Transcript: Mayor Adams Hosts Older Adult Town Hall

November 16, 2023

Video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHn1Zu4_cuw

Commissioner Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, Department for the Aging: Hi, I want to introduce two new additions to our executive cabinet here. And we have… Oh yes, Kim is going to do a grand entrance. From the Department of Transportation, we have Kim, and we also have the Deputy Commissioner of Housing and Preservation, Ahmed, who we'd love to be around all the time.

And that is who is here to help the mayor address any of the questions that you have. We will start momentarily.

That was a buildup. You got to see the video. We introduced everybody who was here and here he is. And we're going to start with the mayor giving us some words and then we'll go around the room with the questions.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. This is number what?

Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez: Five?

Mayor Adams: Five. Five of nine. We have nine more to do. And we have been doing town halls all over the city as well. And we've been doing youth town halls where we're sitting down with our young people to speak directly with them.

We made an announcement yesterday that I'm really proud of. Those of you who have grandchildren, what are your grandchildren have in their hands the most?

Their phones. Their phones. And so we noticed with Dr. Vasan from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, we noticed that depression, suicidal thoughts, all forms of negative thoughts are impacting our young people.

So, we put in place around the clock methods for our young people to speak to mental health professionals when they're going through a state of depression right on their phones, using what's called telemental health. And it's an amazing announcement and it's going to impact children from 13 to 17 years old so that we can really give them service right in their hand.

They're not like us back in the day. We'll go to see a psychiatrist and sit on the couch. Their couch is Instagram and TikTok and all those other mechanisms. So, we need to meet them there.

But this series of talks is because I want to be on the ground and speak with you one-on-one. I don't want people interpreting my message for me. You voted for me to be the mayor, and your mayor should interact directly with you. And that's what my team here… I have an amazing team here from [Commissioner] Cortés-Vázquez for what she's doing in the Department of Aging with our older adults, and Commissioner Stewart who put in place the first time in the history of this city.

We have a rep in every precinct that only deals with older adults. So, you walk into a precinct, you are not trying to navigate the complexity of government, of agencies or how to report anything to the police department. You have a rep that's in every precinct that you will interact directly with and they will give you their contact number.

Who's the rep here in this precinct? Wait, wait, wait. Right here in the back. The guy with all the hair, raise your hand. So, make sure you see him and you should know him so that if you have an incident as an older adult, you can go with him directly.

So, listen, I only know honesty after 22 years of being a police officer, seven years as being a state senator, eight years as being a borough president, I'm just an old fashioned New Yorker. There's nothing fancy about me. I believe New Yorkers believe in plain talk and honesty.

We're in some serious financial trouble right now and we just had to announce a budget cut in our services in the city. We have in New York… And I want you to do the math, we have the $106 billion budget in the City of New York.

But out of that $106 billion, $76 billion roughly is already accounted for. Nothing we could do about it. It pays for salaries, it pays for all the basic services. About $30 billion goes into all the other things we wanted. We want to do additional trash pickup, we want to do additional service in our older adult centers, we want to do afterschool programs. It's about 30-something billion.

Out of that 30 billion, we have to take five billion this year because we have to balance our budget for two years by law. So, we have to take five billion out of that $30 billion by November. And then in January, we have to take another seven billion, a total of $12 billion, to pay for these asylum seekers, migrant crises that our city was hit with.

This is unfair to the asylum seekers and migrants, and it's unfair to New Yorkers who have been here for years upon years. The national government must do their share. This is a national problem. It's not a New York City problem, Chicago problem, a Massachusetts problem. The national government should be picking up this tab and it should not be coming out of the backs of everyday New Yorkers. That is wrong, and that is what is happening.

And your advocacy and your voice is crucial in announcing this. 142,000 migrants and asylum seekers have come to the city so far. Now, one child of family sleeping on the street because of what we have done, but we've run out of room. We've run out a room.

And so the four things that people need to know about this that I think is important. Number one, people say, well, Eric, why don't you close the door? Why don't you stop allowing people to come in? I can't. That's against the law. I don't have the authority to do that.

Okay, well, why don't you send people to other locations? That's against the law. I don't have the authority to do that. Well, you're quite welcome. Well, you're giving asylum seekers and migrants more than what you're giving everyday New Yorkers, untrue. They're living in HERRCs. Humanitarian relief centers on cots, getting basic services.

No one is getting anything more than what New Yorkers are getting here. They're getting the minimum care that we could afford to do. What the national government needs to do is have a decompression strategy and make sure when people come across the border, they're able to go throughout the entire country and not just New York City.

That's why I went to South America and Central America to talk about and let people know what the reality is here. Then they need to pick up the cost for this. This is not our cost. Imagine if you own a home or an apartment, you rent and you budget out your money because you're on a fixed income. You budget your money for the year and all of a sudden, the roof caves in. But you say, okay, I got an insurance policy. The insurance policy would pay for my roof. And you go to the insurance agent and they say, no, we're not paying for it. You have to take the money out of somewhere, your light, your food, your gas, paying for your children. That's what's happening to us.

