Transcript: Mayor Adams Hosts "Hear From the Mayor" Radio Show

December 8, 2024

Gary Byrd: Well, each and every Sunday of the month, WBLS is proud to welcome the brother who is the 110th mayor of the number one city in the world, New York, and the second mayor of color, and the first hip-hop mayor in the city's history. It's time to welcome our brother, the mayor, Eric L. Adams, on 107.5 WBLS. Mr. Mayor, good morning and welcome.

Mayor Eric Adams: Hey, thank you, Gary, and good morning to you, and the listeners are really excited to be on this morning, and I want to say welcome back to another episode of Hear from the Mayor, and I'm your mayor, Eric Adams, and if this is your first time tuning in, the purpose of this show is not only to hear from me, but to hear from you, everyday New Yorkers. 

Listeners should give me a call and hear directly from your mayor on what we are doing to build a better city. You can sign up also to hear from me by visiting newyorkcity.gov/hearfromeric, and you can sign up on our website to text with Eric and talk with me on WhatsApp, but today it's about the phone call. You can dial 212-545-1075, 212-545-1075. 

Really excited about this week. This was such an important week for me. It was the affordability week. We wanted to highlight and dedicate this week to spotlight all that our administration is doing to really stand up for everyday working people, and that is what has been the cornerstone of my administration. My siblings and I, we were denied by this city, and I like to say betrayed by this city, by not giving us the basic things we needed, but we have focused on how do we use our power as city government to put money and resources back in the pockets of New Yorkers, and we came up with over $30 billion in ideas, everything from the reduced cost of child care to free high-speed broadband to NYCHA resident to paying off billions of dollars in medical debt to making sure that we are sponsoring the college for foster care children, reduced fare, MetroCard. I could go on and on and on, but the most important thing is housing. 

As the philosopher said, the rent is too damn high, and part of the reason the rent is too damn high is because of the inventory. In addition to this week, our Axe the Tax for the Working Class initiative, anyone that's living 150 percent below the poverty line or at the poverty line or lower, we are saying you are no longer paying New York City personal income tax. We presented this bill to Albany, and we look forward to it passing, but I'm joined here by the person I affectionately call Dan the Man, Dan Garodnick, director of City Planning, to talk about the most significant milestone we could have accomplished. This was so important to Dan and me that we passed what's called City of Yes. Dan, can you just go into plain talk, like you're standing in a barbershop somewhere just talking to some folks from around the way, with the City of Yes, why was it so significant?

Dan Garodnick, Director, Department of City Planning: That's great. For the first time, people are really talking about zoning in their barbershop because that's a tough topic. The most important here is through a citywide zoning change, we are working, and now have the City Council's approved, a plan that will allow a little more housing in every neighborhood of the city. What does that look like for people? Well, we designed this plan so that it doesn't have really dramatic impacts in any one neighborhood. 

A little more housing means you see small incremental changes over time, while in the aggregate we are going to be able to deliver about 80,000 additional units of housing over the next 15 years. So this is a really big deal for the city, and at a moment when we have vacancy rates which are shockingly low, as low as they have been since 1968. You charged us, mayor, with going big on housing, doing something meaningful, and with this proposal we are going to look at this year and the action that we took this year as the year that we finally turned the tide on housing supply in New York.

Mayor Adams: And what's important here, for all of you out there, because you listen to the policy wonks talk about this stuff, but let's break this down. The city is divided into 59 community boards, that's how we divide the city. Out of those 59 community boards, only 10 of them have really handled this affordable housing crisis and building affordable housing. 49, they have not done their job. In fact, the 10 build more and manage more than the 49 combined. 

So what Dan did, he said the housing crisis is a citywide crisis, but we don't want to destroy what communities look like, so let's do a little more. So if you have that one story storefront or bodega or beauty salon, let's put two more stories on top of it. And when you do that across the city, you're able to produce 80,000 units of housing. But this has come on board with not only did Dan map out the housing, but you have a couple of other city of yes initiatives that you were able to do.

Garodnick: Yes, that's true, Mayor. This was our third of three citywide initiatives that we were able to accomplish in the last year. The first one of them was a citywide proposal for the environment. It was called City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality. We want to be a greener city. We want to make sure that building owners are able to achieve our own environmental goals. Zoning was in the way. We had all sorts of old rules that were keeping people from putting solar panels on their buildings, making higher performance buildings, and we wanted to deal with that. City of Yes for Economic Opportunity was our second bite at the apple here.  

We looked at our zoning resolution in a post-pandemic world and saw that there were so many instances where zoning was impeding progress, was keeping job creation from happening, keeping storefronts vacant, and our 1961 rules were just not doing the job for us. So we proposed and the city council adopted City of Yes for Economic Opportunity, which in itself was the biggest expansion of manufacturing in the city's history and also the biggest citywide tax amendment up to that point that the city had ever seen. So these two proposals, if we had just stopped there, this would have been truly transformative and the biggest things the city had ever done. But then, of course, as you are inevitably going to know, there was just one more that we had on the horizon.

