Transcript: Mayor Adams, Rev. A. R. Bernard Celebrate Vision for Over 450 Affordable Homes in Heart of East New York, Launch Next Phase of Larger "Innovative Urban Village" Project in Brooklyn

June 19, 2025

Mayor Eric Adams: Good morning and Happy Juneteenth to everyone. Such a significant day as we talk about renewing our future and learning from our past. Nothing personifies that more for Black New Yorkers than the issue and the conversation around housing. 

And as we're here today, joined by many community leaders, including the pastor of this site, Pastor A.R. Bernard, and many of our leaders that are coming together to deal with this significant, significant project, building housings. 

And it's about a more equal future, a more prosperous future. And that is why today's announcement is so important. That is why today's announcement is what the future is going to look like throughout this entire city. 

So when we talk about the history of Black New Yorkers, we cannot ignore the housing aspect of it. Redlining, discrimination, the failure to have the proper housing, exclusionary zoning that prevent Black New Yorkers from buying homes and building wealth. 

And when we have to talk about housing discrimination, that prevented families from living in certain communities and allowed [them] to watch their prosperity grow. And we have to talk about the not in my backyard mindset and attitude that told too many people they were not welcome in our city. 

When we came into office, we said we were going to change that mindset. We put in place the most comprehensive housing reform and the initiative, the City of Yes, we wanted to dismantle outdated zoning that prevented the growth and building housing in every community. 

And we said every neighbor needs to do [their] part to support more housing. And today personifies how Pastor Bernard and his team is doing just that. And we invested tens of millions of dollars to help more minorities and women-owned businesses build houses. 

This Juneteenth, we're not only celebrating that progress, we're doubling down. Soon we will break ground on phase 1B of the innovative urban village. I can remember the day Pastor Bernard walked into my office as the Brooklyn borough president and laid out an ambitious plan. 

And he saw the vision and now that vision is materializing into a reality. It will allow us to build 450 new affordable homes in the heart of East New York. But what Reverend Bernard understands and that is not enough, that it is not enough just to build housing, we have to build a community too. 

That's why the innovative urban village will include a world-class art center, 24/7 childcare and new businesses in the neighborhood. This is going to be an entirely new community that is going to be built. 
It will demonstrate the power of our public private partnership to transform our city and improve quality of life for all New Yorkers. We are so grateful to this partnership. 

And we believe that in order to make it happen, you must bring people together that understand the imperativeness of the moment. With a 1.4 percent vacancy rate, we have to increase the inventory. And that is what we're doing today. 

We want to thank Governor Hochul, the Christian Culture Center, the Gotham Organization and Monadnock Development from studio apartments to three bedroom homes. This new phase will provide critical housing for our city's most vulnerable residents and bring us closer to the completion of the entire innovative urban village, which is expected to create more than 2,000 affordable homes. 

And I wanted to just make us think about that for a moment. 2,000 families that won't be priced out of our city, 2,000 homes where New Yorkers can reclaim their life and restore their dignity. 
2,000 homes that provide a community with a common purpose. I don't know how many times we said it, but this is the most pro-housing administration in the history of this city. We built a record amount of affordable units two years in a row. 

We're going to do it on a third year with the work of Deputy Mayor Carrión. We built record amounts of homes that allow people to move from homeless shelters into permanent houses. We have advanced bold neighborhood plans to bring more homes and more jobs throughout the city, from Brooklyn to the Bronx and Staten Island. 

We passed our historic City of Yes initiative to clear outdated zoning, first citywide zoning reform in six decades. Every day we are fighting to give New Yorkers a key to their future and nothing is better than a key to a home. 

And we're going to continue to build on every block and every neighborhood and everywhere all the time by creating more affordable housing across our entire city. We take one step closer to making this a city where you can raise healthy children and families. 

So proud of this project and so proud of the vision that Pastor Bernard has shown. He's had to stick to it in this, to go from the days of being borough president and now seeing it into its fruition as a mayor of the City of New York, I want to bring on the pastor that had the vision to do it, Pastor A.R. Bernard. Pastor Bernard.