The national government is our insurance policy to take care of national issues. And since they're not taking for the roof caving in on us, we have to pick up the cost to that. That's wrong.

And lastly, number one thing we're asking of the national government, let them work. Every asylum seeker I speak with, they say, we don't want anything free from New Yorkers, we want to work. How anti-American it is that you come to this country and you are being told you can't work for six months to a year, and all you can do is sit around all day?

How many of you have male children? How many have male children? Can you imagine telling the 18 to 24 year old you have to sit around all day doing nothing? That is just not sustainable?

And so I wanted you to know why we are having this economic crisis that's impacting us all, but also want you to know what we are doing for our older adults. Everything around public safety, everything around what the commissioner of Department of Aging is doing in our creative ways of giving you the services that we provided.

And I wanted to come on the ground and speak with you one-on-one and keep you informed on what we're doing. That's the purpose that I'm here. This is the best part of my job when I'm able to hold these town halls and I'm able to get on the ground and speak one-on-one. I lost mommy around about a little over a year and a half ago, and I tell people all the time, she has six children. She loves them all, but she adored me. I was her favorite child.

And I saw her dedication and commitment as a food service worker. I saw how she cleaned three homes to raise her six children. I watched how government abandoned her and they were not there for her. That is not what my administration is about.

We are going to give you our all. I serve you as a police officer and other elected officials, and I'm going to serve you to the best of my ability as the mayor of the city of New York. This is the most important city on the globe, and I'm going to give you my all as long as I'm your mayor, and I want to hear from you on how we could do better in areas we are failing and how you could learn more in areas that we have.

May I have one of my magnets? Did we give out the magnets yet? We're going to give out these magnets because sometimes we talk about everything but the basic things. These are magnets that you could put on your fridge at home. It comes in several different languages, Spanish, Chinese, English and other languages.

This is something we want you to fill out. You keep the information, you place it on your fridge in case there's an emergency. When you're dealing with an emergency, it's difficult to find your basic information.

If it's here already, the first responders, EMS, police or whoever comes to your fridge, they'll see this basic information, your name, your emergency contact number, any medication you take, your primary care doctor that's on here, who's your emergency contact and it's just basic information.

But it's amazing. I remember my days as a police officer. When you have this basic information, you can immediately give people the care and contact that is needed. Okay? So, we're going to give it out. You can fill it out.

You can put it on your fridge. If you have a spouse at home, you could grab one for them as well, but it's about just being prepared in the case of emergency. So, commissioner, why don't we open the floor.

Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez: Table number one.

Question: Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. I'll be translating for my table. I have the Hispanic table. What is the administration doing to reduce crime and violence in our subways?

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you for that. We should have our bilingual translation on the screen. When I took office January 1st, 2022, crime was through the roof. It was trending in the wrong directions. Shootings were going up. Homicides were going up. Five of the seven major crime categories were going up.

No one wanted to be on the subway system because it was unsafe. We were dealing with a lot of people who were dealing with real mental health issues. People were being shoved to the subway tracks. We all know the stories.

Look at where we are now. We have decrease in homicides. We have decrease in shootings. Five of our seven major crime categories have decreased. Our subway ridership, no one wanted to be on the subways. Now we're back up capping at four million riders.

The subways are cleaner. No more encampments on the subway system. Our governor, Governor Hochul partnered with me in our subway safety plan and it was a game changer.

And then we infused technology into our subway system. Just the other day you saw that a young person was riding on top of the train doing what's called subway surfing. We have now included ways of using technology to identify our young people doing things that are reckless, that won't hurt themselves.

So, we're seeing a decreasing crime in our subway system. More people are back on our subway system. So, it was important to me, as a former transit cop and a person that uses subway system, that we need a safe subway system. We're not where we want to be, but we're darn sure not where we were, and we're going to get safer every day.

Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez: [Speaking in Spanish]

Mayor Adams: How many police precincts do we have here? Police precincts in this area. Who else is our senior reps here? Is just one here. They're all the senior reps? Yes. Come on up. Come on up. Listen man, you're going to be a senior rep? You can't be shy. Come on up so people can see who you are. And you're [inaudible]. Come introduce yourselves. How are you doing? Good. Good. Just tell them who you're and what precinct, okay?

Officer James Kearney, 17 Precinct, Police Department: I'll wait for everyone to come. I'll wait for everyone to come. Hello, everyone. So, I'm Officer Kearney. I'm from the 17th Precinct.

Officer Greg Edgar, 10 Precinct, Police Department: Hi everyone. I'm Greg Edgar from the 10th Precinct, which… Thank you, and covers PSA 4 also.

