Transcript: Mayor Adams Announces Record-Breaking Year for Creating and Connecting New Yorkers to Affordable Housing

August 3, 2023

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce: Good morning, everyone. It's so great to see all of you. My name is Maria Torres-Springer. I'm the deputy mayor for Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce.

Today we are here to share and celebrate the details of our fiscal year '23 housing production numbers. Thanks to the Herculean efforts of our housing agencies there are many, many partners. You can see many of our teammates in hats in the back. This is a record-breaking year for the creation of affordable housing for our fellow New Yorkers.

Now the mayor says this a lot, and it is true that on day one of our administration he made clear that the mission was to stay focused, no distractions and grind. And so despite many headwinds, high interest rates, inflation, supply chain challenges, staffing challenges, we worked intensely with our development partners, elected officials, advocates all over the city to build to this moment, to turn the ship and start making real progress for what most New Yorkers say is their number one issue. And that's affordability-- to fortify our legacy as a city created by and for working people.

And so with no further delay and to share what we have accomplished together this last fiscal year, I'd like to introduce the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, deputy mayor. And I don't believe she's here, but I want to really also thank the former chief housing officer who really did an amazing job and this amazing team on all levels. It's great to see the dean of our congressional delegation that's here as well and just the entire team. And you're right, deputy mayor, this is New York City. If you wake up in the morning, expecting to accomplish something and not have some form of crisis brewing around the corner, then you're going to fail. You have to operate in the midst of all the noise or the crises.

It's almost like a quarterback. You in your pocket, stay in the pocket, move the ball down the field, trust your line, trust your line. Your line is going to protect you. Your line is going to stop the lineman, 200-pound lineman that called the press from tackling. Your line is going to be all around you. And that's why we are able to move the ball down the field because we have an unbelievable running back, unbelievable defensive end and an unbelievable team behind us as we continue to just get stuff done. And these are real numbers. You could look back and do an analysis and state that how well have we done, but the numbers don't lie. And we stated at the beginning, in the midst of all that we had to deal with that we were going to continue to stay focused, no distractions and grind because I cannot go to a family member who is looking to house their family and state the reason we were unable to do it is because we dealt with Covid.

The reason we were unable to do it because we dealt with over 95,000 migrants and asylum seekers, so we were unable to do it because we were dealing with a crime issue or we were dealing with legislation not passing through Albany, unable to get 421-a done, unable to get hotel conversions the way we want. Unable to get office buildings converted. I can't do that. I have to use what I have to move the ball down the field. And we moved that darn ball down the field this year. And I'm so proud of the team for what we were able to accomplish.

Today, we're making good on our Get Stuff Built and House Our Neighbors Initiative that we focused on and we're smashing the records and connecting even more New Yorkers to affordable housing. When you think about it, we declared a housing emergency over 50 years ago. Over 50 years ago, this city stated we were dealing with a housing emergency. Now five decades later, we are still hearing the same things and the same problems.

When I was a young man growing up, as I say over and over again on the verge of homelessness, we were seeing the push that we needed to get people housed. And the focus has not grown and the problem has grown even larger now that we are faced with it. When you think about that today, less than 1 percent of apartments listed below 1500 in rent are available for new tenants. Less than 1 percent. That's the lowest in 30 years of that number.

It's just not available. We have to build our way out of this. We can't say that enough. We need to put in place an extension at a minimum 421-a and if most come out with a real way of moving forward and deal with the millions of square feet of office space that we can convert into real housing, raise the FAR, do some of the things that Dan has been talking about for the longest, that so we can move forward with affordable housing.

We currently have more than 107,000 people in our shelter system. 107,000 people in our shelter system. And you know what, I saw some of them last night at the Roosevelt Hotel.

I am a servant mayor. And as I was saying, we saw some of them last night with the chief of staff and others that were with me down at the Roosevelt Hotel. And these are not abstract numbers we hear from New Yorkers all the time. Housing, housing, housing, housing is at the top of the list and having it affordable is something that we would continue to strive for. And hardworking New Yorkers, middle-income New Yorkers are finding it more and more difficult to house their family but also know when we built new housing, we have been at several projects when we turned over keys to New Yorkers and they were able to move into their homes. Nothing is more of an enlightenment of feeling than when you're able to give a New Yorker a key and let them move into their new place.

