NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams outlined a “Working People’s Agenda” in his second State of the City address, delivered at the Queens Theatre in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Mayor Adams’ agenda is built on four pillars that are essential to building a city that meets the needs of working New Yorkers and represent the focus of his administration’s work in 2023: jobs, safety, housing, and care.

“Without a strong working class, this city cannot survive. That’s why, today, I’ve outlined how we plan to build a city for working people, one that is more affordable, safer, cleaner, and more livable,” said Mayor Adams. “You need good jobs and pathways to get those jobs, and those jobs need to be able to support a home for you and a family. You need to be safer, and you need care — not just in crisis but throughout your lives. These are the things that our administration is working for every day to sustain the workers who make this city possible and build a better city for all.”

JOBS

New York City has added more than 200,000 new jobs over the last year, with the city’s job growth outpacing both the state and the rest of the nation. But that progress masks a harsh, unequal reality: The unemployment rate for Black New Yorkers is more than three times the rate for white New Yorkers. Mayor Adams’ Working People’s Agenda will ensure that all New Yorkers have access to family-sustaining jobs with good pay and benefits.

To do so, Mayor Adams will launch a new Apprenticeship Accelerator to connect 30,000 New Yorkers to apprenticeships by 2030. The Accelerator will track all forms of apprenticeship from youth to adults in the workforce — also providing technical assistance to support the expansion of apprenticeship programs by employers, training providers, educational institutions, and labor unions. The administration will also launch a citywide campaign to engage potential apprenticeship program participants by highlighting how these programs are providing a pathway to economic opportunity and financial security while transforming the career trajectory for New Yorkers in industries like information technology, marketing, health care, and finance.

In October 2022, Mayor Adams announced the Science Park and Research Campus (SPARC) Kips Bay project with New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a major step towards establishing New York City as a global leader in life sciences, health care, and public health jobs. Building on that work, Mayor Adams will kickstart a new effort to make New York City the global center of sustainable biotechnology — leveraging the city’s growing life sciences and biotechnology industry to meet the city’s carbon neutrality goals and create jobs. The Adams administration will open a first-in-the-nation, 50,000-square-foot innovation space that will provide office space, research laboratories, and events and programming space to support the growth of sustainable biotechnology startups and companies, with an emphasis on creating opportunities for women and people of color and bringing greater diversity to the industry. Additionally, the New York City Economic Development Corporation will release a request for expressions of interest for an operator to open a new hub for materials science innovation focusing on early-stage companies.

Under the Working People’s Agenda, the Adams administration will also:

• Create a new Nursing Education Initiative, in partnership with the City University of New York (CUNY), to support 30,000 current and aspiring nurses over the next five years to enter the nursing workforce, stay in the profession, and climb the career ladder;
• Double the city’s current rate of contracting with minority- and women-owned business enterprises (M/WBEs) and award $25 billion in contracts to M/WBEs over the next four years and $60 billion over the next eight years;
• Launch the new Center for Workplace Accessibility and Inclusion — a dedicated team that will connect 2,500 people with disabilities to jobs, help employers make their workplaces more accessible, and continue the mission of helping New Yorkers living with disabilities thrive in the workplace and every other aspect of city life;
• Expand the CUNY2x Tech program to more campuses — including community colleges — with a focus on institutions serving first-generation college students and communities of color;
• Help 36,000 economically disadvantaged workers and residents of high-poverty communities — including 8,000 construction workers and 28,000 service contract workers — connect to good jobs every year by working with city partners in Albany to finally empower New York City to require companies with city contracts to hire local community members;
• Support the city’s growing legal cannabis industry by launching a new loan fund to help more New Yorkers impacted by the ‘War on Drugs’ start new businesses, while increasing enforcement against unlicensed establishments undermining the legal industry;
• Give every child the support they need to read at or above grade level, building on the success of supplying every elementary school with a phonics-based curriculum rooted in the science of reading by ensuring every school has at least one staff member trained in literacy-based interventions, launching the first district school in city history dedicated solely to supporting students with dyslexia, and making dyslexia screenings available in every public school in New York City;
• Establish a whole-child approach to education that includes social-emotional learning, rolling out a pioneering student mental health program with telehealth care for every public high school student, community-based counseling for those who need additional support, daily breathing and mindfulness exercises, and expanded nutrition education standards and plant-powered school menus; and
• Ensure every child graduates high school with a clear pathway for the future — whether that is a job, job training, or continuing education, provide up to 35,000 middle school students in the Summer Rising program with career exposure and college visits, empowering LGBTQ+ youth through a new Summer Youth Employment Program Pride initiative that places students in truly supportive work opportunities, and expanding FutureReadyNYC to 90 schools and 7,000 students to provide a reimagined high school experience with early college and career-connected learning programs.

