart is doing. We're not just reactive to crime. We're proactive. What this commissioner has done is unbelievable what he has done. Let's talk about this brother that's here.

Deputy Commissioner Mark Stewart, Community Affairs, New York City Police Department: Hello. I have seen this young man grow in three years and he's just succeeding every rank in the explorers. I just want to tell you that we are very proud of you for what you do and how you do it and how you carry yourself. A lot of times that we don't see our kids in these opportunities. We turn on the TV, we see five minutes of violence and we see our kids. Our kids are doing great things. 

When I first came here about three years ago, the mayor tasked me to turn the Community Affairs Bureau into something besides just basketball. In three years, we have an aviation program, we have a harbor program, we have a real estate license from a program, and want to know, an 18-year-old kid just got his license. 

College tours that we do with CUNY. We work with DOE. We take our kids from the high schools to college. It's not just a visit. There's a staff there waiting for them, showing them how could they apply for college. I have two daughters. When I took them around the school, what was missing? Transportation and opportunity. We're providing that. 

We have the SYEP with DYCD Howard. We have over 1,100 kids with summer jobs this year. We have a YPA, Youth Police Academy, and we have over 800 kids ages from 10 to 15. We also have an older adults program. I'll be there soon so we got to set this up right. We have an older adult officer in each precinct and each PSA, so that means anything you need, we are the liaison. We work with Commissioner Vazquez, Mr. Community Affairs Cop. If you go into a precinct and you need help, ask for them. 

We also do baby showers, which the mayor loves. Three years every borough, we were able to service 40,000 new mothers, and we're doing it again this year too.

Mayor Adams: Don't skip over that. Tell them what you do with those new mothers.

Commissioner Stewart: Diapers, bassinets, cribs, prenatal care. We have vendors, over 100 vendors there for them. I don't know if anybody in this room has ever been to one, but it's usually close to 1,000 to 1,500 mothers. 

I like sports. Basketball's good, but I play golf. Our kids should learn how to play golf, too. We have a program, which we have about 70 kids now that joined. We have an e-commerce program. I know a lot of people know what e-commerce is, but if you shop on the internet and you buy and you trade the money, you could go to any precinct or PSA in transit. There's a monitor that monitors the transaction. You don't have to go into the precinct. You don't have to make an appointment. There's a big sign that says e-commerce. You go there in a transaction because what a lot of people are doing, trying these transactions in desolate areas, parking lots, no longer. The cameras are there 24/7, and somebody's always watching it.

We have a culinary program for our kids too. We just started. We had 18 kids. We have to diversify. Our kids just can't dribble away out of basketball and play sports. Kids that we were missing, we are getting a lot of kids back in recruitments. 

The last program that we also have is very important, Deputy Mayor Kaz, drones. We're teaching our kids how to use drones. Everybody always asks, "How do you find out?" Community affairs officers, go to the precincts, after I leave here, you come and see me, and I'll definitely tell you. All right. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Good stuff. Good stuff.

Captain Blair, Commanding Officer, 67th Precinct, Police Department: Good evening, everyone. I'm Captain Blair. I'm the commanding officer of the Explore program for the 67th Precinct. This is about my fourth year in Explore program. In total I'll be nine years with the NYPD, since I was nine years old in the Youth Police Academy. 

The first year I actually started Youth Police Academy is the year that Junior, the incident with Junior in the Bronx happened. We had to sing for his passing, and each year there's a scholarship in his name and things like that. Have my explorers here with me today. I thank you guys for being here.

Mayor Adams: Tell them to stand up.

Captain Blair: You got to stand up. Just bear with me. I didn't think I was going to speak tonight. Ever since I've been in the Explore program, I've attended a variety of different events. I've been to every Labor Day carnival event. I've been to every Veteran's Day parade in Queens. It's a pleasure to be in the Explore program, but there's a lot of things that people don't know about the Explore program and it's not seen. 

As we go into times of subway surfing and a lot of youth are being arrested nowadays, it's very tough times for the Explore program. Especially when those budget cuts happen for the migrants, so many funding went away. There's no uniforms. There's no headgear. There's no boots. There's no things to wear. When we have to go to parades in so many places, what do we have to wear? What do we have to represent?

It's very challenging on me, too, as a leader, every time I speak to many different people in the community. By the time that I get a student that has trouble in school, it's not a job of disciplinary action. It's about guiding the student. It's about caring for them in a different way. It's about loving them, too. Love comes in different forms. 

Youth programs are not car wash programs, right? That means that if youth are having trouble, it's not putting them in a youth program. I put them in tutoring and they're washed clean, right? It's a process. I learned that myself in leadership. I speak confidently about that and what I've learned in my time in leadership. It's very hard when you can't assess every situation, but the best thing you can do is be the change you want to see, right? Change doesn't happen just because you moved something from point A to point B, change doesn't happen like that. You'll be the change you want to see. 

I'm actually a proud graduate of P.S. 235, myself and my 11 junior high school, my lovely principal here. I now teach at my old middle school and I'm doing furthermore things. The point of what I'm saying is that youth programs are not car wash programs, and that's very important, especially with subway surfing. [Jevon Fraser] was one of my students in Explore program. I taught him about three years ago, and he was a victim to Subway surfing, and that itself is a big issue. 

They even came out with the police commissioner for a day essay to talk about that, how can the NYPD and the MTA officials collaborate about that. It's such a touchy topic, but if we keep looking at the things that go unnoticed, what are we really looking at, right? We have many people in high places speaking, but come down to the ground and actually speak to the community, and then you'll really know.

Mayor Adams: Right. Thank you so much. It's just a real powerful testament. Those are the seeds that we are planting. Those are the seeds that we are planting, these explorers teaching golf. You got a golf club in your hand, you don't have a gun in your hand. Those are the seeds that we have continuously planted because I'm telling you, this group of people who are up here, they're so personally invested. They're so personally invested. 

I sit down and I talk about the personal narrative of folks that are up here, and it blows my mind. Look at Commissioner Castro. Many of you see him as another commissioner. He's a Dreamer. He came across from Mexico with his mother as a young boy. Now he's the commissioner in charge of the dreams of others. Here is a Dreamer. 

He and I traveled to El Paso to see the border issue. Then we went to South America, to the Darién Gap. We went to Ecuador, we went to Mexico, we went to Colombia to speak with people on the ground. When we talk about migrants, we talk about immigrants, we're not talking about from this philosophical place that he did a thesis in college someplace. This man lived it. He lived it. Everyone here from the Caribbean community, you know what it is to come here and carve out a way the right way. That's who this team is. You go down the line, each one of these people who are here, you should listen to their personal narratives. This is real, authentic leadership. 

You know what? That's why people hate on me. That's right. That's why they hate on me because I got everyday working-class people deciding that they're going to come and do authentic work because you can't do this rote if you're not real about it. You think about this, Deputy Mayor Carrión, you got to hear his story. His mother and father coming here, of going up through the system. You go down the line and listen to the story the people who are sitting behind this table and what they stand for.