Officer Miles Holman, 1 Precinct, Police Department: Hello, I'm Officer Miles Holman from the first precinct downtown.

Office Daniel Au, 5 Precinct, Police Department: Hi, everyone. I'm Officer Daniel Au from the 5th Precinct.

Officer Michael McKenzie, 7 Precinct, Police Department: Officer Michael McKenzie from the 7th Precinct.

Officer Israel Santiago, 13 Precinct, Police Department: How are you doing everybody? Officer Santiago from the 13th Precinct.

Officer Marisa Gonzalez, 13 Precinct, Police Department: Hi, everyone. I'm Officer Gonzalez. I'm also from the 13th Precinct.

Detective Evrim Can, 6 Precinct, Police Department: Hi everyone. I'm Detective Can. I'm from the West Village 6th Precinct.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Come on, give it up. Give it up for them.

Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. So first of all, we need to do this in all of our older adults. We want to make sure all of you know what precincts that's in your area if you don't already, and who is attached. So, we need to make sure in all of our adult centers, the precinct and who is the officer assigned, all right?

Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez: So, we're working on that right now so that they will know which are the programs in their communities, and also each program will know who's assigned to their community. We're just calibrating right now exactly who are the people assigned.

Mayor Adams: Great. Excellent.

Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez: That's great.

Mayor Adams: Next table.

Question: Thank you for being here, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Question: Our table, we're listening and constantly seeing, according to the media, that there's going to be a constant talk about the budget cut, which our table is feeling or appears like a budget disaster, not a budget cut. So, that should be the language. Financial disaster preparedness. What's being done in terms of financial disaster preparedness and how are the priorities being set in the Department of the Aging?

Mayor Adams: Yes, and you're right, it is a disaster. I'm with you. We're on the same page. Every agency in the city is going through a cut, every agency in the city. Then we looked at agencies that are social service agencies and healthcare, and we modified to make sure we can minimize the pain to those agencies.

I just had a meeting today with all of my cultural institutions telling them, you are also going to be impacted. Every agency in the city is going to be impacted, but we're looking at the service providers and say, how do we minimize those agencies like the delivery… Food, the pantries, the other services that we know, low, moderate, fixed income New Yorkers depend on it, but every agency is going to be impacted.

And I got to be honest about that. I'm not going to give any false impressions. We have to find another $7 billion out of that $30-something billion in January. This is the most painful exercise I've ever done in my professional life.

Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez: I want to echo what the mayor is saying that we will be facing cuts. It's tough. We are not in the business of printing dollars. So, we are really dependent on that.

But I can assure you that with all of the cuts that we're doing, we are making sure that there are no cuts to the older adult clubs as well as to home delivered meals. We are looking for every possible way to avoid that, in every possible way.

Mayor Adams: Right, and that's so important. Now, keep in mind, New York City can only raise revenue to pay their bills two ways. One, through income tax… Not income tax, correction, through home taxes. If we raise property taxes or we do, what's these called? These pegs.

We can't raise income taxes that's outside our power. Only the state can do that. So, we could either go to property tax increases or do these reduction in services or fines. There's only a small number of ways we could raise money to pay our bills. Go ahead, brother.

Question: Hey, how's it going?

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. This is a table of lifelong Chelsea residents. They've been coming to the center forever. They love it. They do have one question. What are some new initiatives that the city is taking to tackle sanitation and building more supportive housing in the neighborhood?

Mayor Adams: First, sanitation. The city must be a clean city. All of you know by now. I hate rats and we are doing everything possible to get rid of these darn rats. Commissioner Tisch, we are doing something that everybody told me was going to take four years to do it. We're doing it a little over two years. We're containerizing all of our garbage.

Garbage in those plastic bags that started during the '60s, those plastic bags are rat magnets and it's unsightly. We started with food service small businesses. They have to place their garbage in containers.

We went to another level to go to the chain stores, and eventually next year we're going to be rolling out and even private residents of less than, I think, less than nine family units are going to be containerizing their garbage. You are not going to see garbage bags on our streets anymore. You're going to see them in containers where it is really an impact on the cleanliness of our city.

We also, for the first time, turned over cleaning our highways to the Department of Sanitation. I mean, to the Department of Sanitation, yes.

Commissioner Tisch also did something that was unique. During holiday times, you normally see garbage remain on the street. She said, let's stop picking up garbage during holidays. That had to come under our budgetary cuts because we can't afford to continue to do it.

So, we're going to need real community participation block cleanups, everybody lending their hand to say, let's keep our community clean and really folks picking up after themselves also. So, it's going to be a real coordinated effort on how we need to continue to keep the city clean. But one of the biggest initiatives we're doing is containerizing our garbage. That's a huge lift.

We're one of the last few big countries where you see garbage on the streets. We're moving away from that and that is something that we are proud of in this administration. They told me it was going to take four years. We're going to do it in two and a half years.