Mayor Adams: Now, you know, because you know I'm a common sense guy, just give one example of how the City of Yes for Economic Opportunity, what type of businesses were we holding back in this city?

Garodnick: Yeah, it's a really important question. You know, life sciences is a good example of where our zoning rules were too confusing and too cumbersome and made it so that you had a lot of ambiguity as to whether or not you could actually locate a life science business in certain areas of the city. Manufacturing is another really good example. 

Manufacturing has changed very significantly since 1961. You know, there's now we have 3D printers. You have virtual reality. You did not have these things in 1961, and our zoning resolution reflects 1961 thinking, not 2024 thinking. So we tried to clean up our rules to enable growth, to enable evolution. Life sciences, light manufacturing are really good examples of that.

Mayor Adams: You know, it's interesting. Let me go back to the housing for a moment, because it's always good to do a comparative analysis. The 80,000 units of housing, what does that fit into how many units my good friend Mayor Bloomberg did, and how many units did Bill de Blasio do, also my good friend Mayor de Blasio as well? 

Garodnick: So this is a really important question, and one that is important for listeners to understand. That in this single zoning action that you and the Department of City Planning proposed, mayor, and the City Council adopted this week, it will generate more units of housing with this one action than all of the rezonings in the 12 years of Mayor Bloomberg. 

It is double the number of units that were created in all of the rezonings in the eight years of Mayor de Blasio. And of course, this is its own action. This doesn't even take into consideration our own neighborhood rezonings. Of course, we have a number of them. One of them has already passed. Several of them are underway. So it is an enormous achievement, and an unprecedented achievement for the city. 

Mayor Adams: And so we're using those terms, rezoning, and other terms, and I know folks are saying, okay, what are you talking about? This allows us to build more housing. This is what it means. We have a 1.4 percent vacancy rate of, you know, your sons and daughters coming home from school, from college, should not have to flee to other municipalities. Or grandparents that want to stay and live near the grandkids. 

You could do accessory dwellings now, what we call ADUs. And so this basically, what we said, we had all this potential to build more housing, and we were getting in our own way. So really, hats off to Governor Hochul, who helped us get this over the finish line, or Speaker Adams in the City Council, where her team came together. But when you talk about these housing crises, what's at the root of this that we had to address to deal with building more? 

Garodnick: Yeah, well, part of the issue is that, and this didn't just creep up on us, mayor. Of course, this is not a two-year problem, a five-year problem, or a 10-year problem. This has been many decades in the making. New York City has failed to deliver enough housing sufficiently over a very, very long period of time. And we are now changing course. Over the last 40 years, we created housing at half the rate that we did in the prior 40 years, at a time when we actually lost population. In the last decade, we added 800,000 jobs and only 200,000 homes. So we were on a path here for a long time that needed attention. So that is what brought us to the moment that we're in, and of course, the reason why we know that you charged us with taking action right here in 2024.

Mayor Adams: And, you know, it's not only about the housing, but we're spending $5 billion in infrastructure investment. A billion dollars is coming from the state. Hats off to the governor. She has been just a real, true partner. And, you know, I like to say this over and over again. It is not what we have done, but what we have overcome. And that's what people are sleeping on. We are doing this and moving the city forward with these important tax initiatives, housing initiatives, in spite of having to overcome COVID, in spite of having to overcome 20,000 migrants and asylum seekers, in spite of having to overcome the investigation that I have to deal with. 

You know, I don't believe in hiding the elephant in the room. We're going to show the elephant in the room, and we're going to tell you, in spite of all of these things that we are dealing with, we have reduced crime in this city. We have turned around our economy, more jobs in the city's history. We have the most comprehensive housing reform in the history of the city, while we have moved more people out of shelters into permanent housing in year one and year two in administration. And Dan just talked about the 12 years under Michael Bloomberg, the eight years under Bill de Blasio. But guess what? I've been in office for two years and 11 months.

Garodnick: That's right. Big accomplishment here, and I think that's an important point.

Mayor Adams: Yeah, listen, we're going to go to break, and when I come back, I want to remember to tell you about Bethel Gospel Assembly tomorrow, 6 p.m. We're doing a great concert with Hezekiah Walker, but right now, while we go to break, we're going to come back and hear from some of our callers.

[Commercial Break.]

Byrd: The call's coming in right now in Manhattan, Brooklyn, LeBron, Queens, Long Island, Staten Island, and New Jersey, 212-545-1075. And I'm back with the mayor, Mayor Eric Adams.

Mayor Adams: Thanks so much, Gary, and I'm looking forward. Let's go to the lines and hear from our callers. Yeah, first caller, you're on the air.

Question: Hi, good morning. My name is [inaudible] from Brooklyn.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question I'm good, how are you, sir?

Mayor Adams: Excellent, excellent.

Question: The reason we're calling is because I'm currently a city employee. I've worked for [inaudible] for 20 years, and I knew that the city had implemented a two-part bonus for $5,000 for us to have a raise increase. The issue is, there's been so many changes that have come in with this, the added, it has to go according to our attendance, if we took time off or we went on vacation, we were taken out of the loop.  