This is authentic leadership. There's never been an administration like this administration with authentic everyday people, fighting on behalf of everyday people. That's what all this hate is about. Said, "We got to get this guy out of here. We got to get him out of here," and then do what they did to Dinkins. "We're going to let his own folks turn on him." You know that? He was going to write these stories, "Oh, he's under Trump's fingers. Oh, he's doing that." Man, I was under no one's finger when I was in the Police Department. If I was scared of people with guns, why the hell am I going to be afraid of anything now? I'm here to fight for this city and this community. Don't get me started. Next table.

Question: Hi. Good evening, everyone.

Mayor Adams: How are you, ma'am?

Question: I'm doing well. My name is [Christina Yana Croswell.] I would like to say that I'm a daughter of East Flatbush, originally raised on East 58th by Tilden High School, then moved to East 51st between I and J and Kings Village. I'm also a proud graduate class of '06 of PS 235, the Janice Marie Knight School. I also went to IS 240, Andries Hudde Junior High School. Since then I've always been understood of the idea of Sankofa, which is mean even though you go away, you always know how to come back. Most recently I came back having graduated with my JD/MBA from the Howard University School of Law and School of Business. I'm currently working as a corporate associate at a big law firm.

However, my pro bono practice as a first-year associate spends most of my time looking at three things: housing, business formation for creative entrepreneurs, as well as real estate issues that our people have. I'm particularly coming to you, mayor, with the third, the latter, which is the real estate issue. Having come back now, now I'm going into my 30th year of life, thank God, I came back with the hopes of wanting to own. I'm seeing that instead there's only a right to rent. Not only that, but hedge funds are actually buying up this very community that this group of people that you speak of helped to create, helped to build, helped to found, and now the same place that the white flight happened here is now coming back to retake and reclaim our community.

My question to you is, how do we ensure that not just my generation, but that generation of explorers and the future generations get to own in their own community that their forefathers and foremothers built as opposed to having to rent in unsafe conditions in these high rises that we don't even know if tomorrow that they'll still be standing?

Mayor Adams: No, no, no. Hold on. Hold on. Hold the mic. Hold the mic. Hold the mic because I don't want you to drop the mic. I want you to hold the mic.

Question: No, I'm here to have a conversation with you.

Mayor Adams: No, and I like that. What we have to do with people who, leaders like yourself that you are very much invested, you and Du Bois's theories of The Talented Tenth that go out and come back, our grandmothers and grandfathers listened to Louis Rawls soothing voice that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. They sent jars of [pennies] to the United Negro College Fund so that we could produce individuals like yourself. Give us some of your ideas of what you're seeing on the ground.

We have our ideas, but nothing is more insulting to a community for us to come in and dictate. It's a combination of some of the ideas you want, give Deputy Mayor Carrión on the microphone who has built more affordable housing, move more people out of homeless shelters into permanent houses, more people in the [inaudible] vouchers program into permanent housing. More people who needed this housing, he has been involved in. If you have some ideas that we could do and go into some of our home ownership initiative.

What happened in many of our communities, well, we saw that predatory lending scandals when they were allowing people to purchase homes with no money down, knowing that they did not make the money to keep up the mortgage, people were losing it, destroying their credit. We don't need a repeat of that. We need to really show how to fix our credit, how to be a home buyer, how to make sure we buy within our income level. My first ownership was a little small co-op. I was eventually able to escalate to buy my brownstone and be able to grow from there.

Our money, as you just explained, without that brownstone, I would not have been able to pay Jordan's college tuition. I was able to get that equity loan to do so. We want to partner with folks like yourself who are professional, back in the community so we can empower people to own their homes.

Question: May I respond to that, mayor?

Mayor Adams: Yes, ma'am.

Question: My response to that is it's unfortunate to come back into a community where all single-family house, where I would want to have a family, is now $800,000 to even purchase. It's unfortunate that co-ops, even now, the very place where I said that my mother is living, is going for $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 for a co-op, which is just out of the price range here, particularly because they're not just being sold from one to one, individual to an individual, but rather hedge funds that do not know our community are coming in and purchasing these houses causing now flight of our own community for a quick cash. As a result, we cannot come back in and purchase it. Instead, we have to rent from them.

Now that's taking away our opportunity to even own like you did. You had an amazing opportunity in the times that you were in to be able to go from a co-op to a brownstone. You had that opportunity. That opportunity, especially in the times that we're in, is just not present. What we're seeing is that not only are they now forcing us to rent the very house that we could potentially own, sometimes they're flattening them all together and creating things like Utica Crescent, where we're now having three luxury apartment-style housing of people that will come into our community, don't know anything about our community, but want to benefit off of the backs of our community at a place where we also cannot own.

Once again, everyone else is coming in to own our community, but yet, look who's in the room, the people here that actually are about this community, that know about this community, that are raising issues about this community. I'm happy I'm willing to talk to you, Mr. Carrión, deputy mayor. However, I would like to also have a conversation with those hedge funds. I would love to have a conversation with the current owners to talk about why is it that we are building up these new buildings to bring in people that do not live here, but then the people that already live here cannot afford to live here. Where do we go?

Mayor Adams: Listen, we must be in a position of results. That's very important because the emotion that's tied to many of these issues, we can feed our emotion or we can feed the results. We do not control the course of a person that have a private location and where they build. We don't control that. I don't control if someone wants to do whatever the income would take or the price would take on a house. I don't control that. If someone has a house, the worst thing we could ever want– Many people here that are from the Caribbean, they came and they bought in communities–

Question: My mom is from the Caribbean.

Mayor Adams: They bought into communities. I bought into [inaudible] when no– People ask me, "What are you doing moving there? You could afford not to move there." I bought there when others didn't want to. Some people have invested in their homes, and now they're seeing a return on their investment. They may want to go back to the South, they may want to go back to the Caribbean. They may want to go somewhere. I'm not going to go to them and say, "You cannot charge this amounts," after they sacrificed and invest to be here when no one wanted to stay. We don't control the cost of what a person is going to sell their home for. That's the free market of the country that we live in.

What we need to be doing, build more housing, give programs where you could do home ownership. Look at how we allow people to build housing that people could own and put them on a pathway of owning, and put on the pathway of owning. It's a process, making sure your credit score is solid, making sure you went to first-time home buyers seminar, make sure you are buying something within your price point. It's not automatic. I didn't just buy that [inaudible]. I had to go through a process and educated myself. It was many things I sacrificed. I never owned a new car in my entire life. I'm not wearing my assets on me. We can't say, "Why am I not having something?" There's a way to get there. Talk about some of the home-buying stuff. I mean, some of the investments we're making.

