Acting Commissioner Javier Lojan, Department of Sanitation: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. In just a few moments, the vehicles behind me, a DSNY Highway Unit team will roll out to clear the FDR and beyond of litter and debris. To kick things off, please join me in welcoming the greatest enemy the rats have ever had, Mayor Eric Adams.
Mayor Eric Adams: I like that, I like that commissioner. Thank you, great to be here and really when you think about what the men and women of DSNY, what they have done is just so important to the quality of life of our city. We often uplift and highlight what our New York City police officers and what they have done to deal with public safety. But we should always remember that safety in our city both actual and perceived takes a team.
And DSNY, they have been a leader in the teamwork of the feeling and the perception of disorder and the lack of cleanliness and I just really want to commend them from snow removal to removing trash and debris off our streets they have done an amazing job, commissioner, job well done, keep doing the good work [for] you and your team.
And it's garbage to say that we can't have a cleaner city. Let's be clear on that. We can. We knew that. We were committed to that. And the only revolution I want to see in our streets is the actual trash revolution of how do you go away from big cities believing that you must live in trash and filth and with rats. We have shown that that is not a reality and it's not something that we have to settle for.
So I'm proud to announce three major milestones on our ongoing trash revolution. Our quest for a cleaner and more livable city for all New Yorkers. First, the success of our new DSNY Highway Unit. The men and women behind me and the trucks behind me. New York City has more than 1,100 miles of highway and for decades, cleaning highway shoulders was just something that no one would really put their hands around and indicating the real responsibility.
I remember sitting down with the team and stating that we have to focus [on] this and ensure that we are cleaning our highways and can have different entities pointing the fingers at each other but making sure that we're clear on whose job it is and get it done. When we did not have that clarity, it resulted in public safety hazards, and I saw it across the five boroughs, and you all saw it if you drove along our highways.
So we created the DSNY's Highway Unit. Since its formation in April 2023, the unit has removed more than 15 million pounds of litter from highway shoulders and mediums. Everything from car bumpers, to water bottles, to fast food, parking, packaging, and more. I really want to encourage New Yorkers, please don't discard your trash as you're on the highways. It accumulates and it creates the environment that we don't want our city to have.
The work that we have done in DSNY has kept our roads safer and cleaner. Our second milestone comes ahead of our June 2026 deadline for containerization of buildings with one to nine residential units. And we're proud to report that these smaller buildings have already ordered more than 800,000 official New York City bins online, plus another 80,000 were ordered from Home Depot. This is a huge win for our effort to keep our streets free of black trash bags, they should have no place on our streets.
And finally, new data shows up. Our approach is working in our war on rats, public enemy number one. Since residential containerization requirements took effect, eight months ago we have seen rats fleeing. Rat sightings reported to 311 have dropped for eight consecutive months when compared to the same month last year. And year-to-date rat sightings are down 16.4 percent citywide and naysayers doubted us. No one thought we could do it, but New York knew they deserve a rat-free city and we're moving forward towards that goal.
And that's what happens when you lead with purpose and have an unmatched hatred for rats and garbage like I have. Our Triple Clean milestone has swept in a new era of cleanliness for New York City, one in which we've shifted garbage set out times from 4pm to 8pm. Less time for our garbage to be on the street, more time for us to ensure that our streets are cleaner.
And we require food-related businesses, as well as chain businesses of any type, to containerize their trash, one of which we have pioneered a new side-loading garbage truck and committed over $32 million in permanent funding for the DSNY budget in our Best Budget Ever. This funding combined with our strategic initiative interventions will ensure New York City remains clean for generations to come.
We're laying the foundation of what a clean city looks like and how do we use our Department of Sanitation in an appropriate fashion to ensure that we remain the cleanest big city in America. As always said, our great city should look as good as the people who live here. Our trash revolution is sweeping aside garbage and showing how we continue to get stuff done in our city. I'm going to turn it back over to the commissioner. Commissioner, job well done.
Acting Commissioner Lojan: Thank you, Mayor Adams. As a 26-year veteran of this department, I can say from experience that the city is cleaner than it has been in at least a generation. Think back to just a few years ago when mounds of black bags were a fixture on our sidewalks swarming with rats at night and many of our public spaces were cleaned inconsistently by a patchwork of entities.
There were many reasons for these persistent dirty conditions and for the fact that New Yorkers were asked to simply accept them. Many believed that this would never change. The prime example of this and of this administration's work to change it is right behind us. New York City's 1,100 miles of highways. These are the gateways to the city seen by millions of New Yorkers and visitors alike and yet for decades cleaning shoulders and medians were sporadic and performed by several different entities. That's just the way it was, but it wasn't the way it had to be.