Pastor A.R. Bernard: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And let me thank Governor Hochul for her support, her participation in this project along with Mayor Adams and his team. I grew up in Bed-Stuy, Bushwick and East New York. 

I would travel from my Bushwick neighborhood to Betsy Head Pool. I used to come over to the dairy market over here and I played CYO ball and we would travel around the city. And when I came to East New York, if we lost the game, we walked home. If we won the game, we ran home. 

But never did I imagine that I would have the opportunity, the resources, the relationships to bring this kind of impact and change to a community that I grew up in. 
Innovative Urban Village is a collaboration of government, the private sector and not-for-profit sector coming together to change the narrative in underserved communities like East New York. That narrative is and has been the way up is out. We want to change that. 

The way up is to stay. But you've got to give them a pathway up. Most of our affordable housing projects have been the warehousing of one income band. We understand and have seen historically the unsustainability of the quality of life. It's not just using great materials to build, but it's also creating an environment that sustains the quality of life throughout the lives of the individuals who live there. 
We have a generation that has grown up in these communities. They've gone to school. They now land jobs making upwards of 130, $150,000 a year. And still they can't afford to live in this city. So they tend to exit and we lose that creative capital, that intellectual capital, that innovative capital. 

We want to preserve that, but we have to give them a place to live and a quality of life. So Innovative Urban Village brings equitable development that gives access to quality construction, a quality of life that allows communities to live, to grow, to learn together, and to expand. 

I'm very excited about the partnership with Gotham, why we chose Gotham as our development partner, not just because of their 100 year history, but they got it. They understood what we were trying to accomplish here. They understood that more than just creating something, building something, we wanted sustainability. 

And in order to do that, you have to create community. So we're very excited about this day. We're very excited about the continuation of this project, bringing those 2,000 units and creating a community and a model that will be observed and studied out into the future of how this can happen. 

So thank you, Mr. Mayor, for all of your work, for all of your support. We're grateful to our partners as well. And of course, grateful to my congregation for supporting me on something like this, because they believe they've seen our vision come to pass in many ways. 

And this was just another level to that visionary leadership that we've provided. I'd like at this time to introduce our Deputy Mayor Carrión, and we go way back. His dad and I were on the New York City Council of Churches together. 

And so we have some history. His dad is not here. So I could tell on him if he didn't cooperate, but I think we have enough history that he feels a little concerned about upsetting me in any way. Let's welcome our [Deputy Mayor] Carrión. 

Deputy Mayor Adolfo Carrión, Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce: It was an honor to be commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

But we in fact do have the commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and development with us. 

Commissioner Ahmed Tigani right here. He picked up the torch and he's running with it. The mayor sees that. To Pastor Bernard, Mr. Mayor, all the clergy gathered here. It is truly an honor to be here and a joy to be here. 

Often you'll hear the mayor speak to the issue of housing and the issue of the work of justice as a personal issue. The mayor often talks about lived experience and that the team at City Hall is representative of a lived experience that says something about this administration's priorities and our march toward a more just, more open, more opportunity rich city and society. 

For me, this is personal on a number of levels. The mayor has heard me talk about our journey. My parents arriving from Puerto Rico in the 1950s, living in a sub-basement on South 2nd Street in Williamsburg, moving to Jacob Riis houses, public housing, moving to a HUD supported development on 12th street and Avenue C, and ultimately buying a small home in the Bronx. 

The only borough connected to the mainland United States, by the way. But the point is that all along that journey, there was an assist, there was a help, there was a hand up, and there was an embrace of our family's journey. This is personal to us. 

It's personal to the pastor as the leader of this flock. It's personal to the mayor because he had the same similar journey. And so what we have done as an administration is we have decided to advance the work of justice. 

Building housing is not just about the numbers, but I have to tell you something, the numbers don't lie. And when you hear our administration and me as deputy mayor, you'll hear the commissioner speak that way, you'll hear the mayor utter these words. 

This is the most pro-housing administration in the city's history and the numbers don't lie. 453 units here at Christian Cultural Center in East New York, part of a 2,000 unit package of development that will create a new neighborhood and a new environment for this area of the city that is rich with opportunity, that creates that ladder that the pastor referenced. 