Deputy Mayor Adolfo Carrión, Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce: Thank you, mayor. Christina, I just want to say to you, you are an inspiration. You really, really are an inspiration. The energy, the clarity of understanding that you demonstrate is powerful. We need you as a city, and I'm glad you came back home, after going away to school. You know what? That deserves a round of applause.

I'm going to say a couple of things, and then I'm going to have the acting commissioner of HPD, Housing Preservation and Development, talk a little bit about our affordable homeownership opportunities and what we're trying to do. Number one, one of the saddest stories that I ran into early in my 10-year as commissioner of housing, before I became deputy mayor, was a woman, a mother of three wonderful adult young Black men from Harlem. They all went away just like you did. They went away to school. She still lives there. They all left the city, They left the city because of exactly your story, they couldn't find an affordable place to live.

When the mayor came in he gave us a charge. He says, "Look, we're facing a housing crisis. We're going to beat every record of production that's ever been established," and we have done that. We have done it in two ways. One, building new construction of affordable rentals. The opportunity for people to rent apartments, working-class people, rent apartments and raise their families here in New York. We don't want to lose them. We want to continue to be the best place to raise a family. Then he said, "We need to create homeownership opportunities, affordable homeownership opportunities."

I'll give you a short story. My parents came from the Caribbean in the 1950s. They didn't speak a lick of English. They came from Puerto Rico. They lived in a subbasement apartment on South 2nd Street in Williamsburg. They went to Jacob Riis houses because there was an opportunity for affordable rentals in Lower Manhattan. They went to 12th Street and Avenue C, because HUD created an opportunity for affordable housing on 12th Street, brand new beautiful buildings, Haven Plaza. In less than one generation, with the help of the federal government, a government program, they became homeowners with a 3 percent down payment in a row house up in the North Bronx, in what we consider then, the country. It was beautiful up there.

We need to repeat that story over and over, which the is mayor's charge to us. He says, "I want to see that story of success that in one generation– In less than one generation, a family in New York City can enter home ownership and enter the middle class." Ahmed Tigani is the acting commissioner at HPD. Talk just a little bit about some of the efforts that we're undertaking, including legislation to fight that kind of raiding of a community by hedge funds and other real estate funds that are taking away opportunity from our city.

Acting Commissioner Ahmed Tigani, Department of Housing Preservation and Development: Hi, Christina. Just to build up on what the mayor and the deputy mayor has said. HPD's focus on home ownership is three-part. One, we're looking to create opportunities. Under the opportunity section, downpayment assistance is one of the most important tools we can give people to get access to all types of homeownership opportunities. In this administration, we took the original program of $40,000 per household and we increased that to $100,000 per household for access to down payment assistance. It comes with it the kind of–

Mayor Adams: Can you repeat that?

Acting Commissioner Tigani: Yes, sir. The first-time home buyer down payment assistance program went from $40,000 per household. For eligible households, you can get up to $100,000 per household for your home ownership opportunity. That comes with the kind of housing counseling that the mayor talked about. That comes with the wrap-around services to make sure that you have access not only to information about the homes but different places across the City of New York that can match you and your household to the type of home ownership opportunities that create stability.

Again, in addition to creating those opportunities, we're also creating new homeownership programs. We have an open-door term sheet that creates homeownership cooperative opportunities across the five boroughs. We're using city land. We're working with private sites. We're creating new homeownership opportunities multiple times a year. We're also looking at the homeowners that we have today. Both the co-ops and the single-family homes, because if we're not preserving the homeowners that we have here today, we're losing a valuable part of what makes this city special.

I would say on the multi-family, the co-op side, we are spending tens of millions per year, hundreds of millions over the course of this administration to invest, rehab, repair, and preserve existing homeownership opportunities whether that'd be the Mitchell-Lama cooperatives that we have across the city or the 30,000 or so HDFC co-ops that make up New York City and is in our asset management portfolio.

We are spending money not only to make those buildings safer, more livable, control costs through providing subsidy, but we're also repairing units that have been offline. By bringing those repairs in, you can now resell those apartments at an income-restricted amount. It means that by putting the public subsidy in, we actually can control the amount that that unit is resold for and have it more accessible to families who are making a wider range of incomes. That's how we're using the money to do that.

The last thing I'll say is one to four-family homeowners throughout the Borough of Brooklyn have helped shape our programs at HPD. A couple of years ago, we had a pilot to create a centralized desk to try to bring together all the information you would hear from across the amazing agencies on this table because people were going in every which direction to figure out how I can get help to the homeowner. We now, under this mayor, have baseline and centralized the Homeowner Help Desk. A 3-year $10 million commitment, bringing together 17 organizations to provide centralized assistance.

You call the one number, which you can reach through 311 or contacting the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, you're connected to a technical assistance guide, and they'll connect you to things like our HomeFix Program, which offers eligible loans up to $150,000 for 1 to 4 family homeowners to make much-needed repairs at a zero interest or forgivable loan. It connects you to things like estate planning, deed theft prevention, it connects you to legal services, all of which are things that homeowners can use to make sure they can stay in their community and provide that house for future generations. I'm happy to talk to you more about some of these programs, but this three-part strategy is helping cement a very critical piece to what makes New York City a fantastic city to live.

Mayor Adams: When you look at what Pastor Monrose is doing with Building by Faith, partner with our clergy to take over these vacant lots, build on them like we did with Ebenezer Plaza. We put, I don't know, was it $2 million, $1 million? I know we put a lot to build real houses. What needs to be done? We need folks like you, trained to go into the community. We have all of these resources that you just talked about, people don't know about them. It's almost like a tree falling in the forest and no one is around. It doesn't make a sound.

If we organize colleagues like yourself, law school partners, accountants, CPAs, and say, "This is worth giving back. This is why Du Bois made a way for us to get the Talented Tenth." Now, the Talented Tenth, not only must come back home, we need to organize and make sure that we know about all of these resources that we have. Exactly what you laid out, we have the programs in place to put them in place.

Question: Okay. Well, I'll just leave it as, thank you for your time. I think it's important to consider just what the future of our community looks like. I'm not saying that there's not an opportunity for changes so long as the same people in this room are brought in to speak about those changes and not just have the changes happening around them and now they have to be reactive as opposed to being conversation and proactive about the things that go on moving forward, not just for them presently, but for their future generations.

Mayor Adams: We're on the same page, sister, but, again, we need to reenergize that Talented Tenth, that talented our grandmothers and grandfathers sacrificed for you and I to be where we are right now. We have to come back now with all of that talent, all of that skill. We have to come back now and build these institutions that's going to make sure our community sustain itself. That's why we need you.

Jose Rios Lua, Chief of Staff, Commission on Human Rights: Mayor, may I add one more thing to the toolkit over here at the table?

Mayor Adams: Okay.

Rios Lua: I wanted to add one different layer to this discussion about barriers to housing. The mayor, the deputy mayor, the acting commissioner, they all talked about the economic barriers. There's a different barrier that no one should ever have to face when trying to find housing, and that's discrimination. One of the things with the Commission on Human Rights, we have jurisdiction over discrimination and lending practices and jurisdiction over discrimination by realtors.