In the spring of 2023, Mayor Eric Adams created the first ever DSNY Highway Unit with specialized training equipment like what you see behind me. And every morning since then, a convoy of workers have removed litter and debris from roadways across the city. Today, we can announce that this dedicated team has removed 15 million pounds of dangerous and disgusting debris from our highways. I want to thank Mayor Adams for believing in us and the sanitation workers of the highway unit for getting it done. And this is just one recent milestone in the trash revolution.
The movement for a cleaner city ahead of the June 2026 deadline for buildings with one to nine unit residential units to use only the official New York City bin for the trash like you see right here next to me. New Yorkers have purchased 800,000 bins either at Home Depot stores or at www.bins.nyc. If you have not purchased your bin yet, the cheapest bin of its quality on the market. Now is the time to do so. Together this administration and the people we serve are building five cleaner boroughs.
The results are all around you. Bins are up, rats are down. When you see a bin on the street or a mechanical broom on the highway, know what you're seeing is a sweeping change to the way this city operates. Proof that the era of anything goes is over for trash and over for the rats. I hope that it makes you all proud as it makes me. Thank you. And now I'd like to introduce Heather Butts, who's the co-founder of our organization called HEALTH for Youths. Thank you.
Heather Butts, Co-Founder and Executive Director, HEALTH for Youths: Hello everybody. My name is Heather Butts and I'm the co-founder of HEALTH for Youths. So we do college readiness, career readiness. We're 16 years old and we also do trash and litter cleanup. So we have monthly beautification projects that we've been doing for about 15 years, mainly on the North Shore of Staten Island, North Shore Esplanade and Skyline Playground and so forth.
And these events have served over the time to be able to help us in terms of making it [a] more beautiful, cleaner Staten Island. But I have to say in the first few years it was really challenging because every time we would go out there was just tons and tons of litter and trash everywhere. This has been a big change over the last few months. We want a community garden in New Brighton in Staten Island.
And we partnered with DSNY on a DSNY compost system. But if you're not careful, with compost can come Mayor Adams' favorite four-legged friends. So with the help of DSNY, we've gotten a lot of training to make sure that we don't have vermin in the garden. DSNY and the Parks Department have enabled us to be able to run gardens that are rat free and that is made obviously for a better situation because rats and broccoli don't really go so great together.
In addition to that and the monthly cleanups, we've also seen a lot of help with these. So when we do the cleanups and we go out on Sunday morning and we see or we saw a lot of trash, now with the bins we're seeing a lot less of it. It makes our lives a lot easier, it makes it easier to do cleanups, and it makes it a lot more enjoyable for the youth that we work with. So I just want to thank the Mayor's Office, the mayor, of course DSNY, who we love working with, and hopefully we can continue to get rid of the vermin and the litter in all of New York City. Thank you.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: We don't have our rat czar here with us, but we were given [an] analysis and chart on where we have witnessed the best improvement and decrease, but we know overall citywide we have witnessed for the last few months a decrease in rat sightings, but the rat czar, Kathleen will give you an exact breakdown of where they are.
Question: [Inaudible] …Era of “Anything Goes”... [inaudible].
Mayor Adams: Well, the remaining four years and six months, I can continue the success that I've been doing and decrease the Era of Anything Goes. And what does that look like? It looked like a city where I don't know many people remember. Go back to July 2021, July 2020– fireworks. Do you remember what it was like back then? We were hearing during that time, fireworks going off in our city, total disregard for public safety.
Go back and witness back then, motorcycles, two wheelers, three wheelers on our streets. We were seeing at one time, two, three hundred motorcycles taking over Times Square, doing whatever they wanted, encampments along our highways, encampments in our subway station cleanup. You don't even notice that all of that has changed.
Because we started long ago, when we first came into office, of stopping the era of Anything Goes in our city. We went after public safety, removing 23,000 illegal guns off our streets, 110,000 illegal vehicles, motorcycles, mopeds off our streets. So when you start to end the era, you have to slowly normalize what it is to live in a safe city, and we've done that. And so now we're able to see the sun setting of the era of Anything Goes. It didn't start this month or this week. It started January 1st, 2022.
And you're seeing the results of that. People are out. Restaurants are opening. Broadway had the best 12 months in recorded history. Our subway riders are now at the lowest level of crime when you take out the two years of dealing with COVID. And so the era has sunsetted, but the sunset has started January 1st, 2022.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: Well, it's clear that, you know, rats have been around a long time, and what you must do is control the population, and I think there's a number of things that we're going to examine in controlling that population. Our rat czar has been clear on pushing the envelope and doing new things, empowering and encouraging New Yorkers on what their role is. I don't want New Yorkers to believe that they have to depend on the government to really handle the rat problem.