But this lives in the context of City of Yes. And that's 80,000 units over a 10 to 15 year period that we're gonna see emerge, increase the supply. Five neighborhood plans that the mayor talked about. That represents 50,000 units of potential housing that's gonna rise around the city. 

And you add the five neighborhood plans, you add the City of Yes, and then the mayor referenced the record housing that we have delivered as an administration. 

In the first three years, in the first three and a half years of this administration, we have financed, preserved and put into construction 72,000 units of housing. And guess what? It doesn't include the stuff we're building now. 

The stuff that's gonna get recorded Mr. Mayor this year. So as we come to the end of the first term and before the second term of this administration, we will see in excess of 200,000 units of potential and many of them already built and neighborhoods rising and opportunity rising all across the city. 

Not to mention the 625 additional units that will rise up in the Western rail yards. That is a result of our advocacy and a little arm twisting on some of us because we insisted that if something is gonna rise in Western Manhattan, in that area around the rail yards, near the Hudson River, that it also include opportunities for Black and brown families. And people of lesser means or people looking for opportunity in our city to have an opportunity to live in neighborhoods like that as well. 

This is a terrific opportunity. It requires vision, it requires work. And I'll close with this. September 10th of 2014, this is how we're connected. Mr. Mayor, my father's body lay in this nave in this church when he passed away, the Lord took him. And it's been almost 11 years now. 

The pastor opened up the church. The community from around the region came to see my dad, but it was a signal about something more important, about partnership and friendship and commitment to community that both A.R. and Adolfo, my father, represent that visionary leadership that looks to the future and looks to opportunity. 

So I wanna say thank you to A.R. Bernard and to the Christian Cultural Center. And I can't finish this without recognizing clergy royalty. Pastor Daughtry, Reverend Daughtry is here. And I know he goes way back with the mayor to his early days as a police officer. 

It is my honor to introduce the hands, the person that represents the hands that will build this neighborhood, this 453 units. There's already 386 units under construction up to the 11th floor. Brian will talk about that, but Bryan Kelly from the Gotham Organization, please come.

Bryan Kelly, President, Gotham Organization: Good morning, everybody. I wanna first thank the mayor and the administration for having the fortitude to make today happen. We wouldn't be here without the administration's foresight and commitment to develop this urban village with Pastor Bernard and the congregation, as well as Senator Persaud and Governor Hochul's office, our local council member. It's a team. 

You know, as a former athlete, you don't do anything by yourself, you do it with others. And I think importantly, nowadays, we need to focus on the facts versus the fiction. And let's just stick with the facts. 
You can have a plan, but if you don't proceed, nothing happens. And I remember that day that Pastor Bernard and I went to see our mayor when he was borough president. We showed him the vision and the guiding principles, and he said, “I'm all in.”

And we had the guts and followed the glory of God to plan and plan and get the pre-development work done. And we knocked on the door and we said, we need your help. And you did it. 
18 months after rezoning this site with the community, over 100 plus community meetings, charrette, learning, understanding, and being better, we finalized the plan with near community board approval. I would say 39-1. It can't be perfect. Perfect is the enemy of good. 

And we flew through the EULA process because folks knew where our heart was. So 18 months later, $700 million of construction of income-based housing is in the ground. So the facts are the facts. 
Five neighborhood-wide rezonings, the City of Yes, and a city which spends more on affordable housing than likely the other 49 states combined. So I just want to end with thank you all, thank the administration, and the facts are the facts.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. And we can't do this without real partners that understand the vision of why housing is a must. And I want to bring on our two state lawmakers first bringing on Assemblywoman Nikki Lucas, who is an on the ground fighter. Assemblywoman Lucas.

Assemblymember Nikki Lucas: Well, well, well, good afternoon. This is a long time coming pastor. I'm extremely excited about what's happening today because, and let me just say this, I'm just happy that this administration has given a voice to the faces of the people in East New York. 

For a long time, it's been ignored. And the one thing that I do want to emphasize is that God has had his hand on this, but he bought in pastor to really use him as a vehicle in his church to carry out that vision. 