Question: Hello.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: My name's [inaudible]. In our lovely table, we had discussed several issues and I think the most pressing one is… It's a safety issue, a public safety issue here in the neighborhood. Although it has improved greatly over the years, there is a huge problem with drug sales, drug trafficking and shootings, especially in the evenings and on the weekends, and as it's getting darker out more so, and the party crowd just drifts along from 6th Avenue to 9th Avenue here and the drugs follow.

In addition, there are mentally ill drug users that are surrounding these neighborhoods, menacing the people on the blocks outside and attempting to get into the apartment buildings. They have gotten into the NYCHA buildings and squatted and they were still here and they were threatening tenants, getting on the elevator and making life very dangerous for people. Any help would be considered. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you very… Thank you very much. I was up in Harlem. I was up in Harlem, ma'am, at a town hall and someone stood up and said the same thing that people are sleeping in their hallways. And I said, I'll meet you up at night. What time are they there?

And sure enough, there was a gentleman sleeping in the hallway, he was sleeping under...he had a knife under him. And so we reached out to the local precinct and we put in place that we wanted them to do what's called verticals, to walk up and down, look on the roofs because there's a real problem where people are sleeping in the hallway.

So, we have a whole entire initiative. If you tell me the location, I'll go over there with the precinct commander and we'll do an analysis because you don't want people who don't live in the building, sleeping in the hallways, on the stairs, on your rooftops. So, we're… What precinct are you in, do you know?

Question: 10th.

Mayor Adams: 10th. Who's the 10th? Okay, so let's connect with this table and let's coordinate a day. I'm going to come over there and take a look at it, and also share with the officer the location that you said there's the drug problem and where's the corridor around the whole mental health illness issue, shared with the officer, and we'll coordinate to come over there and take a look at it. Okay?

Question: Thank you.

Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez: Maybe Commissioner Stewart, you want to add?

Mayor Adams: Hello?

Deputy Commissioner Mark Stewart, Community Affairs, Police Department: Yes.

Mayor Adams: Commissioner Stewart.

Deputy Commissioner Stewart: Yes. Remember, we know the situations around the city. That's why the mayor does these town halls. And when we do these town halls, it's not for confrontation, it's for conversation because public safety, the responsibility is shared. We do our best.

I go to three or four meetings a week with precision policing that we do. But with this information that you're giving us, just like the mayor said, sometimes it hurts me that the mayor has to go out there when we should be going out there and not him. So, I'm going to try to follow up. Matter of fact, when I leave here, we're going to follow up with that information and we'll address it.

And that goes to everybody here too. If there's information that you have in your community, I always tell people, walk into the precincts. Can I see these officers here? Friendly faces, talk to him.

We are here to help you, the responsibility is in our safety in our streets. So, you could walk the streets safely. We have to be aware of it. Know how we get aware of it. If there's a complaint that's filed, a lot of people don't file these complaints.

So, we're going to reach out to you, mayor, I'll take this for you. We'll handle this and no, no, this is true. I go to town halls with the mayor every two weeks. There we go. And I hear these questions with the police department. I was like, why is our mayor doing this?

So, last night Tiffany came, I had to start a new group, is conversation clergy and our communities. Our mayor has enough that he has to do. Police stuff, we'll take care of that. So, mayor, I will take care of that for you and we will follow up as soon as we leave here with that. Okay? Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. You know my saying, you got to inspect what you expect or it is all suspect.

Question: Good afternoon.

Mayor Adams: How are you doing?

Question: I'm good.

Mayor Adams: Good ahead.

Question: Good afternoon. So, at our table, we avidly discussed and posed a question regarding the constant construction of luxury apartments, especially in Chelsea. And would like to know what the administration is doing to provide more affordable housing to balance out the units that have such high rent.

Mayor Adams: Thank you for that. I think somebody else asked about affordable housing. So, yes, and this is so important. This is like a [inaudible] moment. An educated consumer is our best customer. There are several ways to build housing.

We are in a mad rush to build as much affordable housing as possible. We're going to do our job, but the governor and I put in place an aggressive plan with Albany lawmakers so that we can build more affordable units. And there's something called 421-a, I'm not going to get into the technical terminology, but basically it's an incentive to build more housing.

Albany had to pass that they decided not to pass it. We also asked them, can we build higher to get more affordable units by raising what's called FAR? They decided not to pass that also. Albany left last session with not passing one housing initiative, not one.

So, in order to build more, we need our state lawmakers to play a role to give us the opportunity to do so. Now here in the city, we are going to put in place… Department of Planning is putting in place a citywide tax amendment to increase and be creative to build more affordable units because a lot of our 1960 building codes, those codes have been racist and they've been used to segregate people from being able to live throughout the city. We want to change that.