A house is a precursor to sleep that allows you to experience the American dream. And we are showing Americans and New Yorkers over and over again how we want them to experience that. We focus in and zeroed in on three major issues in this administration. Number one, speeding the production of the affordable housing process. And we have just begun. We met with developers, we met with large and small-time developers. We met with people who are really bottlenecked into the process. We are reforming the entire process. We're using an antiquated ox cot method in an iPhone age. It's time for us to catch up and get it right.

We’re preserving the housing stock we already have. For far too long, we've abandoned that housing stock and we're now ... we are preserving that housing stock. We have some good housing stock, we're leaning into it and we're slashing the red tape to get New Yorkers out of shelters and into permanent homes. And so what is the results of that? Today shows that we are succeeding, we are winning and we're going to continue to move the ball down the field. In fiscal year 2023, we built more new supportive housing, homes and homes for formerly homeless New Yorkers than any year in New York City's history.

That's some good stuff. I was about to use another word, but I don't want to, so let me say this again. In fiscal year 2023, we built more new supportive homes and homes for formerly homeless New Yorkers than any year in New York City history. But we didn't stop there. We connected ... and I know Christine Quinn would love this. We connected more New Yorkers to permanent housing using CityFHEPS vouchers than any year in the program's history. I said this was going to be a what type of year?

Audience: Aaron Judge year.

Mayor Adams: Aaron Judge year. Just keep hitting it out of the park.

I went from football to ... I'm like Bo, that played football, baseball, you know what I'm saying. In history, make sure you get this…

[Laughter.]

In fiscal year 2022, which includes six months before we took office. The city created and preserved just over 16,000 affordable homes. We said that is not enough. We set our target higher to do 18,000 for fiscal year 2023. Our complete year. We inherited six months of the previous administration. We said we have to reach higher in 2023, which was our entire year. And we set our target to go higher than the 16,000, 16,000, our target. But instead of going to 18,000, what was our target, we did in fiscal year 2023, the city created and preserved nearly 27,000 affordable homes. 45 percent higher from the previous year, including the second most newly created affordable homes since the city started tracking in 1976.

The numbers are big, but this is really about the tens of thousands of people we place in housing. We know we want to do more. We have to push ourselves further. We know we need help to do it. And so in December, I announced our groundbreaking gift stuff, built plan with 100 actions to streamline new housing. There was just too much bureaucracy in place. We heard those advocates like Christine, who stated we need to lift the 90-day rule. We did that earlier this summer, ended the requirement that people stay in shelter for 90 days to be eligible for CityFHEPS vouchers. And just this week, we announced the first resident vote for the Public Housing Preservation Trust out in Brooklyn so that NYCHA residents have a say in the future, they are able to vote on the type of residencies that they want. This is such an important initiative.

But listen, we need help. We need help. Without Albany, our historic progress, it will stall. A new improved 421a is crucial to getting new housing built. This year, we've seen how much it makes a difference. In fiscal year 2023, projects that relied on 421a made up half of the newly built affordable housing. And we need Albany to act on office conversions. As I indicated. We want to stand here again next year at this time and show how we continue to exceed these numbers. We can't do without Albany. We need some form of tax incentive to turn offices into affordable housing.

And so again, I want to just really thank the team that my entire defensive line: HPD, NYCHA, DSS, DCP, and HDC, all of them standing behind me and our developers, our builders, our contractors, our suppliers, just this whole team effort, all heard the same thing. We need more and more affordable housing, doing this hard job, making it happen. We're really excited about what Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer is going to bring to this new wave. Every time she briefs me on the new initiatives that we are doing and how we're moving it forward, I see the excitement.

But we can do this. We can build for New Yorkers, the inventory must reach, meet the demand of our population, increase. We have to increase the housing stock. We have to build our way out of this. We are showing that it could be done. Give us the support that we need, and we continue to get it done the way we say over and over again. Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you, deputy mayor.

Deputy Mayor Torres-Springer: Thank you, Mayor Adams. I did want to highlight a few other additional points to compliment what the mayor has shared. Also in the last fiscal year, we showed that we are dedicated to deep affordability. Nearly a quarter of all the homes financed by HPD this year will serve people earning between zero and 30 percent of area median income. And for those who are interested or don't memorize what an AMI is, 30 percent of area median income for one person is $28,000. We're also, as the mayor mentioned, doing the most homes for supportive housing and for the formerly homeless. 