These containers are a huge step forward. Garbage bags, plastic bags on our streets. Former Commissioner Tisch used to say it's an all-you-can-eat buffet, and you would never get rid of the rat population if you didn't get the garbage bags off our streets. We've done that. We're now going to move towards the next phase is 100 percent containerization. Now 75 percent of our garbage must be containerized. We want to go to the next 25 percent.
Then we want to deal with the conditions around our buildings and our streets that create a rat problem. New Yorkers can play a role. Our Rat Academy is teaching New Yorkers on what to do, and in addition to that, just our basic habits. Put your litter in the bin. Don't throw your food sources on the ground. Just basic etiquette will teach us how to be partners in this.
And so we are really proud of what our rat czar has done. She's been featured in many of our news outlets because she has a place to focus on the goal, and we're seeing that goal materialize.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: Yes, and, you know, New York is an interesting place. You have to first get New Yorkers accustomed to the changes. I mean, this is a huge city, 8.5 million people with different methodologies that's associated with how they do something, and the culture shift is challenging in a city like this. The first order of business is to get them to use the containers, and we have done that. We have sent out information on how to purchase them, all the things we talked about, 800,000 ordered online, 80,000 through Home Depot.
And you're seeing more and more people understand from the communication, from DSNY, how you have to not do just what you say, that it shouldn't be stacked up, to allow rodents to climb up. Because rodents are smart as []. And so you're going to see an adjustment time and time again. New Yorkers come out and they see a rodent [climbing] up on their garbage container, they're gonna realize, hey, you can't keep it open. You have to close it. And so it's all part of the process. The most important process was to get this to our one to nine unit houses. And you're gonna see the adjustment as New Yorkers adjust on how smart these rodents are. All right, guys, thank you. We're gonna do– now, are you putting this on the highway now? Okay, why don't you do that and then we'll do the off-topics.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: Because, you know, I've said this over and over again, that it is so important to allow people to go through the process. And this is what, you know, we fought for, you know, when we had migrants and asylum seekers up to the tune of 237,000. We knew that we should put people through the process through free legal services. We advocated for TPS. We advocated for work authorization. And so we want people to go through the process.
And I always reflect on the story when I was a rookie police officer in District 2 in Lower Manhattan. A Chinese immigrant was being robbed while I was off duty and I took action. And he was afraid to stay and report to the police because he thought he was going to be deported. And if people are afraid of the legal process, then they will live in the shadows and people will prey on them. We have to allow people to go through the legal process. And that is why we filed the amicus brief because this was our work. This is what we wanted to do to make sure that people can go through the process.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: The message has always been clear. ICE, we will coordinate with you when we're going after dangerous gangs, like we've done. We will coordinate with you when we want to take dangerous weapons off our streets, but we should allow the individuals, children, and families who are trying to go through the legal process of pursuing the American dream, we should allow them to do so, that's our message.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: That I'm saying that they're illegal?
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: The judge will determine that, that's why you go to court, the judge will determine if they can do it or if they can't, that's the role of the judge. Our role is to say why we believe it's the wrong thing to do, what we are doing and then the judge will determine that when our team and others go to court.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: I believe that, you know, as we vetoed the bill for grocery deliveries of workers, as we have continued to fight for the cost of living in the city, I believe now is not the time to do an increase in fare hikes. Some people would say, well, it's just a slight increase. Every dollar matters when you're struggling, and that's why we put $30 billion back into the pockets of New Yorkers. We looked at every area that we could put money back into their pockets, from paying off medical debt to reduced fare Metro Cards. I could go through the list.
We know that every dollar matters, and that is what we're going to continue to fight for. And raising fares is taking dollars out of the pockets of New Yorkers and increasing the cost of their groceries, particularly those who are living [at] home and they can't go out. You know, it's just not right right now. We should be looking at how to put money back in the pockets of New Yorkers, not take it out. And when you look at the shooting, fourteen people were shot.
This is why I have been so consistent and just dogmatic about guns. Having the illegal guns off our streets is important. And when you remove 23,000, 3,400 this year alone, it shows that what we're doing is working. And people should always go back, as I rolled out these public safety plans and these other plans, I took a lot of criticism. I took a lot of criticism for removing people with severe mental health off the streets. They called me all sorts of names, inhumane, took a lot of criticism and I put in place the gun unit to remove guns off our streets, removing illegal vehicles off our streets, making our subways safer.