SAFETY AND QUALITY OF LIFE

Mayor Adams entered City Hall with a mission and a mandate to reduce gun violence. Having lowered shootings by double digits in its first year in office, and leaving 2022 on an overall downward trend in major crimes, the administration will continue to focus on violent crime while rolling out new and expanded efforts to combat issues from property crime and traffic violence to quality-of-life issues.

The Adams administration will work to get ‘New York’s Most Wanted’ — roughly 1,700 known offenders responsible for a disproportionate amount of the city’s violent crime — off the streets. That means working with Albany on targeted, evidence-based solutions to this crisis and changes to state law to ensure that defendants receive the speedy trial that the Constitution guarantees, that victims and their families are provided justice in a timely manner, and that district attorneys and public defenders have the resources to hire more attorneys and paralegals to remove the bottleneck in the courts while simultaneously investing in technology. The administration will also work to address the overly complex and burdensome discovery process that is consuming innocent people with bureaucracy without getting dangerous people off the streets or providing closure for victims.

Following a promising year for Vision Zero and traffic safety efforts, which included a 25-percent decrease in speeding after Mayor Adams turned on speed cameras 24/7, the Adams administration is focused in 2023 on holding reckless drivers accountable. The administration will work with partners in Albany to advance a package of six bills called Removing Offenders and Aggressive Drivers from Our Streets (ROADS) to increase penalties for serious crashes, running red lights, and impaired driving. The ROADS legislative package would also ensure swift and serious consequences for those who drive with suspended or revoked licenses, including by revoking the privilege of driving on city streets and suspending the registration of vehicles that collect five or more red light camera violations within a 12-month period.

Mayor Adams will also continue to focus on quality of life and provide clean, high-quality public spaces that are essential to the city’s comeback. The mayor will take a major step by launching the country’s largest curbside composting program, with access for every New Yorker by the end of 2024. He will address the longstanding, pervasive issue of unsightly sidewalk construction sheds by replacing them with newly designed structures that keep our streets vibrant and strengthening enforcement against those who leave sheds up for years. And, building on the “Making New York Work for Everyone” action plan released in December, Mayor Adams will make a game-changing $375 million investment to create extraordinary new public spaces and permanent Open Streets in all five boroughs, including:

• The Broadway Vision plan to connect Madison Square to Greeley Square between 21st and 33rd Streets;
• Unlocking two spaces under the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan for public use with a working group to evaluate medium- and long-term concepts for these spaces and others nearby;
• Additional high-quality pedestrian space around the perimeter of Court Square Park and along Thomson Avenue and Court Square West in Long Island City;
• A full reconstruction of Jamaica Avenue from Sutphin Boulevard to Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica;
• Permanent upgrades to the Open Street on Willis Avenue between East 147th Street and Bergen Avenue in the Bronx with a bike lane, pedestrian safety improvements, and public space beautification; and
• Permanent improvements to the Minthorne Street Open Street on Staten Island, with expanded pedestrian space at Tompkinsville Park and a new plaza at Central Avenue.

Under the Working People’s Agenda, the Adams administration will also:

• Supplement the city’s focus on the most violent offenders by redoubling efforts to protect New Yorkers from robberies and burglaries — including increasing the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) crime prevention units’ focus on retail theft and working with business owners and business improvement districts on proactive solutions to prevent shoplifting;
• Expand the community response teams to operate at the borough level and address everything from ghost license plates to noise complaints and property crimes;
• Continue the fight against gun violence by expanding neighborhood safety teams to additional neighborhoods, investing in more violence-prevention programs in neighborhoods with the highest concentration of violent crime, and launching a new Neighborhood Safety Alliance — a partnership between local precincts, service providers, and community leaders in many of these same neighborhoods;
• Increase the number of NYPD tow trucks to address the growing number of abandoned or illegally parked cars blocking traffic and visibility, help keep delivery zones and bus and bike lanes clear, and crack down on illegal placards and placard abuse;
• Bring CompStat meetings to the community level and give New Yorkers direct access to a version of these meetings for the first time, allowing them to interact directly with local and citywide NYPD leaders;
• Build on efforts to electrify the city vehicle fleet by requiring the 100,000-plus high-volume for-hire vehicles to do the same — requiring them, with the support of Uber and Lyft, to be zero-emissions by 2030, with no new costs for individual drivers;
• Appoint a new director of the public realm to coordinate across city government, community organizations, and the private sector to ensure we invest in public spaces citywide;
• Work with the City Council to build on the massive success of the pandemic-era temporary Open Restaurants program and deliver a permanent program that actually works for businesses and residents in all five boroughs;
• Unveil an updated PlaNYC in April with even more of our sustainability agenda, including new data on how our food choices impact the environment; and
• Launch a new climate budgeting process — making New York City the first big city in the nation to adopt the approach of aligning financial resources with our sustainability and resiliency goals.