We want to make sure that as we are preparing communities with the economic knowledge to get your credit ready, the money ready to put your down payment, folks also know their rights when walking into a deal that a realtor can't ghost you because of your race, your age, your gender, your disability. A bank cannot discriminate on you on lending, give you a higher interest rate than someone because of your protected category. In the same vein, we want to work with these communities to make sure that you all understand your rights when you're walking to the negotiation table. You know what can and can't happen. We're here willing to work with anybody who's interested and we're ready to be used for our services.

Mayor Adams: Great point. Yes ma'am.

Question: We are not going to beat a dead horse, right? Most of the things that were discussed at the different tables, we discuss it here, too. There's something that we want to actually just zero in on. Is that we were talking about how our young people are being traumatized. One part of the reasons why they're being traumatized is that in East Flatbush here, right here in East Flatbush, we have a lot of them who are homeless. They live in their cars. We may see their cars parked, but that's their home.

They talk about the racial profiling that's going on. I'm sitting here, I'm happy to hear about all of the beautiful things that's happening, the golfing, and all of the things, the swimming, but if they don't trust the system, they don't have confidence in the system, how are they going to access the help that they so need? How are they going to tap into the resources that they so need? Most of them are immigrants. Their families have either moved down South or they moved back to the Caribbean.

They're young, they came here young, they don't know anyone, but they didn't get a green card, so they're just ending up in the system because as they get stopped in this, they can't find jobs, and they're just here because there's nowhere to go. The question is, how are we going to help this population? What are we going do so that they don't end up with a gun, they don't end up just doing whatever just to survive because a lot of them, they're not evil.

They're not trying to do what they're doing. They're trying to survive. When people are trying to survive, they will do whatever it takes to survive. We need to change their perspective. We need to show them that, "Yes, there is a system that you can trust. You can come to us. We can help, but how do we make it safe?" Create that safe space for them, so that they know that we are here for them.

Mayor Adams: You want to talk about that, Commissioner Howard, some of the stuff you're doing? You're right, there's so much distrust. There's so much pain, and people hurt people and they hurt themselves. Why are you disturbing her when I'm trying to talk to her. We need to find ways to alleviate that pain that people are feeling. Particularly, after COVID, a lot of our young people went into a dark place and never came out. A lot of our young people lost loved ones. We need to, as an entire family and village, must respond to that. That is why council women wanted that center, the Shirley Chisolm Center. That is why we're doing what we're doing because there are children out there that don't have that safety net. You want to talk about some of the stuff we're doing, Commissioner?

Commissioner Howard: Yes, sure, Mr. Mayor. I need to go out with you to see what you're seeing. We have a huge investment in our drop-in centers that deal with runaway and homeless youth, that provide a whole plethora of different services, from mental health services to support services, to food, to clothing. Those drop-in shelters actually refer those young people to shelter beds. They work with those young people in order to get them stabilized, and sometimes reconnect those young people to their families.

The immigrant population that you're talking about, I would have to leave it to Commissioner Castro to really discuss that, but in terms of shelters and shelter opportunities, and bed and what we provide, the mayor just invested another 100 beds for young people age 21 to 24. We have a total of 913 beds that's available in a system that is very caring with a provider network that are subject matters, who know how to talk with young people and get them all stabilized.

I have my team out there. We're going to connect with you. I want to go out with you and see exactly who are sleeping in vehicles, how do we connect. We also have an outreach team, too, that does very well in terms of reaching out to those young people and talking the different cultural languages in that immigration population. Okay?

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your question.

Commissioner Castro: Mr. Mayor, if I can–

Mayor Adams: Yes, yes.

Commissioner Castro: This is Commissioner Castro. Just briefly. thanks to the mayor, we've been able to secure funding to partner with community-based organizations that serve immigrant communities to get that message out to them because we understand that people trust community-based organizations and we need to work with these partners that people can walk in to their storefronts, to their offices directly in their community. One such organization that I want to shout out here today is Life of Hope. Porez is back here. He's an incredible partner. He's one of our funded organizations.

Just want to shout him out because he and his amazing group of staff and volunteers, just a number of months ago, announced the first Haitian-owned community center to be established in this very community. That was all thanks to Porez insisting and leadership and for the support of my colleagues here today. Thank you so much Porez.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Commissioner Castro: Thank you so much, mayor, for the support.

Mayor Adams: He came to me and stated that he was not leaving my office until I gave him the money to build it. 

Porez Luxama, Co-Founder and Director, Life of Hope: That's true. That's true.

Mayor Adams: You tell the rest.

Luxama: Bonswa. Good evening. Sak pase? My name is Porez and also thank you Mr. Mayor for being here in East Flatbush Little Haiti as well Little Caribbean. I want to thank my Councilmember Farah Louis being here. Thank you Commissioner Castro for acknowledging. I was not here to speak, but I heard you're going to be here and I really want to come to show my support. It's tough times but, again, you have to speak the truth always. I remember like two years ago we were going to capital budget. It was a tough time because as just like all organizations to be able to own your own building to purchase, as my sister was saying, that you cannot live in a community where you don't own it. Whoever own it, what they call the landlord, is the lord.

We want to make sure the work we're doing in this community, as Commissioner Castro said it, with the support and then we have a permanent [inaudible]. I would have to thank yourself because I was going to City Hall to be in the budget and everybody would tell me, "It is not going to happen. It is not going to happen." I remember Commissioner Castro asked me to speak to Commissioner Jacques Jiha, and then say, "The only person can really help you, you have to come speak to the mayor."

It was impossible as– You are going to a meeting and then it was on the step of City Hall, I spoke to the mayor a day before the budget, whatever, "You have to help us. It's a unique– If we don't have the money, we're going to lose the building and we're going to lose $400,000 money we own with interest on it. We're going to lose that money." Then he called me in 30 minutes. He said, "It's going to happen. It's about time for your community to have a community center." Again, I want to thank you for what you do on behalf of New York City, also for my community here in Central Brooklyn in Flatbush. I appreciate you. I love you.

Mayor Adams: He caught me walking up the steps. You know that? Jacques Jiha, our first Haitian American to be OMB director. He controls the budget. $113 billion go through Jacques Jiha. That's some real stuff.

Question: Good evening. My name is Leah Lewis. My fellow explorers and I are here representing the Explorers program. We need uniform shoes and headgear as part of the program just as Captain Blair has previously stated. After many budget cuts in the city, NYC youth, especially the Explorers program, has not been funded well or reimbursed for our service to the community. We continue to do community service, law enforcement training, competitions, parades, and overall program activities but have no uniforms to wear.

Mayor Adams: Okay. Do we– You want to– Go ahead.