We want to build more in places that traditionally had access to healthy good food, access to transportation, access to good schools, access to good supermarkets. We want to build more in those locations. And for far too long, those locations have restricted people from building there. So, we are doing a citywide text amendment, zoning amendment so we can build more.

So, it's a combination of what we are doing in the city that we're introducing now to the city council and the help we need on the state level. We have to build more. We have an inventory problem. That's the problem. There's not enough units in the city, particularly senior, adult, veterans of type of units. And we want to build more. I'm aggressively pushing that. We know what needs to do.

Now, we have done some great building thus far, but far not enough. And we need help on the state level and help in the city council level. And we look like we have a good place with this current speaker, but we also need help in Albany as well.

Question: Right here. Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: [Inaudible] back to you. Let me finish the table and I'll come back to you, okay?

Question: Just a suggestion.

Mayor Adams: Yes. Okay. We want suggestions. Yes, how are you there?

Verna Arthur Director, Manhattan Community Outreach, Department for the Aging : Good afternoon. Fine, Mayor Adams.

Mayor Adams: Good to see you.

Arthur: I'm Verna Arthur of NYC Aging and I'm the facilitator for table number six. And the question is: What is the status on the mentally ill on the streets and the subways who are being neglected?

Mayor Adams: Yes, we have somebody from DOHMH? Okay, we're going to let her respond, but let me share this. I don't know if many people remember, last year, I made it clear. In the first two months in office, I went out into the streets and I visit people in encampments.

I went down in encampments, I sat down, I spoke with them, and here's what I found. I found people living in drug paraphernalia, some living in their own human ways. Some was bipolar, schizophrenic, some people did not know they needed care.

It was inhumane for people to be living like that. And you saw encampments all over the city. And we took a very aggressive position that it is not dignified to have fellow New Yorkers living this way. We got a lot of pushback.

People said, people who are living in those conditions have a right to live on the streets like that. I don't believe that. I believe if you are at the mental capacity that you can't take care of yourself and you're dangerous to others, you should get the wraparound services and support that you need.

And that's what the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has been doing. And you see a drastic change on our streets, like other cities where you see a lot of encampments, a lot of people are walking the street not getting the care.

Now, we need to do more because we shouldn't have anyone without community, without care, without support. That is crucial for people who are dealing with a mental health illness. But I got an amazing commissioner, an amazing agency, and they're really focused on that. So, can we talk about some of the stuff that we're doing over at Department of Health and Mental Hygiene?

Rachel Schwartz, Policy Manager, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Rachel Schwartz from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. I just want to take a moment to tout once again, 988, which is the new program that has been rolled out in the city to provide free mental health and substance use treatment and resources to folks 24 hours a day.

There are many other initiatives as well. I have to say I'm just a representative of the health department, but I'm happy to have a further conversation after and get more answers for you.

Mayor Adams: So, we have a host of different services because we're with you. No one should be on the street that is at a capacity where they can't make the right decisions for themselves. And what has been happening is that we've been taking people inside to the hospital, they get medication for one day, then they back out the street the next day, and then we wait until they commit a crime.

Do you know that 48 percent of the people at Rikers Island are dealing with mental health illness? Rikers should not be a psychiatric facility. We should have state-of-the-art psychiatric care for people who need it with good support services, wraparound services, and everyone needs to be on board with that.

There's nothing humane by allowing people to live on the streets. That is just inhumane, and I'm not going to participate in that as the mayor of the city.

Question: Good afternoon, Mayor. This table was very shy and they start leaving. But they leave me the question right here, mayor. The first time they were here, the first time, they want to see you. That's why, that the main thing, they come to see you close enough to you.

And they raised one question here around the neighborhood here at a lot of homeless here at night time, and some people are asleep in the building. And the real concern about it is the most senior around here.

Mayor Adams: Yes. And that was similar to the question on the other side. Commissioner Stewart is going to put his team together to look at that. Do they live in NYCHA or private?

Question: NYCHA.

Mayor Adams: NYCHA. Okay. So, let them know that the team here… Do you know what precinct they're in?

Question: 7th.

Mayor Adams: 7th? Who's in 7th? Okay. So, Commissioner Stewart is going to partner with the 7th Precinct and he's going to put a plan in. Tell him we're going to do a walkthrough of the building and identify what the problem is.

Anya Buberman, Program Officer, Department for the Aging: Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. My name is Anya Buberman, NYC Aging. I facilitate the conversation of table 8. Members of our table are concerned about the safety issues that are caused by e-bikes and mopeds. They see that not all e-bike drivers abide by rules and they drive recklessly and they ask, are there guidelines to control e-transportation? And how are they reinforced?

Mayor Adams: We have yet to go to one town hall that we have not heard about e-bikes. Know that we have yet to go to one, not one that we've gone to. Every town hall that we've attended, people talk about e-bikes.