We're dedicated to getting New Yorkers into those homes. It's not good enough to finance the properties, to finance the units. We have to make sure that families are able to move in as quickly as possible. And so in this regard, HPD and HDC increase the number of households getting into new affordable units by 37 percent compared to last year via our Housing Connect system.

We also are dedicated, of course, to all of the tremendous work that we have to do at NYCHA. Their work is so key to preserving and protecting the affordable housing we have here, our city. And in the last year through the PACT program, we provided nearly $1 billion dollars in capital repairs to nearly 6,000 NYCHA residents. And one of the projects that closed this year, the Edenwald project, also happens to be the largest single development NYCHA campus that will have gone through the PACT program really since the inception of that program. And we are investing because we have to be committed to putting our money where our mouth is, more than $2 billion into the affordable homes that we talked about today.

Now, I also want to just briefly mention that all of this is part of a broader agenda that the mayor has made sure that we are quite focused on, which is really reaching 500,000 new homes over the course of the next decade. And we are doing that of course, in three ways. By building faster, building everywhere and building together. The mayor mentioned our Get Stuff Built report where we've outlined and already implementing close to two dozen of the more than 100 initiatives so that we build faster. We're committed, as I mentioned, to building everywhere. That includes our City of Yes Zoning for Housing Opportunity text amendment, and the several neighborhood plans from the Bronx Metro North Plan to the Jamaica Plan, to the Atlantic Avenue Mixed Use Plan in Brooklyn, really paving the way for tens of thousands of new homes across the five boroughs.

And finally, we have to build together. We are moving in all of this with our partner elected officials, real estate partners, labor tenant advocates, and will continue as the mayor mentioned, to fight for much needed tools in Albany, because we all know that the time for hand wringing, that the time for pearl clutching is over and we must deliver the desperately needed housing for New Yorkers. But finally, I just wanted to share that despite all of the numbers that are in the press release that we have shared today, we really know that this work is more than just about bricks and mortar. The work has to center the New Yorkers who need affordable housing, their voices, their experiences and their advocacy. And I know of course, firsthand what it means to have a stable and affordable home.

We traffic so much in the housing industry and the language of units, housing units, but we all know that it's more than that. This is about a lifeline. And I know this because my family depended my entire life on a Section 8 voucher. And the Section 8 program, like many of the affordable housing programs, they were created and they are sustained because of the commitment and dedication of so many professionals and partners. And so without that unit, without that lifeline, what I also know is I probably wouldn't be here today, really fighting for that same opportunity for New Yorkers across the five boroughs. And with that and from one New Yorker who really understands the need for affordability deeply to another, I'm really happy to introduce to you a Bronx resident, a proud New Yorker, Arnetta Dickey, to speak about how this work and housing production has impacted her life. Arnetta.

Arnetta Dickey: Good morning, everyone. My name is Arnetta Dickey and I'm proud to call New York my city. Who I am? Well, I'll tell you, I'm a New Yorker who once lived in a homeless shelter. I'm a New Yorker that once lived in supported housing. I'm a New Yorker who rents an apartment with housing voucher. I'm a New Yorker who knows more than anyone here why New York City needs more housing. There's no place on earth like New York City. There is no other place I'd rather live. Like so many in this city, I once fell on hard times. I ended up living in the homeless shelter system. But I was patient and I prayed and I prayed. And once I got those keys in my hand, I was out of there.

After moving out of the shelter, HPD and Queen Defenders helped me receive Section 8 emergency housing voucher and connected me to my new home. The experience of searching for a new home with my voucher in my hand, it showed me why we badly need more new housing. The lines to view apartments was so long that I took my chair with me and had a seat while I wait to view the apartment. New York City created some new homes last year, but to anyone who might say not affordable enough, not fast enough, it's not enough, well, here what it is. It's home for grandmas like me and kids who grew up and new people move in and homes for New Yorkers.