Question: Good evening, everyone in the room. My name is DeAndre Felix. I'm also a part of the 67 Explorer Community 67 Explorer Post. As of 2025. This will be my fifth year being an explorer. Before I ask my question, I just wanted to say that being an explorer doesn't mean you walk around with a patch or you walk around with a shirt or you walk around as a captain or a drill sergeant. It means to build your character, and as a young man in this community, that's what I've went through.

Thank you. Thank you. I went from being the troubled kid that gave my mom hell to being the kid that found himself. It wasn't just me. It was the people that surrounded me. The people like the officer sitting right here, like Coach Moe, my elementary school friend, Captain Blair, Officer Roach, Officer Bellingeri, Officer Shahi, and many other six, seven people that I've been around. I guess it's time to get to the question. Enough of that.

As my captain stated, in 2017, we did lose Junior. In what, 2023, 2024, we lost Javon Frazier, a brother, a soul, an explorer that impacted us a lot. My question is, what diminutive action would you take to protect youth like me, like Leah Lewis, like Justin here, from ever being the next person to be buried?

[Crosstalk.]

Question: All right, sorry. My name is Justin Macias. I'm also from the 67 Precinct. I want to explain my experience in Explorers because when I first joined the 67 Precinct, I thought I was not going to be welcomed because I didn't know anybody. As soon as I joined, I was welcomed by DeAndre, my captain, Leah, and everybody else, which I didn't really know much about the program at first. I was like, "Maybe I'll be interested, but I don't know exactly what is it about it." When I first joined, I found out more about what officers do because one of my goals is to become a police officer myself.

As Captain Blair and my drill sergeant that helped me learn about what police officers do, I was able to use that in my real-world experience, like forensic science, how to figure out people's fingerprints, which now I know how to do it.

Also learning drills, which is actually fun. You have to be serious but also have fun with it, which mainly to me, the Explorers program is about teaching you discipline, because like DeAndre said before, he used to be a bad child.

[Crosstalk.]

Question: I'm seeing how the cause and effect. When DeAndre did join, he changed a lot, but now you see him as a good person, a leader, a mentor and a big brother to me.

Mayor Adams: Let me answer each one of those pieces. Talk to me, commissioner, because I meant to answer that question when you raised it, about the uniforms. What's happening with the uniforms?

Deputy Commissioner Stewart: This is a long conversation here. It's probably a conversation we should have just you and I, because there's more to it than what's going on. I have to say, when I first came here, these explorers, they do drills and this is what I'm talking about. You can't measure what these kids do. A lot of these kids come to us and say, "If it wasn't for this program I would do A, B, C, D," but we can measure in stats on the good things that these kids are really doing.

First person that came in, I saw them, they were doing drills. I saw no cellphones. We want them to get into law enforcement, but we want them to be committed and dedicated, in which they truly are. We have now, I think it's 1,800 explorers, and they're all over in every precinct, in every boroughs.

You guys ever go to the summer camp this year? We take them to camp for just about a week, and they do drills, and they practice. You know what happens? We mentor them. They get a chance to tell us what's going on in their communities. Our officers stay there with them over night, and it's just an amazing journey. Especially with this young man here, to see him growing three years, it's just amazing. These are the great things that our kids are doing in our communities. They do other things too. They go out, they paint, they clean parks, community stuff that they do.

Explorers is amazing, but I have to tell you, even with funding-- A lot of these programs are funded through city council, district leaders, and when they fund it's only to that precinct. You might have the Bronx getting more money than Brooklyn. Sometimes when it comes to uniforms out of the NYPD budget-- When I first came, I think we laid out $90,000 in uniforms. We'll talk about the other part later. Who else is supposed to be doing the funding. We do try out best.

Listen, I'm very proud in each and every one of your guys for the work and dedication that you guys do. Because you know what happens? What you do is probably not cool now. When you walk the streets, everybody probably looks at, "Oh, you're explorer," and they probably laugh, but you know what? I had friends that laughed at me too, and I'm the commissioner now of the largest police department in the entire world. Let them laugh now. Stay dedicated, stay committed because this is a great program. Look at him. You could definitely tell. Alright? Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Carrión: Mr. Mayor, one of the best examples of the Explorer program is our Deputy Mayor Kaz Daughtry.

Mayor Adams: Used to be an explorer.

Commissioner Juanita Holmes, Department of Probation: Mr. Mayor, I just want to– I'm sorry, Kaz. I just wanted to speak about the uniforms because– I know I should stand up, right? I just wanted to speak about it because when I had my presents with the explorers, we would do a lot of fundraising. While we're waiting to sort things out for uniforms, we would do bake sales, all different kinds of things just to get donations to buy them uniforms. I'm talking about back from 2007 we were doing that. That's always an option while we're waiting to get whatever respective funding we need for uniforms.

Mayor Adams: Let's get a budget. Let's get a budget. First of all, you're extremely impressive. Let's get a budget. There are so many private companies here. They talk about public safety. They need to be proactive. Everyone must have skin in the game. I want to put you in front of some of our big CEOs in the city, and let you come and present because they need to see the quality that you present. They can't just sit on the sideline.

I'm going to do a gathering at Gracie Mansion, and I'm going to bring in and invite in some of the big CEOs, or we're going to one of these major corporate entities. This is a rounding era for them to buy you uniforms. We're going to get that resolved. Okay? Alright. Good enough.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table seven.

Question: Mayor Adams, thank you for–

Mayor Adams: Oh, good. How are you doing?

Question: I'm doing well. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Good.

Question: It sounds weird. Basically, as we were discussing earlier, when you're looking at our community as a whole, we have some food insecurities and the quality of food that's coming into our area. What can we do to better address those food insecurities for your constituents? Also with Community Affairs, a lot of the offers in this building, a few of them I've played basketball with, different events with, and to them, I say thank you for your hard work and dedication, but then there's also a part that now, it seems like there's a major shift, if you will, because a lot of them are being transferred out into, let's say, transit, but a lot of them also have dance programs, track programs, mental health programs for the kids as well as mentorships.

Now, when you remove them from those posts and those areas in the community, what are we left with because there's nothing backfilling those positions, and the bonds that they built with the kids over the years are broken, and there's no one there for those kids to turn to? I understand the comp stock numbers and moving and shifting the allocation of your service and your officers, but if you put a thousand kids on the street in 90-degree heat and you leave them to their own devices, then you have a whole new problem. What are we going to do to address those needs and concerns?

Mayor Adams: We should look at that because what we have done historically, we rewarded those who have large number of arrests, large number of gun counts, large numbers of this and that. I think we should look at the proactive things that are done. If you have a police officer that's assigned to a precinct and they're doing a host of other things, like you said, dance program, interacting with young people, that should be a pathway of promotion as well, and they should remain in those precincts. Let us do an analysis. If there are some specific officers that you saw moved out to other locations, please share that with us, because if they holding it down in the 67, they should stay in the 67 to continue to hold it down.