So, what has happened? Over the last few years, we've had a major transformation in the use of our streets. E-bikes, bikes, mopeds. If it's on wheels, it has been on our streets, and we have not properly adjusted to the change. We have not.

And so I had the police commissioner, DOT commissioner and a whole team, DCWP, the whole team come together and we must come up with real rules and regulations for using mopeds, e-bikes, scooters, bicycles. Everyone must comply with the same rules and make sure that it's done correctly.

Then Covid happened, and when Covid happened, people stopped going outside. They started getting deliveries. And so we want to bring in the delivery apps, and they have to play a role in it. We want to get everyone on board and say, you can't drive up and down the sidewalk. You can't go down one way street.

We are going to start having enforcement. We don't want to be heavy-handed, but we're going to start letting people know you have to follow the traffic rules and adjust because this is endangering the lives of everyday New Yorkers.

We were at Park Slope and we had a woman in Park Slope who… She plays the violin and she's now paralyzed because she was hit by an e-bike. And so we know this is a real problem and I put the team together that we're going to rectify this problem and make sure our streets are safe to walk down and dealing with the E-bike situation that we're having.

Deputy Commissioner Stewart: Mr. Mayor, can I just touch on that?

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Deputy Commissioner Stewart: So, the e-bikes, mopeds. Yes, Mike. Okay, listen, we understand that we have an enforcement that's going on in the Police Department. The mayor just gave me 1000 new officers to address this.

We have the enforcement. It's working. We took over 15,000 bikes off our streets, but they keep coming back. So, now what are we missing? We have to educate the businesses. We have to go after GrubHub, we have to go after Uber Eats, but it's just not them. There's contractors.

So, my team here, I just had a meeting with them. In every precinct, we're going after every eatery that uses mopeds and e-bikes. Our first phase is to educate. We're going to let them know there's stop signs, there's rules and there's regulations.

We going to go… We are identifying. Matter of fact, we identified probably about 200, 300 places already. We're going to go after the people who are selling the e-bikes and mopeds and inform them, listen, if you drive an e-bike or moped, they have to go through a course.

I'm putting a course together now. It's going to be four to five hours to educate because we have to be realistic too, a lot of migrants that they're using a bike. That's a culture thing where they use moped over the street that you can't do that here. So, we're going to educate them about the rules and regulations of New York City.

Then we do that. If they're still not paying attention, that's when the enforcement comes in, and we're working with our transportation on the Police Department. But what's good about it is that we're identifying every eatery in each precinct. So, we know where the e-bikes are and we know where the mopeds are.

And if they're not paying attention to the rules and regulations, then we're going to come after them. Because guess what? We identify where all the bikes are and where they turn out and where those mopeds are.

So, we're doing that as we talk now. I just had a meeting with my team about it and we have to educate. We don't educate, then we take it away. All right. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Hold on. We got DOT here also.

Assistant Commissioner Kim Wiley-Schwartz, Education and Outreach, Department of Transportation: Yes. The Department of Transportation has been working very closely with the Department for the Aging on pedestrian safety for older New Yorkers. So, there's a lot of work and a lot of effort that has gone into that.

Well, I'm looking forward to talking about this. I am the head of safety education for the City of New York, which means that I've spent the last few years dealing with e-bikes and things like that.

So, we have a comprehensive program with delivery cyclists right now. And right now we're going to the Hercs, do this work. So, there's a lot of, I think that the way that we get Vision Zero done is through redundancy, right? We do the work. You do the work. The more that we are out there doing the work together, that's how we really get the job done.

But we are also making sure that we are contextualizing your safety on the sidewalk. Sidewalks are sacred spaces. They're for you. They're for parents with kids in strollers. They're for people with disabilities. They're people who are trying to get around, and we're really trying to figure out how to reclaim your sidewalks for you. So, Mr. Mayor, will be working on that.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. And one of the older adult cabinets that we put together. This is one of the topics that has come up. So, we are with you. We are very much with you. We hear you loud and clear.

Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez: The mayor's being shy. One of the first initiatives that we did was to make sure that this is an age-inclusive city. And the mayor put together 24 agencies and said, I'm relying on you to address this issue of older New Yorkers. I care what happens. There's policies we want to change, there's gaps in systems. I want all of you to work those because I need you to help me create the vision for an age-inclusive city.

So, there's 24 agencies. A lot of these initiatives that you've been hearing about today have been as a result of that cabinet. Many things have come out of that in just the first year, looking forward to a lot more. So, I really want to thank the mayor for creating this cabinet, breaking down silos, identifying gaps and filling those gaps. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Question: It was my pleasure to see you. And I would like to see you in the Lower East Side. And the crime has calmed down in Vladeck Houses. The 7th Precinct has done a very good job.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Question: But we would like to see you down there too.

Mayor Adams: I would love it. Who's the 7th Precinct?

Question: Over there.