And it's like, how can we be giving something when the contract consistently changes? We work hard. We've been working hard. Whoever's been in my job, I know that they've been there. And it's like, consistently being saying we're going to get an increase somehow because of something that's changing. Major relations came in and also changed it. And it's like, how does this continue to keep changing? You see, we work hard on that. Everything around us is getting higher than us. We're not getting higher pay. Our rent goes up. And it's like, how does this keep changing and not get fixed?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, no, so let me do this. Are you over in the Bronx or are you over at Metro Tech?

Question: I'm at the Metro Tech.

Mayor Adams: Okay. I'm going to pop over there to see you this week so I can better understand this issue, because that should not be happening. And you know, there's never been a mayor or a president or a state senator that has spent so much time at Metro Tech. I know what you ladies and gentlemen are doing, particularly overwhelmingly ladies, and overwhelmingly women of color. So what tours do you do? Let me stop over so you can explain this to me more. And this way I can speak with the commissioner of labor relations. What tours do you do?

Question: 6 a.m. to 3:45. That's not our only issue. Our only issue that we have... 

Mayor Adams: Well, hold on. We don't want to spend the whole show trying to go over all these issues, because I know how complex it is over there. I'm going to come over there to see you. And this way you can sit down on your lunch hour, and we can chat, and we can try to lay out and identify these issues. Would that work for you?

Question: Yes. My name is Brenda Lee.

Mayor Adams: Okay, Brenda. Okay. I'll see you this week, okay? Brenda Lee. Okay. Let's go to the next caller. I'll see Brenda Lee this week. I'll be able to update you on this. 

Question: Hello?

Mayor Adams: Yes, sir. You're on the air.

Question: Yeah, good afternoon.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: On your City of Yes, there was a $10 billion funding from the state and the city. What is that $10 billion for? Is that going into housing? Is that going into keeping these apartments that will be built affordable to the people that are living in the neighborhood? 

And the second question I want to ask is about the rent guideline board. It's going to go up on the rents next year from 2 percent to 6 percent. That's a lot of money. Is there any type of adjustments that can be made on your part to keep these tenants in their apartments and the rents going up so high?

Mayor Adams: Okay, I'm going to have Dan talk to you about the $1 billion. Was it $10 billion? It was $1 billion. He'll talk to you about that. 

Question: No, it was $5 billion. It was $5 billion that was put in from the state and the city on the City of Yes that was passed. And I want to know what is the $10 billion for?

Mayor Adams: Oh, no. You keep saying $10 billion. Let me break this down for you. $1 billion came from the state. $4 billion came from the city. That's $5 billion. So $1 billion state, $4 billion from the city. The city councilmembers were very concerned about building the infrastructure as we build new housing. And so they wanted infrastructure put in. Dan will explain that, but I want to quickly go over what you were talking about, the increase in rent. 

Most important thing for me are those low or small property owners. You have an 18-unit house. Everything is going up around you. You have to keep up with that pace. If those small property owners can't raise their rent at a small ratio, they can't hold their houses. They lose their houses. And so when we say no rent increase at all, you look at that mom and pop that are using their primary source of income and assets is their small property owners. We can't lose them. Black and brown people's wealth is in their properties. And if you say no rent increases forever, which some people try to sell that to you, you're going to lose those small property owners. Dan, can you talk about the infrastructure money?

Garodnick: Sure can. So the $5 billion was broken down into three parts. And, mayor, you were correct in saying that $4 billion from the city and $1 billion from the state. So the $5 billion is broken down as $2 billion for infrastructure. Obviously we have lots of neighborhoods that badly need infrastructure today. 
And, of course, when we're doing a big proposal like this, you know, even though it will be modest changes in any one neighborhood, we thought it was also important, as did the council, of course, to make needed investments in infrastructure. $2 billion for housing capital, homeownership opportunities, vouchers, driving affordability. $1 billion for expense funds to allow our city agencies to do their work better and more effectively. So together this is a tremendous opportunity for us to really move the ball here. But that's how you break down the dollars.

Mayor Adams: And it's so important, as the brother was pointing out. Listen, we do everything from SCRIE and DRIE, from disabilities to seniors to be able to freeze their rent. We have housing vouchers of the FHEPs program. We have HRA there to assist people. So we do so much to assist them with their rents, keep them in their homes. We know the rents are high. So we have to build more housing. The lack of inventory drives up the cost of rent. That is why we have to build more housing. And that's what this administration has done. 

Listen, we're out of time. I'm looking forward to seeing you and speaking with you next month on Hear from Eric. And again, hats off to Dan and what you accomplished. And to all, Bethel Gospel Assembly tomorrow, a season of praise and worship where my brother Bishop Hezekiah Walker will be performing. 1483 5th Avenue in Manhattan. 1483 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Great to be on with everyone.

Byrd: Thanks to our mayor, our brother Eric Adams, of course, joining us each and every second Sunday of the month.

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