Question: 127 Pennsylvania. You had officers like detective [inaudible] who had a dance program. Then you had officer [inaudible], who had the Black Kings and Black Queens, and he was doing mentors. He's removed to transit. Officer Mill, he would come in, do turkey drives. He would go out with the kids and do candy drives, things of that nature. You have a lot of officers that were in that building that were removed to transit for whatever reason but no one backfilled those positions, and no one validated what they were doing in the community before they were snatched out. Now you have that hole that nobody else is filling.

Mayor Adams: Yes. First of all, let us look at that. The reason with transit, we were dealing with a real crime issue in transit that's now under control. Look at those specific officers that you mentioned. You need to give us a list of those officers so that we can make sure that they're in the precincts where they're doing a good work. Policing is more than running after bad guys. It's preventing the crime in the first place. There are some specific officers you know about, share that with us, okay?

Question: Not a problem. I will.

Mayor Adams: Okay, thank you. The first question you had. There was the first–

Question: Food insecurity.

Mayor Adams: Big issue. Who wants to take that? Dr. Katz? Anyone here that want to talk about? Big issue. I say all the time. We can't have Whole Foods in Park Slope and junk food in Flatbush. Food insecurity is a big issue. Dr. Katz, you want to talk about some of the programs?

Dr. Mitchell Katz, CEO and President, Health + Hospitals: You've really championed the life story of what it means to change your diet. You went from somebody who had vision-threatening diabetes to someone everybody can see is incredibly healthy, and you did that through lifestyle medicine. We're very proud to have a lifestyle medicine program at Kings County Hospital. Sheldon McLeod, our CEO, is here. I give him a shout-out. Thanks, Sheldon. He does a great job at Kings County.

I've also seen your cooking instructions on how you can cook a bean dinner for very little money for your family. I do think, though, that the question is serious about businesses and how beyond Health + Hospitals to say I see that as a business question of how we perhaps subsidize and encourage businesses to be throughout the city and not just in boutique areas of Manhattan, but in all the places where people need to have healthy food.

Mayor Adams: It's a real ground-up, thinking about starting a co-op similar to what they did over in other parts of the city in general, but specifically what they did in Park Slope, getting access to healthy foods, starting out slow, and building it up. Access to healthy food is crucial. Health is wealth. What we eat is tied to many of our ailments. I had to learn the hard way, but I think that you're dead-on in attracting good healthy supermarkets here. Starting out as a co-op and putting together a group of people who are interested in what you're doing is a good pathway to accomplish that.

Deputy Chancellor Christina Foti, Department of Education: Mayor, if I could also just point out-

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Deputy Chancellor Foti: Hi. Good evening. Christina Foti, New York City Public Schools Deputy Chancellor. Our schools play a major role in food security for our children. The mayor's and the city's investment in fresh food has given kids across the city universal and equitable access to high-quality fruits, vegetables, and all of the nutrition they need to sustain a healthy lifestyle. That's a huge, huge, important piece of this puzzle, is making sure that kids are able to learn. That's why our summer food programming is such a vital program for the community as well.

Mayor Adams: I'm glad you raised that, because with the New York City Public School, what they did around food, we really went in and looked at the food we were serving our children. In the hospital, H+H, we're doing plant-based, we're doing plant-based food as a default. If people want to eat something else, that's up to them, but we're saying, "As a default, we're going to give you a healthy meal, because that's part of your healing process if you are in the hospital."

We really lean into our children. Looking at our schools, the food our children were being fed was feeding their healthcare crisis. Changing that food was crucial in changing the food in our schools in New York City Public Schools. What we're doing in New York City Public School, we're teaching our children breathing exercises, meditation, healthy food, communication skills, financial literacy. It's more than just being academically smart. Our children must be emotionally intelligent, and they must develop their full personhood to be prepared for the futures that's in front of us. We're zero in on this.

People think my legacy is going to be public safety. My legacy is going to be health. If we are not healthy, then no matter how much we have in value, no matter how much money we make, no matter what house we live in, if your health is not correct, it really traumatize your entire life and that is what we're leaning in. I was really blessed to have someone like Dr. Katz that understood how we have to start dealing with food and healthy eating. You want to raise something, Commissioner?

Acting Commissioner Tigani: Yes, sir. I just wanted to point out and make sure people know that we're also using public land to make sure that we're increasing access to healthy food. Even at HPD where we're building housing, we're looking at how we're using the ground floor of our buildings to increase access to healthy food. In this administration, we announced a project called Steps at Saratoga on Fulton that will create 280 units of senior housing, of multifamily housing, but on the ground floor– The reason why we picked this project is because six different non-profits dedicated to community wellness, to food prep, to healthy living education will occupy all parts of our community and commercial facility.

They'll be providing not only education but access to fresh food, teach people how to use it, teach people how to incorporate healthy lifestyle routines like the ones that are promoted in Health + Hospitals. Not only will the people inside the housing that we're building will benefit, but the entire community. This came out of a neighborhood plan where the community told us that this is what they want to see, so we took housing dollars, matched it with space that we had, and we continue to put that out there, and we look for opportunities to do that in other areas of the city.

I know I have colleagues from DCP who can speak to this more eloquently, but even in our zoning, we have created benefits, like the fresh zoning text. That creates an incentive that allows building owners to build fresh food markets and make that building easier to build because they're providing the fresh food markets. In our zoning, in the buildings we finance, and in our community plans, we're looking for that feedback, and then we're investing back in the community with healthy food options.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, Commissioner Ahmed.

Commissioner Howard: Shout out to Kate MacKenzie, Mayor's Office of Food Policy, for what she does and our work in the afterschool program, 1.5 million meals served in our afterschool program. Not just to the participants who actually attend but also allowing them to take the food home to their families as well. 1.5 million meals served in our afterschool program last year.

Mayor Adams: Good stuff. Good stuff. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Yes, Commissioner?

Commissioner Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, Department for the Aging: No way I was going to let that go without saying what we're doing for older adults in New York City. We too serve 10 million meals a year to older adults. Of that, 20 percent are plant-based meals. Every week. Everyone told us it was never going to work. I want you to know that last week the mayor hosted a plant-based cook-off where we had six chefs from older adult centers, and six of them won prizes. We've been doing plant-based because that is healthy life, and we see food as medicine.

Mayor Adams: That's right. Now is somebody going to say you got 30 million meals? All yours.

Deputy Commissioner Leslie Hayes, Division of Family Child Health, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Just wanted to add. Good evening, everyone. Deputy Commissioner Dr. Leslie Hayes at the Department of Health. Our major initiative is Healthy NYC, and that is to focus on increasing life expectancy for all New Yorkers. We have several programs that we're focusing on to support that initiative. As far as nutritional access in communities, there are programs like green carts. I don't know if any of you are familiar with them, where we're bringing in DOH-licensed nutritional vendors to be able to distribute fruits and vegetables in communities where the access to those particular items are low.