In order to help all the people in housing, we need to build more homes for all New Yorkers in every neighborhood throughout New York City from Chelsea, from far walk away to my very own neighborhood in Rego Park, Queens. That's why Mayor Adams and the city got to build 500,000 new apartments and it's important. It's important to me, people like me and so many of New York who's struggling today. It should be important to you. Today I live in a wonderful home with large rooms and enough space for me and my grandkids and my son to come visit. So let's say yes to that, let's say yes to creating more new houses in the future. Let's say yes to helping more vouchers hold a secure housing. I'm a New Yorker with a home because someone said yes to me.

Yes to building an apartment, yes to rent to your vouchers, yes to funding vouchers and yes to this grandmother and yes to housing. I cannot end without saying I'm especially grateful to Mayor Adams for inviting me here today to HPD Commissioner Carrión and the House Navigator program, and to the Queens Defenders. But most of all, I would like to thank God for getting me here where I'm at today. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Torres-Springer: Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, Arnetta. You did great.

Dickey: Boy, I'm glad that's over.

Deputy Mayor Torres-Springer: Another round for Arnetta, please. Thank you so much. For our next speaker, I'm happy to introduce Manny Pastreich, who's the president of 32BJ. And his partnership has been so critical not just in making sure that we all know what affordability means for every New Yorker, but that this isn't just a question of housing. It's a question of providing well paying jobs to New Yorkers across the five boroughs, so Manny?

Manny Pastreich, President, 32BJ SEIU: It is really great to be here today as we really celebrate working with every tool available to make more housing available. Again, my name's Manny Pastreich, I'm the proud president of SEIU Local 32BJ. We represent 85,000 working New Yorkers here in the city. And I want to start with the positives and the mayor said it. The mayor and his team have created the most affordable units in the history of that city. Let's take another second to give applause for that. It is so, so important. And I also want to second the importance of not just creating them, but matching New York City residents with those units. And again, so important, it's making things happen for this city. And also, I've had the honor, standing with the deputy mayor twice over the last two weeks as the mayor stood at the Gowanus redevelopment and then at Five World Trade Center.

Again, where hundreds and hundreds of affordable housing units are going to be built, real examples of what we can do. But having said all that, housing, as the mayor said, remains the number one issue. Well, for our members, it's jobs, good paying jobs. But the main issue that our members face once they attain that good ping job is finding affordable housing. And I'm sad to say that even for the 32BJ members, many who have some of the best union jobs in the city, they often find that they cannot afford to live in the city and too many of them are living in New Jersey and even Pennsylvania because they can't find that affordable housing. So we thank the mayor as a voice for the 8.5 million New Yorkers, the millions of working New Yorkers who need Albany to hear the importance of them doing their part to support the housing and all the incredible work that's going on in the city.

And 32BJ adds our voice as well in calling for 421a. And we use those letters and numbers, 421a, but 
what that represents is building more housing, getting more housing built. What that represents is getting more affordable housing built. And what that represents is getting housing that will have jobs, good quality jobs with 32BJ standards. That's a win that we need to make happen. It's a state investment in making that happen. We've lost two years while 421a has expired and all the other good programs that could happen. We need to get it going and make it happen now, we need those bigger and bolder programs that the mayor talked about.

We need to make them statewide and we can look at this building right here, and we see the success of the 421a program and creating affordable units. We need dozens, we need hundreds of these programs going, but we're not going to be able to do it until the state takes action on 421a and the other important programs' bold initiatives that we can do to make this happen. So again, I stand, I thank the mayor for his work and his leadership and his team to get things done for New Yorkers, get affordable housing built, and also in lending his voice to push the state to do what we need to do. Thank you, mayor.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, Manny.

Deputy Mayor Torres-Springer: Thank you, Manny. I'm going to call up our HPD commissioner, Adolfo Carrión in just a second. But I wanted to just point something out. For those of you who've been to a few of these end of year production events, I like to call them the Oscars of housers, in any given year, I think you're going to notice something a little bit different. And I've done a few of these, mayor, so I feel like I can say this with some level of credibility. Now, in the past — the HPD commissioner, the HDC president, Eric Enderlin — is here. We would do these events with the mayor, with the deputy mayor, and that would mostly be who from government is there. What you might notice that's different is that we also have, of course, NYCHA Chair, NYCHA CEO Lisa Bova Hiatt, we have Molly Park, the commissioner of DSS, and that is important not just for the photo op but because the mayor made very clear, from the beginning, and I have to give a lot of credit to former Chief Housing Officer Jessica Katz, that the work of housing is not just the work of two agencies. And so, in the housing plan, chapter one is NYCHA. When we talk about housing, it's not just what we finance, it's how we ensure that the most vulnerable New Yorkers are actually in the units as quickly as possible.