Mayor Adams: Good job. Good job.

Question: Okay.

Mayor Adams: I would love to come down. Invite me down.

Question: I'm inviting you. I'm inviting you.

Mayor Adams: Okay. I need a hangout.

Question: Oh, and you too. Okay. You too.

Mayor Adams: I need a hangout for Thanksgiving.

Question: Sure, why not? Yes. And like you said, we're supposed to get more housing done, but why is it that there's so many apartments empty and when somebody applies, they don't give it to them and Housing Connect.

Mayor Adams: Okay, so remember we have different levels of housing. Some of it is private that we have no control over at all. Right. And we have placed more people in the city's FHEPS housing support program than in the history of the program. We have placed more.

And so the team has placed a substantial number of people in housing. So, sometime you see vacant housing, it could be private-owned for whatever reason a person is. Right. But we want to make sure that places like NYCHA does not have… Right. No.

We are trying to have a faster turnaround. We have new leadership at night over at NYCHA, faster turnaround for those apartments that are empty to get people back in them. But some of these apartments have been vacant for so long that they have to, I should say, they have been occupied for so long that when people move out, you have to do lead abatement. You have to do a major renovation

Now, down in Chelsea Housing, I'm really excited about the project we're doing in Chelsea Housing. I think it's the pathway forward for NYCHA. Chelsea housing is doing this complete renovation where there no displacement. They're tearing down the old building, building a new building, moving people completely in the new building before they tear down another building.

I think it's the pathway forward for NYCHA. NYCHA has billions of dollars in capital projects. We're never going to get there. Federal government is not helping. We have to find creative ways and I'm really excited about the Chelsea project. Thank you. Hold on one moment, HPD in the house.

First Deputy Commissioner Ahmed Tigani, Department of Housing Preservation and Development: I also want to say that we've been doing extraordinary work in trying to push the envelope in this community. Just within this administration, we have passed land use projects, ULURPs land use projects through the council to put 300 new units in the Hell's Kitchen area.

60 percent of that is in the supportive realm, which I know I heard earlier is something that we need. In fact, this administration has put in motion the most supportive housing within one fiscal year. Our last year we started 27,000 units.

That's after the year prior us starting 16,000 units. This administration put the tools in place to see a 22 percent increase, even while we face obstacle after obstacle. The mayor has put, with NYCHA, in total 33 billion in the housing plan that's larger than at least seven or eight state capital budgets.

So, even with that, as the mayor said, without the flexibility and zoning, without the ability to get more support from the federal government on vouchers, without these tools, we can't continue to build up on the success. 

We will do everything we can. We'll use city vouchers. When the federal government gave us 7,800 emergency housing vouchers, we put together a plan bringing together 10 different agencies that helped at-risk, homeless, DV victims, at-risk youth. We all work together and we are on track to meet our commitment to using those 7,800 vouchers by the end of this year. We have done what we can. When someone gives us resources, make housing happen.

Now, as the mayor said, we'll be calling on our state partners hoping to have your support to get the extra tools to make more housing happen.

Mayor Adams: Well said. Well said. Thank you. Thank you.

Robin Forst, Manhattan Borough Director, Community Affairs Unit: Hi, mayor.

Mayor Adams: How are you doing?

Forst: How are you?

Mayor Adams: Good to see you.

Forst: Good to see you too. I'm Robin Forst and I'm with the MAyor's Community Affairs Unit. Most of the questions that our table had have been answered, but let me pick up on one thread related to already asked questions. And that's related to homelessness in the streets.

A lot of seniors are frightened to walk down the street with people who may or may not have mental illness issues but are camped out. And is there any advice that you or NYPD or Department of Homeless Services can provide for seniors to feel safer when they're walking on the streets? Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Yes. And, Commissioner Stewart, we have a lot of safety tips for seniors and we should do a whole presentation around that, so Commissioner Stewart we could talk about that. But keep in mind, we have limited authority on if a person is on the streets and they're not acting in a disruptive way, there's limited what we can do.

And we have to respect the constitutional rights of people. But if we see someone acting in a manner that's dangerous to themselves or others, we take action. If you call the police, the police will respond with mental health professionals and give them the support and services they need. But there's some safety tips that we could talk about that we're doing.

Deputy Commissioner Stewart: Yes. We have crime prevention officers that are here now. And what happened? We go to how many...hold on this Lieutenant Bodden. She's my right-hand, left-hand woman.

Lieutenant Jackie Bodden, Police Department: Hi, my name is Lieutenant Bodden. I work with the great Deputy Commissioner Stewart. Your same liaison can put together crime prevention tips for all the adults and we could get a workshop done for you just to give you different tips to help you out with that. He'll be able to connect with you after and then we could do a presentation here if needed.

Mayor Adams: Yes. So we'll do a presentation. We'll have the Commissioner Stewart's team come in and give you some crime prevention safety tips specifically in that area, okay?