We're also doing healthy NYC shop retailing, where we are bringing in advisors to work with communities on how to properly shop to increase your knowledge on nutritional choices that you can make during your shopping experience. Those are just some of the things that at the New York City Department of Health we are doing to support increasing the life expectancy of New Yorkers here.

Mayor Adams: Love it. Love it. I think Dr. Hayes, what you pointed out is so important because information is key. Being able to know the nutritional value of your food, how to look for it, all the hidden secrets that are in the food that we're eating. There's a great website called nutritionalfacts.org. It's a great website that gives you information on if you're dealing with a healthcare issue, it shows you what foods you are eating that aggravates those healthcare issues. That was the site that I learned back when I was fighting to get over my late-stage of diabetes. How are you brother?

Question: Hey. Hey Mayor, how you doing? Hi, everyone. I'm Rodrick Daley, Chair of Community Board 17 and thank you everyone for coming out. Before I even ask my questions, I want to shout out all of my fellow board members. All the board members of Community Board 17, please stand and the district manager. I know I saw a few of them– alright.

I'm sorry, I just had to do that, or else I couldn't go home. Alright. This is a two-part, the reactive and the proactive component. Allyson Martinez, stand up, she's going to do the proactive part. I'm going to do the reactive part. We're in a community that is very high in many ways. Over healthy– and you touched on some of these issues. One is diabetes, which you and I both know that we shared that in common, heart diseases, cancer, yet there was a push to shut down some of our medical facility, primarily downstate.

Like I stated, I'm a sufferer of diabetes and a sufferer of cancer and I know about some of the struggles as well, but because of the type of community that we live in, it's very tight lip and so a lot of times we find that we are reactive to the situation and not proactive to the situation. My part of the question is, what are some of the initiatives that you foresee that you're going to continue to do?

You did mention some with the food, but I'm talking about in terms of facilities, updating our hospital so the individuals in our community when they go to the hospital, they don't actually wait forever or be seen and stuff like that, to assist them to– and also educational. What are the educational components to assist them to live a– to understand not just about healthy foods, but about the diseases that affect our community, especially within our Caribbean. I'm going to turn over to Allyson to talk about the proactive part.

Question: Good evening. I'm Allyson Martinez.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: I'm well. I am the founding executive director of a non-profit community development corporation in our community called Brooklyn Level Up and our work is really around small business entrepreneurship, community land trust building, and Cultivate, which is about environmental justice issues. East Flatbush is a community that's one of the last bastions of Black home ownership, but it also faces massive environmental justice concerns.

It is number one when it comes to extreme heat and lack of tree canopy. Second to last on the list when it comes to open space. It also is third when it comes to lead in its soil, but this is a community of people who take pride in growing food. We know that because we had a paid youth internship this summer where we had community children being paid to test soil around our community and we found that the levels were mid to high.

The reality is we also have issues of air quality, not knowing the data around a community that-- where the residential is built right across from the industrial. These are relics of redlining and environmental injustice. The reality is that has led to higher hospitalization rates for asthma, diabetes, all the rest of the ills that we know that can be attributed to the environmental harms and also climate change.

Right now, across the street we have a project called DeCostole that is looking to basically have a support of the community around what has really been a history of carting in construction waste, having particulate in the air, dust all over, that community resident have complained about for about basically 40 years and we are in a school that is right across the street from that. We don't know if there are enough filters for the children or the staff to be here safely.

We need to know what will be done in terms of funding plans or programming that will help to do air quality monitoring and more importantly, remediation of these various issues that we have. We need to obtain an environmental study results for what's been going on here and really do more to understand what's happening on a daily basis. Those are the questions.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Both those–

Question: Oh, sorry. Before you go, I would be remiss if we didn't talk about a lot of the properties that you find on the tax lien sale, which is happening on May 20th, are properties that we know are in need of some environmental repair. Or they're owned by seniors who are not in a position to do the work to get them to a place to be in a good property and if we want to create affordable housing, there are a lot of things that we can do.

You could work with the City Council to abolish the tax lien sale. We have 1,100 properties in East Flatbush alone that are on that list and we need to do what we can to get them off. You could work with the state to basically give senior homeowners or disabled homeowners what they were entitled to or retroactive exemptions that would cut down their costs. You could work with them to have a rolling exemption application process instead of cutting it off on March 13th. Most seniors don't even know they're eligible for these things.

You could work with the federal government to get Rockland County, and Schenectady, and Westchester off of the AMI that counts for affordable housing in our community. You could also work to pass and sign into law the Community Land Act, which would allow tenants and also community land trusts to buy these properties and be able to make sure that they stay affordable. You could actually work with the state to make sure that the ADUs are now part of City of Yes, have accompanying low-cost loans and grants so that you can actually create affordable housing with them. There are a lot of other things you could do. That we have plenty of suggestions.

Mayor Adams: I'm going to get your applause in. How are you doing, Reverend? I'm a little amazed that you went from one period to a bunch of you can do's. She was wrapped up, and she went through all these you can do's. Listen, we are excited about all of those you can do's, but we need to sit down, map them out, and actually see how we do them. The items I caught some of them, let's sit down with the right team members, because we are looking forward to forward-thinking legislations and actions, so that we can do things that keep people in their homes, and make sure that if anything, we can do to excuse these tax issues or what have you, that's what we want to do.

I want to be honest, folks. I want to be honest. There's only certain ways cities can get revenue in, certain ways. Paying water bills, paying taxes. There's only certain ways you can do it because if you don't pay water bills, you don't pay taxes. You don't have teachers, you don't have police officers, you don't have firefighters. We want to make sure that people don't lose their homes, but we have to be very clear there's a reason there are these things called taxes. Those taxes allow cities to function and operate.

You know what we were able to accomplish? With all that we had going on, we did not lay off any employees. In fact, we settled 98 percent of our union contracts, and we did not raise any taxes on homeowners in New Yorkers with all that was going on. If we start saying a significant portion of people don't pay taxes, then it is going to come on those who are paying taxes. That is the reality of running a complex city.

You have a whole lot of people that's going to say give everything away free, but we have to pay to run this city. It costs money to pay the salary of a community board manager. I want to keep real because a lot of people come in front of you and they going to tell you anything because it sounds good. I'm not going to tell you anything. I'm going to tell you, running a city of New York with 8.5 million people, you better have the ability to balance this budget. If not, you're going to balance it on the back of working-class people like yourself.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: Come on now, come on. You know the rule. You talk, I listen. I talk, you listen. We heard your question. I want you to team with my people and give some of those ideas so we can see what's realistic and what is idealistic, because I run cities based on realism, not idealism.

Commissioner Kreizman: We're going to follow up with the community board of chair, and we have Malcolm at that table. We'll get the issues, we'll follow up. We have DEP to follow up afterwards with regards to property across the street. Mario Bruno from DEP is here to follow up.

Mayor Adams: Yes, Mario, talk about the property that she was talking about across the street.

