Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears On WHCR 90.3 FM’s “Rhythm And Soul Radio”

July 16, 2024

Marko Nobles: It's Rhythm and Soul Radio. I am Marko Nobles. We have our virtual studio open. Once again, we are joined by the mayor of New York City. Mayor Eric Adams is back with us in the virtual studio. Mr. Mayor, how are you doing, sir? 

Mayor Eric Adams: Good. Good to speak with you and see you this morning. 

Nobles: Yes, good to see you as well. It's a hot day and there's lot of things going on. Since last we spoke, one of the major things is there's a new budget for New York City that has been approved for fiscal year 2025. We hear a lot about or those of us in New York, we hear a lot about with certainly your administration, but every administration dealing with coming up with a budget for the city for the fiscal year. 

Talk about that process. This year, your city [inaudible] through your eleventh hour to get a budget approved which was earlier than past years. Talk about the process behind the City Council to approve a budget. 

Mayor Adams: [Inaudible] do what every day New Yorkers are doing, and that is making sure we spend the money that comes into the household should equal the money that goes out and not spend beyond our means. We all have to balance our books. It is as simple as that. Any homeowner, any person who's renting, you have to look at the money that you have. 

Far too often, city government, we have been spending more than what we have, and that is what has led to really some of the fiscal crises that we're facing, and being able to sit down with Speaker Adrienne Adams, who was a childhood friend, to figure out how we make sure we make the city affordable, livable, and helping out everyday New Yorkers, and we did that. We were able to save a lot of money during the beginning years of this administration when we first came into office. Thank God we did that because the migrants and asylum seekers had us spend over $4 billion more than what was expected. 

If we didn't show fiscal responsibility early, we would be having a different conversation right now. We were able to put money back into our libraries, $53 million, put money back into our cultural institutions, over $50 million, and we were able to look at some of the programs that we're going to sunset. Many people were not aware that the previous administration used COVID dollars that were temporary to fund permanent programs. We looked at those programs, and we were able to put money in those programs so they did not sunset like Pre-K summarizing, that's a full-year program for our young people. 

It was a very challenging moment, but the City Council members and the speaker understood that we had to make the right decisions, and we did. 

Nobles: You mentioned being able to look at how you're budgeting and spend only what you have. There was a lot of concern of the budget cuts that was in last year's budget that you addressed when you talked about monies being put back into libraries. A lot of the cuts that was in the last year's budget that cut out a lot of the funding for the libraries and cultural institutions were able to be replaced.  

Talk about being able to do that or being able to go back and look because it seems like it would be easy to say, "Okay, we cut that out, so let's just move forward," and not go back and say, "Okay, we can go back to that and go back and replace those funds for those programs." 

Mayor Adams: When you look at it, and I like to really use the right analogies that people could understand that if you are any homeowner, and you have a budget for the year for your food, your clothing, to turn in your lights and gas and other necessities, if all of a sudden you have a major tragedy such as your roof caves in, you go to your insurance company and ask them for the insurance that you've been paying for. If the insurance companies decide they're not going to pay for that, you're stuck with that. 

You have to look at where you're going to take the money from your everyday expenses, and that's what happened to us. The migrant crisis like I said, over $4 billion, we had to look at that and our insurance company was the federal government. The federal government did not pay us the insurance premium, which are our tax dollars we've been paying every year. We were stuck to pick up the cost, and so we told every agency that you must look at efficiencies. 

Then once we got every agency to look at efficiencies for the last two years, we were able then to go back and say, "Okay, what can we put back into the budget once we got the savings we had?" Brother, we came into this year's budget with a $7.1 billion deficit. We had expenses of $7 billion that we didn't know where the money was going to come from, and we were able to restore around $340 million. When you hear about the restoration, we didn't restore $7.1 billion because we didn't have it, but we were able to restore $340 million, and that was things like the libraries, Pre-K's summarizing, and some of those programs. 

The first order of business is to tell everyone you have to come up with efficiencies. Now you sit down at the table and say, "Okay, what can we restore? What do we believe are crucial?" That's what the City Council speaker and I were able to do. 