And, of course, we also have our chair of city planning, Dan Garodnick because it is about the financing of affordable housing in any given year but it also has to be about the broader plan to boost the supply of housing in this city in the most dramatic fashion in order to meet the needs of New Yorkers. But with that, as background, we have to make sure to allow our HPD commissioner to say a few words because the units that we're talking about today, the records that were broken, are due to his leadership and the extraordinary work of the teams at HPD and at HDC. Commissioner.

Commissioner Adolfo Carrión, Housing Preservation and Development: Thank you. Thank you very much, Deputy Mayor, and thank you Mr. Mayor for your leadership and your vision and for defining the discussion around housing and ensuring that all the parts or all the elements are here and that the leadership is represented.

I recall back in late January, when the mayor announced that I would be the commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, he said something very important and it was, today, reaffirmed by the deputy mayor and I shared the same sentiment at that announcement. The mayor said, "this is personal to me." And that meant a lot to me. He said, "This is personal to me. My family was one paycheck away from homelessness, packed bags, unable to sometimes meet the rent obligation, let alone put food on the table." And when the deputy mayor, this morning, said, "I'm the product of rent support, of Section eight," that's powerful, powerful stuff.

We lived in Williamsburg, not the Williamsburg of today, in the 1960s. Two Puerto Rican kids who came from Puerto Rico, they met here, they married and they started having kids and we were in the subbasement of a tenement building and we won the lottery. We went to Jacob Riis Houses in the Lower East Side and had a beautiful apartment facing the water, we had waterfront views. And then the march continued. Saved enough money to get an FHA supported mortgage. The city invested, the federal government invested, the state invested, and this is what this generation needs to do. And we do it in partnership.

I promise not to talk a lot but I'm going to say something. We're here at a Douglaston 421a development with 188 units of affordable housing in a high cost neighborhood in Manhattan. But for 421a, but for a tax incentive, that's an invitation for investment from the private sector by the city, by government, to say come invest with us and we will both create affordable housing all across the city. Thank you, Douglaston. Thank you, Jeff and the team. We look forward to the little tour that we're going to take right after. I was planning to say... You know that phrase "everything has been said but not everybody has said it yet." Yeah. I had a little twist. Everything that can be said, has been said by all of the speakers, but only in the language of Shakespeare, not in the language of Cervantes. [Speaks in Spanish.]

Deputy Mayor Torres-Springer: Thank you, commissioner. And, finally, as the mayor mentioned, we can't do any of this work without the partnership and leadership of many levels of government. And so, I'd like to invite the dean of the Congressional Delegation, Congress Member Jerry Nadler.

US Representative Jerry Nadler: Thank you very much. Good morning and thank you to Mayor Adams for gathering us here together today to discuss the strides the city has made in our fight to address the housing crisis. Today, as we celebrate the city for connecting a record-breaking number of New Yorkers to affordable housing over the past year, we recognize how much more remains to be done to make New York more affordable. We all have an obligation, at the city, state, and federal levels, to work together.

For example, in Congress, I'm renewing my effort to increase funding for the housing choice vouchers program. I'm fighting for funds to not only renew all vouchers currently in use but to provide additional tenant protection vouchers and create new housing vouchers, so that also we can make vouchers available to all eligible households.

Despicably, the Republican majority in the House has yet to show any willingness to support the needs of working families. We recognize that this will be an uphill battle but it's not one that we'll give up on. Still, there are steps we can take immediately to meet this moment. I continue to hope that the state legislature will pass good cause eviction, which will help prevent unreasonable rent increases that force New Yorkers out of their homes. Again, thank you to Mayor Adams and his team for their tireless work to make today's announcement possible. I look forward to our continued partnership as we work to create the housing that New York needs. Thank you.

Question: Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: How are you Dana?

Question: Good. How are you?

Mayor Adams: Lovely day.

Question: The governor is trying to gather support again for her Housing Compact [inaudible].

Mayor Adams: Yeah, yeah. I hear you.