You know, you take the criticism, but that's what leadership is. You got to be able to ignore that criticism and do what's right. And that shooting personified that. Number one, we believe gang involvement. Some people who are trying to take away the gang database, they need to think twice about it.
Number two, there was more than one shooter, and I'm pretty sure some of them are repeated offenders. That's the revolving door in our criminal justice system, I've been talking about it. So all of these things are an accumulation of failure of policies that we have to fight against. And thank God we were here to fight against to protect safe New Yorkers. My heart goes out to the family members, but we will find the shooters, we will find those who are involved.
Question: We are staying with crime on behalf of my colleague Nicole Johnson.
Mayor Adams: I’m sorry, say that again?
Question: We are staying with crime on behalf of my colleague Nicole Johnson who's working on a story about a pattern of robberies involving mopeds in Queens right now. We've seen mopeds used a lot lately. Officer-involved shooting, DEA-involved shooting not too long ago. I know you focused on getting these mopeds off the streets. I know you focused on getting these mopeds off the streets, the illegal vehicles at least, but it seems that this keeps popping up. Why and what more can your administration do to get after these illegal mopeds?
Mayor Adams: Well 110,000 illegal vehicles were removed off the street, 110,000. And this has been our focus of going after these illegal mopeds. And if you look at many other countries across the globe, you'll see that these methods have been used to carry out crimes and we knew we had to zero in on it. I told the commissioner and her team, Chief of Department John Chell, that we had to start going after these illegal mopeds and you saw we were witnessing patterns.
We were witnessing patterns of illegal mopeds being used in crimes and we started leaning into that and that's part of our our effort and then we have to do more we have to start registering these bikes we have to require them to have registration, have insurance we need to make sure before they roll off the stores or the lots that they have the required documentation. That is how you will assist the Police Department in doing their job.
So I need state lawmakers to step up and require the licensing of these vehicles, but we're going to continue to remove them off and we're going to continue to lean into whenever we find these patterns. We'll do three more. Hold on, we're out of time. What are we doing? It's nothing new.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: My chief of staff, Camille Joseph Varlack, is the extreme weather coordinator, and she reached out this morning. We communicated that her team is now monitoring the storm and making sure that we have the appropriate response. You know, the teams, all of our teams, all of our agencies are aware of when we see this forecast come in, how to get prepared, and she's on top of it. She communicated this morning, the team is monitoring it, and the team will be ready based on the storm coming in.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: She's going to make that call, that team is going to make that call, they're going to make that call.
[Crosstalk.]
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: Well, you're right, the number's up to– the number's up to [108.] And I don't even think that question is worth answering, of what do I think about it? I don't want to see any deaths in this city, and it hurts us to do so. There are clear procedures on inspection, and I think Dr. Morse really answered something to all of us, that you can inspect a building in one hour, and the next hour, Legionnaires’ can be there.
So it's not the fact that when you look at this, like I use the analogy of COVID, you can test negative for COVID in one hour and the next hour you have it. So you're supposed to, as soon as you identify Legionnaires’ is there, you're supposed to go in and make sure that you remediate the problem. That's what we're doing within 24 hours. We do have testing that's in place and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, if they believe it should be elevated, they're going to do so.
But this is not one of those diseases, Legionnaires’ disease where the mere fact you tested a building previously is automatically that you're going to detect– there may not be the Legionnaires’ disease while you're there.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: And the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will do an evaluation to see exactly what we can do to ensure that if there's a way of additional inspections to bring down the numbers, particularly in those areas that are susceptible to, seem to be susceptible to it, [with] Legionnaires’ disease, we're gonna do everything we can.
But, you know, I don't think anyone could accuse the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene of not really being proactive and reactive when it comes down to saving the lives of New Yorkers. They should be commended for what they've done from Ebola to COVID to all these other crises that they had to face and they're going to continue to do that.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Adams: I'm not sure, you know, you will have a case where someone may have passed for something else or some type of illness and then later you may determine that it's connected to Legionnaires’. This happens often when you have cases and the goal is to make sure that we're transparent and count every case. We're not going to undercount because [so] it may sound good.
No, we're going to count every case. If a determination is made that after review that the person died from Legionnaires’, we're going to make sure we report that accordingly. And one death is too much. There's too many. We don't want New Yorkers dying from any premature issue. And that's why we're telling those who have respiratory problems, who are having difficulty breathing, who are having challenges in any way, we're telling them, please seek medical attention and medical care.