Nobles: Well, certainly it's a great lesson. For some of us, we get to learn a little bit more about the process. The transparency is certainly appreciated because a lot of us hear about it, but we don't get to see it in action or don't get to have it explained. That's the greatness about you being able to join us to be able to share some of what's going on in City Hall because it's our taxpayer dollars that we're really talking about here, so we appreciate that. 

As we talk about homeowners and looking at budgets as a regular homeowner budget, you have the City of Yes program that you've been spearheading, which is really an affordable housing program for the city. Talk a little bit about that. For those who are able to pick it up, there's an op-ed in amNewYork today that is pinned by Mayor Adams that taught us a little bit about it, but sure the City of Yes program and the housing opportunity that it hopefully will provide. 

Mayor Adams: It is about our zoning rules. These are the rules that tell you how you build in the city, how high, how much parking you need. This is a series of things. When you think about that you want to build housing, there are many rules that tell you what type of housing you could build and what neighborhoods. They are part of what we call zoning. We have looked at those laws, and to be just perfectly candid, they were racist in nature. They prevented housing from being built in certain communities to keep people of color and other groups out, and it's just unfair. 

Our city is divided by what's called community boards. We have 59 community boards, almost like how we divide up a precinct, so the boundaries decide the shape and size of a community. When you look at the community boards in the city, those 59, last year, 10 of the community boards built more housing than the other 49 combined. 10 build more housing than the other 49 combined. That's why you see places in our city where you're seeing an oversaturation, you're seeing people being moved out, prices are going up because we have put the burden of building affordable housing in just certain communities. 

We have a 1.4 percent vacancy rate, 1.4 percent. That's why you're seeing that the city is not affordable, and we're not allowing people to transition out of homeless shelters or there's some of our young people that go away to college, and they come back home, they want to live in their communities, they can't because there's no housing. Our parents may get older, and we want to keep them in our house, what we call grandparent housing or using accessory dwellings, and we can't because the laws don't allow like basement apartments, et cetera. 

What the City of Yes is saying, let's build a little more housing in every community so we don't oversaturate those 10 community boards, and we allow parents and families to do an extension on their home so that they can keep their families together if they want to have their family stay with them. If my son wants to live in a basement apartment in the house until he's able to sustain himself, or if we want to convert a garage into a small apartment, we could do that. We said let's be creative with our space so that we can allow families to be able to live in the city they love and not have to go to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other places. 

Nobles: If I'm reading this correctly, the plan calls for some 100,000 new units of housing over the plan. I guess some would question, how does this get built? New York City is already as densely populated as can be, so how does that work? Where do we find the space for 100,000 new units of housing in some of our spaces that are– whether it's in the Bronx or in Harlem or in Bed-Stuy like you said, a lot of those communities that don't get additional housing built and have been shunned for additional housing, and we're trying to create more spaces that are affordable for people to live? 

Mayor Adams: That's exactly what the whole City of Yes proposal is about. It's about instead of building and saturating those 10 community boards, how do we build a little more? Let's say a place like Merrick Boulevard in Queens where you have a store with two stories on top, why can't we allow that store owner to add two more? Instead of two stories, let it be four stories or instead of two stories, let it be three stories. 

We're not saying look at Merrick Boulevard and turn it into a skyscraper on Merrick Boulevard, no. We're saying do a little more housing, this way, when a young child went away to college, and he returns back to the community, he won't have trouble finding space in his community, that he can actually stay in his community. I would love for my son to be able to stay in his community so it could be affordable, and he could continue to contribute to the community that he loves. When you look at it, the philosopher once said, "The rent is too damn high," and the rent is too damn high because this is basic supply and demand. 

If the supply is low, the demand becomes high and the cost goes up. Anytime you have a 1.4 percent vacancy rate and almost a functionally zero, when you look at affordable housing, you're going to have an increase in cost. 

Nobles: Yes. Last question on this. I know there's part of this project in the Bronx was just looked at, and there's been some concern from some of the City Council members in the area because I believe there's a number of units that is being looked at along the Metro-North line and how has that affected, particularly in terms of the infrastructure needed to support additional people coming into a community. How do you talk to that point, whether it's additional police or schooling or parks or whatever, that really helps to make a real community? 