Question: Which, if it stands any chance of passage, would require your very active support, do you support the plan, as originally formulated, with mandates on communities like New York City and, separately, congressman just said he supports good cause eviction, what are your thoughts on that?

Mayor Adams: First of all, I'm in full support of what the governor has introduced to the lawmakers in Albany. I thought it was a smart plan using regional development, looking at housing as a regional issue and not just in each municipality separately. And we need to look at all of the items she had in her plan, from 421a to lifting FAR to all of those items coming together is going to really help us with that moonshot, a target of 500,000 units that we're trying to put forward. We have to look at these initiatives and I'm hoping Albany do so. I think that the concept of good cause eviction is a smart concept. We want to make sure we get it right. We need to sit down with our building owners and come up with a real partnership that everyone can live with and I think we can do that. I think we can accomplish that.

Question: Yeah, thank you. Mr. Mayor, or the deputy mayor, whoever is able to answer, just some specific questions about the data. You mentioned 27,000 affordable housing starts, right? Can you give us a breakdown of how many were actually started on construction and preservation and then, separately, the MMR set as a target, for FY2023, to have 15,000 actual completions. Was that target met?

Deputy Mayor Torres-Springer: Let me just break down the numbers a little bit. The mayor mentioned, and it's in the release, total of 26,282, right? Now, 24,000 of that are construction starts from HPD and the breakdown of that for new construction, and then preservation, is 12,278. That's new construction. On preservation, it's 11,812. The balance to get to the near 27,000, that the Mayor mentioned, are the NYCHA units. And so, that is approximately 2,500. In terms of completions, the total number of completions this year did, in fact, exceed the MMR. It's 20,153 and that's approximately 30 percent above the MMR target.

Mayor Adams: Hold on, hold on. Before you do that: Come on, Chris. Now, give me some good lines in the story on this. Come on, man. Y'all got to give me some of this.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Good. Because 421a is not available, does the city have to put subsidy into housing deals that wouldn't have needed city resources otherwise?

Deputy Mayor Torres-Springer: 421a, as the Mayor mentioned, is an incredibly important tool. For the half of the new construction units that we outlined today, that number being 12,278, half of those units relied, in some form or the other, on 421a. Now, for a number of projects, there is additional subsidy that is needed but I think the point that we have to really understand, and it's why we are fighting so hard for 421a, is that, if we want these numbers to be this robust into the future, we need that tool and we need it not just because it boosts housing production in general, but it allows us to put affordable units in developments like this, in neighborhoods like this. And so, for those who care, not just about more housing, but who care about fair housing, who care about affordable housing in affluent neighborhoods, that is a critical tool, in addition to all of the subsidy programs that we have and we bring to bear.

Mayor Adams: Two points. One, and just really want to thank the developer here because why shouldn't middle, low income New Yorkers enjoy this view? And when you diversify the housing stock in a population, you diversify the school system, you diversify access to healthy food, you diversify access to good healthcare. It's more than just a house or a place to stay. You are diversifying this entire community and children are going to grow up being able to attend diversified schools where they're going to sit down and learn from other students. You're going to learn new ways of living. This should not be just for affluent New Yorkers. Everyone deserve to appreciate the beauty of this city and having the partners that are saying, "We're willing to do this, we're willing to do this together." And so, when you look at the ocean that is drying up, you have to ask yourself why? People look at just that the ocean of housing is drying up.

Look at the rivers that feed that ocean. As you always hear me to say, there are many rivers that feed things. The river of 421a can't be dammed. If you dam that river, 421a, you are going to dry up a substantial amount of housing. If you dam the river of unwillingness due to ULURPs that Dan is putting together, you're going to dry up that river. Each time you dam a river and say, "I don't want somebody building in my community," that's another river you're damming. It is the accumulation of all of those dams that we're saying, "Get them goddamn blown up, so we can let the water flow." We got to let the water flow, so we can get the housing that we need.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Chilly.

Mayor Adams: Yeah, it's all good, man. Part of the process.

