Mayor Eric Adams talking at Metropolis Corridor on June 10, 2025.
Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
After I got here into workplace, reasonably priced housing was on the prime of my agenda, and I didn’t want any research or polls to inform me why. New Yorkers have been telling me day by day, each likelihood they obtained. I heard it on the retailer, on the road, and within the subway; I heard it from younger adults and seniors; I heard it from the Bronx to Staten Island.
For me, this work is private. Rising up on the sting of homelessness, I do know what it looks like to fret about whether or not or not you should have a roof over your head at evening. That’s a sense that too many New Yorkers nonetheless really feel, and that’s as a result of too many administrations have kicked the can down on the street when it got here to coping with our housing disaster. After I got here into workplace, I used to be clear that I used to be not going to let our administration proceed to make excuses or tinker across the edges.
We introduced a complete new strategy to housing, utilizing each software at each stage of presidency to create new properties throughout all the metropolis. Final week, throughout “Housing Week,” we showcased our success and laid out bold initiatives to double down on our efforts to create the housing New Yorkers want.
Due to historic investments and a relentless focus throughout our total metropolis authorities, our administration has shattered reasonably priced housing information 12 months after 12 months. Now, we’re including one other “year” to that listing: Fiscal Yr 2025. This previous fiscal 12 months, we produced probably the most reasonably priced rental items in metropolis historical past and probably the most properties for previously homeless New Yorkers, too. We positioned a report variety of homeless New Yorkers into reasonably priced properties and related a historic variety of individuals to reasonably priced housing by means of our metropolis’s housing lottery.
And — for the primary time — we revealed that whenever you put collectively all of housing initiatives, our administration has created, preserved, or deliberate over 426,000 properties for New Yorkers. This contains properties we’ve already constructed and houses we are going to construct quickly due to historic initiatives like “City of Yes,” the primary citywide rezoning in 60 years, that may change our metropolis’s housing guidelines and construct just a little extra housing all over the place.
While you put collectively all of the information, the rezonings, and the actual progress we’ve made, there may be merely no different solution to say it: That is probably the most pro-housing administration in New York Metropolis historical past!
However we all know there may be all the time extra to do. That’s why I issued a historic government order final 12 months requiring each company to establish city-owned websites that may change into much-needed housing, and final week, we introduced our imaginative and prescient to show a type of websites, an deserted airport in Queens, into 3,000 new properties. From outdated workplace buildings to sanitation garages, we’re turning the outdated properties of the previous into the properties of the long run.
We’re creating extra properties and we’re serving to join extra individuals to these properties. To try this, final week, we additionally introduced that we are going to double the proportion of reasonably priced properties in our housing lottery with a desire for veterans and metropolis employees. Public servants sacrifice for our metropolis day by day, and this new coverage will guarantee they will proceed to reside within the metropolis that they love. Moreover, final week, we formally modified our metropolis’s senior reasonably priced housing program to construct extra family-sized items. Plenty of older New Yorkers wish to reside with their grownup youngsters or live-in aids, and with this new coverage, we are going to assist them do it. Regardless of how outdated you might be or what job you have got, our administration needs each New Yorker to discover a place they name house.
“Housing Week” represented extra than simply the information we’ve damaged or the progress we’re making day by day; it represented our dedication to each New Yorker. Our administration has centered relentlessly on creating extra properties, connecting extra individuals to properties, and serving to maintain extra individuals within the properties they have already got — it’s what New Yorkers want, and it’s what they deserve. That focus has delivered outcomes three years in a row, and we’re not stopping there. We all know {that a} home is greater than only a roof with 4 partitions — it’s the key to unlocking the American Dream, and it’s the key to protecting it alive.