Karen Cherry, Senior Liaison, Community Affairs Unit: Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. This is the last table and my person got shy over here.

So, for those who don't know me, I'm Karen Cherry. I'm out of the CAU unit for the mayor's office, and I am the older adult liaison. I travel citywide on behalf of the mayor.

Mr. Mayor as an older adult… Thank you. Mr. Mayor, as an older adult, we feel that traffic lights in this area change too quickly and make it unsafe to cross the street. What can be done to address this?

Assistant Commissioner Wiley-Schwartz: Thank you for that question. So, we would be more than happy to find out. We need to know exactly where you're talking about. Making changes to traffic signal timing can take a little bit of work because every tweak that we make has a ripple effect, but we believe very strongly, and that's why we put those countdown signals in many years ago.

And we have the leading pedestrian intervals where you get that walk signal before any cars get to move. And that's for you, for your safety and we want the crosswalk to be a safe space for you.

So, I would be happy to come over and hear those things. But through this older adult center, we can always get those things, those go to your borough commissioner and then those will be taken care of. Engineers will go right out and we can actually work that out. You're the experts on where you're safe and not safe in your neighborhood.

Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez: And why don't you talk a little bit about the audits that we received?

Assistant Commissioner Wiley-Schwartz: Oh, sure. It would be my pleasure. So, we have been collaborating doing special projects where we take older adults out in your communities to go for walks to look with you at where these things are creating problems, turning vehicles, places where you feel that vehicles are speeding.

When you don't feel safe, that is a sign that we have more work to do. And so as we walk around with you, we take maps, we make all sorts of markups, we go to the borough engineer and we're getting changes on the ground. In fact, we're just about to report to the eight adult centers that we were with where we actually were able to make changes in 2023 based on their recommendations.

Mayor Adams: And I love this initiative because what it does is, is we go out and allow you, instead of us interpreting for you, we go out, walk with you, you point out this light is going fast, there's not enough time to walk across the street. So, we walk with you, and it's really commendable with the Department of Aging and what DOT is doing.

That's the style that we have. We want to be on the ground. Anyone can stay in City Hall and analyze what the problems are. But we are on the ground team. We like to be out there in the community speaking with you firsthand on how to resolve these problems.

I promise you, I was going to come back to you, sir. Can we get a mic to him before? Thank you. Okay. Okay. Whichever flows.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I invite you to my table. Okay. Can you hear me now?

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Question: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you all. I'm not a housing advocate, but I have supported them. I mainly have worked with the immigrant population. But one of the things from Willets Point that came out of that, and the reason I'm talking about this is because the mayor talked about affordable housing. And I commend you for all the actions the city's doing.

But one of the issues that came up is that when affordable housing is being classified as far as what tenants have to pay is that HUD gets involved. So, I know you talked about the city and the state getting involved and trying to push legislation, but are we still working with the feds to try to change the way the formula is? Because I remember one of the biggest issues in densely-populated Willets Point with Corona is that Westchester County was being included in the average for, quote, unquote, affordable housing.

Mayor Adams: You're talking about the Area Median Income. You want to address that?

First Deputy Commissioner Tigani: Yes.

Mayor Adams: Okay. Go ahead.

First Deputy Commissioner Tigani: Thank you. That's a great question. This comes up a lot. So, when we build affordable housing, it's kind of like a pie. In order to make it work, we're using federal sources, city sources, private sources, philanthropic. And the federal source does go by formula. It does not prevent us, and it has not prevented us from building extra low and low income housing.

In fact, in the 27,000 number I cited, under 50 percent of that housing went to low and extra low, and 15 percent of that went to homeless aside. We can still use the funds and create housing to meet people where they are. We can still use those funds backed with something called project-based vouchers, it's when we pull together a voucher resource with our other funding resource to make sure that our senior housing is affordable to 50 percent AMI and lower.

And what does that mean in real dollars? We're talking about 60, 50, 40, $30,000 a year. We're talking about nurses, we're talking about firemen, we're talking about workforce, essential workers being able to live in our housing. So, yes, there are formulas that are attached to different funding sources. We get creative. We think about how to put them together but still meet the program targets we need to meet because these are the New Yorkers that we're trying to build housing for.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. Listen, thank you for taking out the time. We have some follow up with the public safety. And listen, really enjoy your question. They were thought provoking and this is how we want to get it done.

Please give it up for my amazing team that's here to serve you.

And I wish you all a great Thanksgiving. I say this over and over again every year. Remember, it's Thanksgiving, not thanks receiving. So let's go out. Let's find a way to give back. There are a lot of people who are hurting.

Before we do our meal, let's go out and volunteer somewhere. Let's spend some time really giving people some love. Let's give back in a very thankful way. Let's be grateful by doing great things. Thank you. Thank you.