Question: So evictions are surging right now. Filings are to pre-pandemic levels. But a lot of the city's interventions are strained. Right to housing isn't reaching everyone. One shot deals are getting rejected at like a two-thirds rate. So that's really threatening to worsen the city's homelessness crisis. What more is the city doing to stop evictions and how you adapting to that?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, listen and evictions, they're a real problem and there's a couple of things that we must do. Again, there are many rivers that flow into people being able to pay their rent on time. Number one, I think that Manny said it best, we got to pay people affordable living wages. That's why we fought to get our deliveristas to receive an increase. That's why we settled over 77 percent of our union contracts with 97 percent ratification because we are paying our teachers, our police officers, our firefighters. We're paying them a wage so they can live in the city.

And we must have real preventions to allow people to be employed. You look at the unemployment numbers in the Black and brown community, they are dismal. And so that's why we're doing the hiring halls to get people into these 12,000 good union paid jobs and doing the partnerships with corporate America to make sure that we can get people employed. When people are employed, they are able to afford their housing. And so we saw a substantial increase in evictions during the pandemic. And so it's not a one shot. It's not one thing that you can do. It's an accumulation of those things that we need to do. Go ahead.

Question: Well, I think there's a lot of people who owe back rent and maybe can pay rent moving forward, but there are people who owe this amount from the pandemic [inaudible] ,and that's leading to these eviction filings and prolonging these cases. So what is the city going to do?

Mayor Adams: Well, we have HRA and DSS. We have our one-shots to assist people to catch up. Everyone was hit hard by Covid, and so it's accumulation of services that we are providing to help people get back on track. And I tell people all the time, a bend in the road is not the end of the road, you just have to make the turn. You can make the turn. We saw that today with this grandmother. She made the turn, leaving a homeless shelter into housing.

Listen, these are tough times, and we have accumulation of services with our teams of trying to get people back on track. We need help from the state and federal agencies to do so. We don't have our heads in the sand. We know these are hard times that people are going through and we have to come up with real ways to assist them through this. We got a bottleneck housing court system. We have to move faster through it. We have, I think, almost a substantial amount of money in our NYCHA housing, where people are backing rent. So it's going to take an accumulation of city, state and federal assistance to get New Yorkers back on track.

Question: Hi, Mayor Adams.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: I'm great. I know you had mentioned the importance of partnerships, but I noticed there's nobody here from the city council and last month they had overridden your veto of their CityFHEPS and other affordable housing bills. So I just wanted to check. I knew that there was the possibility of your administration pursuing further legal action. I wanted to know what the status was on that and if you've had continued conversations with the city council because I know everyone wants everyone to have housing, but there seems to be some concerns from your administration about the costs of it, but the City Council members say that it's just important to get people vouchers so they can get into housing.

Mayor Adams: Yeah, listen, we cannot thank our City Council members enough. Amazing project out in Queens, Innovation Queens, the Bruckner Project in the Bronx. We're looking at what we're doing in the Gowanus projects. Dan would tell you that our City Council members have been amazing partners in saying we have to build. They realize. Everyone gets it. I don't think any elected will attend any event without someone standing up and say, "We need housing."

And we didn't get these numbers on our own. Our City Council members were real partners, sat down at the table, fought hard for their memberships to get it done. We disagree on an item. I don't agree with myself all the time, so how am I going to agree with someone else all the time? I always find it interesting is how we want to highlight the disagreements on the 1 percent, but the 99 percent of the times we agree ... 

We agree on a lot together and more and more City Council members are coming out, joining us on the migrant and asylum seeker issue, the congressmen and the delegation. We are coming together as a team and saying, "We have to make sure New York succeeds."

So whatever happened with how they felt about the voucher issue was different from us. The process is going to go through, but you don't stay there. You don't spend all your time there. We got projects. We got to do the Rockaway Project. We got to get done with Councilwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers. So if I go to her and say, "Okay, since we disagree on one thing, now I don't want to do the Rockaway project. I'm going to stay in my corner and I'm going to pout and I'm going to be upset," I can't afford to do that. Every day is a new day and we going to do new things. And those areas that we disagree on, so what? We disagree on them and then we move forward. We're going to work it out. We're New Yorkers, we work out everything.

Question: Well, you're going to continue to pursue legal action to perhaps block it?

Mayor Adams: My corp counsel handles that. All I do is keep moving the ball down the field. My corp counsel's my defensive line. They protect me from being sacked.

Question: Anymore on topics? No? Okay. Thank you, folks.

Mayor Adams: Okay, thank you.

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