Mayor Adams: That is the goal to make sure that we build that infrastructure as well to supply the needs. You got four new Metro-North stations, that is going to be a game-changer for the Bronx. Housing would be built around those stations. It's going to bring commerce. It's going to bring economic development, and it's going to bring real housing opportunity. The state and the governor– actually, this is a plan that came out of the state. The Bronx has been suffering for many years, and former Bronx Borough President was instrumental in this. 

The current Bronx Borough President, Vanessa Gibson, they understand that when you bring transportation, you also bring opportunities, and so we're looking forward to building around those locations and building the infrastructure that goes with it. 

Nobles: Absolutely. Shifting a little bit to some national and local stuff. We all saw the unfortunate incident over the weekend at the Trump rally where former President Trump was shot at. You held a prayer at City Hall with Reverend Sharpton and a number of others. I find that really interesting, one, the situation itself. It's an unfortunate showing of where we are as a country that we can have this type of political violence.  

Then two, the fact that you and Reverend Sharpton who have been outspoken critics of former President Trump could come together to have a message of unity and prayer with this happening. Can you share a little bit about that? 

Mayor Adams: Well, both of us have actually survived assassination attempts. As you know, Reverend Sharpton was stabbed when he was participating in a protest, and when I was a sergeant, someone shot out my car windows attempting to take my life. We know what it is when your family must go through the devastation of thinking that they're going to lose a loved one, it's a real impact. 

It's not about the former president regardless of his political views, regardless of how one feels about him, or regardless of how one felt around Reverend Sharpton or felt about me, it's about the impact of that. Remember, the bullet pierced his ear, but those bullets took the life of those who had nothing to do with this, and severely and critically injured others. That's what we must think through of, what about them? What about those who were trying to protect their family members and were killed because of that? When we use these acts of violence, it impacts innocent people. 

When a bullet leaves the barrel of a gun, it does not discriminate on who is going to hit, harm, and maim, and that's what we need to think about. Then I think we were also joined by Pastor A.R. Bernard, Rabbi Potasnik, Bishop Chantel Wright, and other leaders. I think that what we must really ask ourselves as Councilman Borelli, the Republican who's a minority leader in the Council, he said something that really touched me. He said, "There's a difference between anger and hate." Anger motivates us. I was angry when I was arrested and beat by police officers. It motivated me to become a police officer. 

Anger motivated me when I saw how the city betrayed my mother and my other community residents by not giving us what we needed. It angered me when I was not diagnosed with my dyslexia earlier, so I could get the support that I needed, but it motivated me. That's why I'm doing dyslexia screening in our schools, that's why I do police reform, that's why I want our city to be affordable, but hate is different. Hate wants to harm you. Hate motivates a 20-year-old to pick up an assault rifle and shoot someone because you disagree with them politically. That young man did not know Donald Trump. 

It wasn't like Donald Trump killed a family member of his or did something directly to him. No, he hated him because of political beliefs. We're seeing that hate play out all across our city if not all across the country and globe where instead of the anger motivating us to change what we dislike, we're seeing hate is calling for the eradications of groups and of people. That is what we need to be alarmed about and concerned about when the young people of this country use hate to respond to the issues that they are concerned about. 

We're always going to disagree with something. Disagreement is as natural as human existence, but disagreement should not turn to hate when you want to take the life or harm someone, and that is what we're dealing with the issue of Donald Trump. For those who came out after the shooting and said, "I'm sorry that he missed. I wish he would've killed him," and things like that, we need to self-examine ourselves. Is that what we want for our country and for our city? I say no to that. 

Nobles: Just one more on the topic because there's so much that's wrapped in this, and what we've seen and what we've heard since this happened on Saturday because we're in a political season. We're in an election cycle right now where we have a presidential election coming up in November. The Republican National Convention is going on right now. I know you're part of a conference of mayors to speak with the president leading up to the Democratic National Convention. How do we continue as a country in this cycle, and maintain the unity? 