Bruno: Thank you. Yes, sir. A lot of different agencies have their hand in construction. DeCostole is building a new facility. DEP's role in the construction is, during construction, we make sure that the air quality is not diminished because we respond to air and noise complaints, especially dust complaints. Right now, DeCostole has–

We also govern the sewer permits. This facility has to do two different kinds of difficult sewer connection permits, which are really engineering documents. They submitted the site connection permit, which basically our engineers review to reassure the community that your sewer will not be overloaded by what comes out of there and that they're taking proper steps to detain stormwater.

There's also a requirement for them to do a storm water permit, which is something newer. You can ask anybody in the engineering business, that's a heavy lift. They submitted a site connection permit in November. We responded them with comments. They haven't responded since. The storm water permit, they haven't even submitted at that. I just want to reassure you, I'm an engineer. I work in public affairs, but I work closely with our engineers. They are really on top of any applicant, whether they're building a new home or industrial facility, that everything is right with the engineering in these applications.

In terms of when the facility is under construction, you can do two simple things. If you think there's too much dust or noise, call 311, or I like using the website, and then since we've hired, we've opened Borough offices. We have Borough commissioners now. You can very easily take that 311 complaint and email brooklyndep@dep.nyc.gov. That's brooklyndep@dep.nyc.gov and our whole Brooklyn team gets that email, and we will follow up and respond and make sure that, if there is a problem, it's taken care of. We monitor thousands of construction sites, and I can also tell you we've always been very successful in getting 99 percent of builders to be good neighbors and compliers.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you for that. Thanks for both of your questions.

Commissioner Kreizman: Mr. Mayor, before we go to last table, just want to thank Pierre Gedeon, our Brooklyn Borough director, and Hercules Reid, our former Borough director, and now our youth liaison for helping set up this town hall.

Question: My name is [inaudible]. I work for Health + Hospitals, hospital police, as well as Auxiliary 67 Precinct and I'm a part of [inaudible]. I have two questions. I would like for the city to have a recruiting center that can be in every community to assist the children and everyone in the community to be able to get skills that they don't have access to. Majority of time you're going all the way downtown, or Manhattan, so I think that should be one of the programs that come about, as well as mentoring children, young boys and girls to give them mentors. That they can see themselves in that profession.

Also, the vehicles that drive recklessly down the blocks, where it's really hard for children to cross the street safely. Those vehicles do not have proper plates. Majority of time they're ghost cars. The plates don't even exist. What can we do about that?

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you for both those questions. First, when we came into office, exactly what you stated, we went to every agency, because cities are run by agencies. We went to every agency and say, "What's your recruitment plan?" Like, "How are you letting people know about the 13,000 jobs we have out here?" All the recruitment was being done through one agency, DCAS. We said, "No, that can't happen."

Every agency had to create a recruitment plan, but we did something else, we did hiring halls. We partnered with our local elected. I think we did a couple of– probably two, I think we did. One or two with the councilwomen, and we went into the communities. We brought all the agencies and our private companies. People walked inside community locations, right in their community, and often in many cases, we hired them on the spot and gave them a job on the spot because you can't wait for people to come downtown.

Sometimes people don't have the MetroCard money, so we went out into the communities, to community centers, to high schools, to colleges, and we had hiring halls right there. Hundreds of people showed up with their resumes and even without resumes because we wanted to hire people on the ground, exactly what you said, not wait for people to come downtown. That was our goal to do.

One area where Deputy Mayor Daughtry was really successful in is what you stated, ghost cars. Do you know we took 80,000 illegal vehicles off our street in 3 years? 80,000. Think about that number, 80,000. Many of them were ghost cars, three-wheelers. Remember how we used to have motorcycles running up and down the street, racing all over the place, the quality of life of that? Remember those fireworks back in '21, prior to we became mayor that during 4th of July you would hear. You thought you were in Beirut somewhere with all this explosion going on.

You don't hear them because we zeroed in on quality of life. We took those illegal mopeds, those illegal ghost cars that were being used in robberies, and we started doing inspections not only at our tolling places. We started going out through the night because people were parking during the day and during the evening and going out using those cars for illegal behavior.

We took 80,000 off our street and we're going to continue to zero down on that because they create real crises in our city and we knew we had to go after those quality-of-life issues. Both those issues are dead on. We heard about them and we responded to them because we knew they were real quality-of-life issues. Thank you very much.

Commissioner Kreizman: At this time, I just want to thank especially the Mayor's Office members on every table, the Community Affairs at every single table. You see the blue shirts in every single table, make sure you hand in your cards, you will–

Mayor Adams: Before we leave, I'm going to turn it over. I just want to have our new deputy mayors that are here just say hello to you. First starting off with a long-time friend, our first deputy mayor.

First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro: Thank you. It's great to be back in city government. We are the City of Yes, and we are here to say yes, to get things done, so those of you who have raised issues here tonight, you're going to hear back from us. Ma'am, you're going to hear back from us and we're going to honor your son's memory. Everyone here, we are here to get things done for the good of all New Yorkers. I want you to meet the rest of the team. I'm so honored to serve this mayor who's been delivering every day, who's the most resilient man I have ever met, the Comeback Kid. Alright. Now I'm going to turn it over to Deputy Mayor Carrión.

Deputy Mayor Carrión: Thank you, Randy. Good evening, everybody. I'm going to be super short. It's almost 9:00 pm. I bet you a bunch of you haven't eaten a healthy dinner tonight. I'm Adolfo Carrión. I am the Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development and Workforce. All of those things that drive our economy and our foundational for families. It is a pleasure to work for you. I'm going to pass it on to my colleague, Kaz Daughtry.

Deputy Mayor Daughtry: Good evening, everyone. I am deputy Mayor Kaz Daughtry, the deputy mayor for Public Safety. My job is to continue to keep New York safe. While you guys go home after this event, Moe, we are going to go over to that location and toe those cars. Let's go.

Deputy Mayor Suzanne Miles-Gustave, Health and Human Services: Thank you. I'm going to stay right here. The walk is longer. Thank you, mayor. Deputy Mayor, Suzanne Miles-Gustave. I'm the new deputy mayor of Health and Human Services. We oversee everything that helps you, helps your family thrive. We have all the health agencies and the human service agencies and many of the mayoral agencies here to support your needs, your family needs, and your community needs. I'm happy to be part of the team. I'm available. My staff is here, so if you have a concern, please, we are as accessible to you as the mayor is, so please talk to us. Thank you. My Deputy Mayor colleague, Jeff Roth.

Deputy Mayor Jeffrey Roth, Operations: Thank you. Jeff Roth, deputy mayor for Operations, city background and military background. Honored to be here. When the exploratory students were speaking, I have an ROTC background, so felt akin to that. I focus on parks and public space, making sure they're clean, vibrant and safe. Infrastructure that is sustainable for the long term and climate resilient communities. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, sir.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. God bless you.

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