HOUSING

New York must remain a place where working people can get a foothold and afford an apartment while simultaneously raising a family in a community. But New York City cannot address its housing shortage and solve its affordable housing crisis simply by continuing the status quo. The city must build more housing, and that’s why Mayor Adams has committed to making New York a “City of Yes.”

Building on the mayor’s “Get Stuff Built” plan and his moonshot goal to meet the need for 500,000 new homes across the city, the Adams administration will work with New York City Councilmembers Erik Bottcher, Keith Powers, and Kamillah Hanks to kick off two major community planning processes. In the coming weeks, community engagement will begin with the goals of creating more housing, including rent-restricted housing — in Midtown Manhattan where current zoning only allows for manufacturing and office space, as well as on the North Shore of Staten Island where the administration will pursue expanded waterfront access and flood resiliency, job creation, and mixed-use development.

Under the Working People’s Agenda, the Adams administration will also:

• Help New Yorkers stay in their homes by investing $22 million in tenant protection programs to provide more staff dedicated to investigating and enforcing against bad landlords, creating stronger partnerships with community groups and legal services providers to protect tenants from being pushed out of rent-regulated apartments and cracking down on landlords who discriminate against tenants based on their source of income;
• Expand the Big Apple Connect program to reach even more New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments with free broadband and TV for tens of thousands of New Yorkers;
• Provide free broadband access to households with Section 8 vouchers with a new pilot program in the Bronx and Northern Manhattan;
• Continue putting money directly in New Yorkers’ pockets — including $350 million through the expanded Earned Income Tax credit — with an historic expansion of the city’s free tax preparation program in coordination with schools, houses of worship, NYCHA, and community partners to process an additional 26,000 returns next year and save New Yorkers an additional $14.3 million in filing fees and refunds;
• Broaden access to other public benefits like unemployment insurance, Medicaid, or SNAP by cutting unnecessary red tape and expanding benefit screenings so New Yorkers get every dollar they deserve; and
• Pursue legislation allowing New Yorkers to keep public benefits for up to six months after they accept a new job, easing the transition to financial independence.

CARE

Over the past year, New York City’s ability to care was put to the test by an asylum seeker crisis. New Yorkers rose to the occasion, as they always do, and the Adams administration has provided shelter, food, health care, education, legal support, and a host of other services to the more than 42,000 asylum seekers that have arrived in New York City since last spring. The city will continue to do its part, but everyone else must do their part as well — New York City cannot continue to shoulder this cost on its own. The administration will continue to provide care for the newest New Yorkers, while also deepening its commitment to every resident of the five boroughs and fundamentally changing the way it provides care for its residents.

Mayor Adams will undertake an historic effort to provide health care for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness. The administration will work with its federal partners to allow New Yorkers who have spent more than seven days in the New York City Department of Homeless Services’ (DHS) shelter system to become eligible for free, comprehensive health care services through a specialized network of dedicated providers and care management. This would make New York the first city in the country to provide this level of care and support to its residents. Connecting New Yorkers experiencing homelessness to ongoing primary care, behavioral health care, and social services is more cost-efficient than the cycle of hospitalizations and emergency room visits that so many people experience, more effective at supporting the health of a largely vulnerable population, and an important measure to get more New Yorkers into high-quality, permanent housing and ease overcrowding in DHS shelters.

The Adams administration is also developing a three-part mental health plan focused on child and family mental health and an upstream approach to the opioid crisis, including investing more than $150 million in opioid settlement funds into proven harm reduction and treatment programs. As part of the plan, the administration will open new Clubhouses for New Yorkers with severe mental illness. Clubhouses provide peer support and access to services, employment, and educational opportunities — offering an alternative to the instability and danger of the streets, hospitals, jails, or subways, while reducing hospitalization and contact with the criminal legal system and improving health and wellness.

Under the Working People’s Agenda, the Adams administration will also:

• Continue to address women’s health by hosting an all-hands-on-deck summit in March and putting forward initiatives that will help improve Black maternal mortality while also improving the birthing experience for all New Yorkers, in addition to unveiling a comprehensive women’s agenda in the coming months; and
• Fight the crises of obesity and chronic disease by investing in access to healthier food for lower-income New Yorkers, relaunching the Groceries 2 Go program, and expanding Health Bucks.

Source: The Official Website of the City of New York