Transcript: Mayor Adams Hosts Community Conversation

November 21, 2024

Video available at: https://youtu.be/GBcaDKDetlQ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Crosstalk.] 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commissioner Donoghue: Senator Comrie, yes. 

Mayor Adams: I'm sorry? Okay. 

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

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

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

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

Question: [Inaudible.] 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How are you? 

Question: Good. How are you doing? 

Mayor Adams: Quite well. 

Question: Welcome back to Southeast Queens. 

Mayor Adams: Thank you. 

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

Mayor Adams: What high school did you go to? 

Question: August Martin. What, what? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mayor Adams: You're quite welcome. 

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

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

I don't think that is fair. I know it's not fair. This is our American dream. No one has the right to shuffle us around and remove us for somebody else to have their American dream on our backs. 
Getting to the question, can you please tell us what are you going to do to ensure your agencies are responsive and adequately operating in our district in regards to quality of life, including the homeless situation in the district that is also impacting our school safety, and we need more police? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: Hi. 

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

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

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

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

Mayor Adams: You're quite welcome. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eva Wong, Executive Director, Mayor's Office of Community Mental Health: Thank you for your question. I'm from the Mayor's Office of Community Mental Health. I'm joined by my colleague from Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Youth mental health is absolutely a priority for the mayor and for this administration. We put out a plan that really talks about valuing young children, young people, and families as one of the special population. 
I hope that by now you are aware of Teenspace that is available for 13 to 17-year-olds. Through an app, they can get free access to mental health care. What we need to do is make sure that these type of resources that are completely available to young people is known to you. Another thing that I have to make sure that everybody here is aware of is the 988 number. Sometimes there are resources, but our community is not aware of it and they can get access. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: I'm good. How are you? 

Mayor Adams: Good, quite well. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

How are you? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: Not shelters. 

Mayor Adams: Not shelters. 

Question: Housing. 

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

Question: [Inaudible.] 

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

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

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

Question: [Inaudible.] 

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

Commissioner Kreizman: We got a question, table eight. 

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

Question: [Inaudible.] 

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

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

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

Commissioner Kreizman: Dan Greene. 

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

Mayor Adams: Who? I have NYCHA? 

Commissioner Kreizman: Dan Greene. 

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

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

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

Greene: I don't know, Mr. Mayor. 

Mayor Adams: Okay, can we look into that? 

Greene: Yes, absolutely. 

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

Greene: Yes, sir. 

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

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

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

Question: Good evening– 

Mayor Adams: Good evening. 

Question: Thank you for the opportunity. 

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

[Crosstalk.] 

Mayor Adams: You got it? 

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

Mayor Adams: Thank you. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mayor Adams: Thank you, Kevin. 

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

Mayor Adams: Yes, ma'am. 

Question: Good evening, Mr. Mayor Adams. 

Mayor Adams: How are you? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mayor Adams: Who's— 

Commissioner Kreizman: Alfonso Lopez from DEP is here. 

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

State Senator Comrie: Alright. Thank you. 

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

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