And so I'm extremely grateful that you saw fit to actually have that happen here in East New York and throughout your journey. We've had a lot of fights with the former commissioner, the current commissioner and the mayor. 

And the fighting was all around one common goal because we really love this community. And how were we going to go about doing the right thing by it? It was never a question as to whether or not it was going to be done. 

But I will say in addition to another major project that the mayor and the commissioner and the former commissioner has invested in is Linden Plaza. We can't forget that. That $834 million that was invested in this community. And I didn't think they could top that. I really didn't. 

But this is topping that. And let me tell you why. Because it's not just about the investment in the structure, in the housing units. It's about the investment in people. The vision was about the investment in people. There is a housing opportunity. There are home ownership opportunities. 

There's an investment in the creation and the talents and the arts. There is an existing economic development piece that they started out in the beginning. They positioned our community. And it's not just about opportunity. 

It's about using that opportunity to position people to feed themselves. They trained a number of different local people, residents, who all they wanted was just a chance. They trained them. And not only 10 years later when this project is done, they have positioned them with career paths that they can journey and sustain living in this community, owning homes, and taking care of their families. 

And that's what you have invested in. That's what you created for this community. Mr. Mayor, I don't care what nobody says about you. I'm going on the facts. And I'm going on the investment. And I'm going on those many nights at four in the morning, where you brought people out to make sure that this community was clean, that sanitation and housing and all of these different city agencies that you've managed to do, whatever you've been doing throughout your journey, that you never forgot about East New York, that you never forgot about this city. 

So I want to thank you. I want to thank the commissioners. I want to thank CCC. I want to thank Pastor Bernard, who happens to be my kinsman because he's Panamanian. And I want to thank my colleagues and partners in the state because we weren't going out without investing in this. 

The state invested over $500 million in this project, and that's not the end of it. And I'm thankful to have a partner like Senator Roxanne Persaud as well that is in Albany fighting on a daily basis to make sure that we're doing true investment with resources in East New York. Thank you all so much.

Mayor Adams: That brings us up to our senator, Senator Roxanne Persaud, real fighter in Albany for this community. 

State Senator Roxanne Persaud: Good afternoon. Good day, everyone. Happy Juneteenth. Happy Freedom Day. And today we are really celebrating freedom because housing is about freedom. Access to housing is about freedom. 

To Pastor Bernard, thank you for everything that you've done. When you and your team came and we had those conversations many years ago, you know, I asked the questions and I asked, you know, if, why, when, how, what, where, when, right? And everything and everything that I asked, they were able to answer because they were committed to the community. 

Every suggestion that I made, I said, you know, we'll think about that. We didn't think about that. You know, what will you do with this? How will this affect this? They did all of that. And the conversation did not end on the first day that we met to discuss the plan that's still on my desk because I always look at it. 

But throughout, they've ensured that anything that's changing, they kept us up to date. They let us know whatever is going on. This is about transforming this community. For too long, this part of the community was seen as a blight. We knew that. 

And so when they had the vision to transform this area, we welcomed it. Yes, there were pushbacks. There were people who didn't really believe in the vision because many people, let's be honest, will come into communities and say, this is what we want to do, which will benefit the people. 

But in the long term, it's not benefiting the people. But they are about what's best in the best interest of the people. And that's why we stuck with them. We worked with them, whatever they asked us to help them with, we were willing to do so because we believed in the vision. 

To the mayor and his team, thank you for always believing in the people of East New York. I must also say to Governor Hochul on her team, thank you for when we're fighting and asking for funding, like I was doing a couple of days ago, that they realize that for us to build our city, for us to help our people advance, for us to elevate them, we must invest. 

And this is a major investment that is not stopping today. So again, thank you all for being here. Thank you for Gotham and everyone for believing in the people of East New York and for making sure that you're doing things the right way so that when you are finished with the project, we will say it was worth it for us to partner with you, for us to believe in you and you kept your promise to the people. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: I think we covered everything, so we won't have any questions. Thank you. Thank everyone for coming out.

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