Even with the nomination of the vice president that happened yesterday who is extremely radical, doesn't that just up the rhetoric and put us in more danger to, like you said, have to deal with the hate and try to undo some of what seems to be done with some of these policies and the natural rising of this rhetoric? 

Mayor Adams: We need to push back on that rhetoric. Last year, that rhetoric could be harmful. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words would never harm me. That is not true. Words do harm you. Words matter. Last week in Tuesday off-topic, they were asking me about some of the disagreements that I had with City Council members from time to time, and I stated that I'm just not going to engage in that any longer. 

We must fight for New Yorkers and not fight against each other. There are those who are just comfortable in the space of the constant fighting. I think we need to show a better example, and I'm going to lead by example. If I disagree, that's understandable. I disagree with myself sometimes, so I'm not going to agree with anyone all the time. When I look at what we do agree on, all of us agree that we should live in a country that is safe and that we should be able to raise healthy children and families, we all agree on that. 

Those minor differences we have on policies, issues should not turn into some of that rhetoric that we have been looking at. This is America, and America say you have the right to protest the right. We're going to have those that are going to talk about these complicated issues like border, like security, like law enforcement, like the costs of living in cities, and what we need to do with our environment and the economy. Some of these things are emotional, and we bring our emotion to the floor, but that is what life is. I think that the road debate is introduced into the human vocabulary for a reason. 

We've always debated these issues. This is part of the season and the political showmanship. You want to encourage people to vote for you, and you want to speak on behalf of their issues. I don't think there's much we could do about that, but we should not personalize it. It should not come down to name-calling. It should not come down to this political violence that you're seeing. It should not come down to using hate as a motivator. Use the anger as a motivator to get the change you're seeking. 

Nobles: Sure, and we're going to do a last shift as we talk about safety and bring it back local again. One of the things that's been a major issue of yours has been subway safety. We've saw spikes in crimes on subways. Earlier this year, you've introduced the subway safety program. How have you seen the results? Thus far, I think we saw spikes in January, February, now we are in July. How are we seeing the results of some of the subway's safety initiatives? 

Mayor Adams: Well, we saw a spike in one month in January, we immediately responded. February, March, April, May, June, you saw a complete turnaround. In fact, our crime numbers are the lowest in 14 years if you take out the one year where people were not on the subway because of COVID, the system was closed down, so no one was riding, but in over 14 years, it is at its lowest level. Think about that for a moment. It is called responding immediately to a situation and circumstances. 

Brother, do you know we have about 4.1 million riders on our subway system a day? 4.1 million. Do you know out of that 4.1 million, we have about six felony crimes that take place today? Out of 4.1 million. Just look at those numbers for a moment. That is a remarkable achievement by this administration and by Commissioner Caban and Chief Kemper who's in charge of our transit system. To keep those numbers at that level, it states that our city is one of the safest cities on the globe, definitely one of the safest big cities in America, but our subway system is one of the safest on the globe. 

When you're able to have that many New Yorkers combined to a small space, but you're able to get people to and from their place of business, of education, of visitors, of tourism, to have 4.1 million people use the system and only six felonies a day that takes place in our system, I'm really impressed with that. We want to zero in on those with severe mental health issues, and that's why we put in place an initiative called Scout, where we're going to give people the care that they need. 

We took over 7,000 people off our system and about 1,000 were still in some form of care, but we know dealing with severe mental health individuals is what was planned on the psyche of everyday passengers, and we want to zero in on that as well. 

Nobles: Well, it is an amazing accomplishment. I spend quite a bit of time riding the subways, and I've grown up riding the subways. It is easy to think that there's still lots of crime on the subways, and certainly, we see the mental health issues. It's a lot to continue to have to deal with, and I know there has to be vigilant action continued, but certainly, commendation to you and everybody within the administration who is working on creating a safer subway system and a safer New York City, so we appreciate you. 

We appreciate Mayor Eric Adams for joining us. He's been with us here at Rhythm and Soul Radio in the virtual studio. We always appreciate the time to be able to share with the listeners and share with the audience of the important things going on within the greatest city in the world, New York City. Mayor Adams, thank you so much. 

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Take care.