'Alarming to Not Have a Goal': City Council Pushes Adams Administration on Affordable Housing for Seniors
A push for senior affordable housing (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
Older New Yorkers, aged 65 and above, are the fastest growing age group in the city, currently numbering at about 1.24 million and expected to grow to as many as 1.4 million residents by 2040. They are also a population that experiences significant housing insecurity and other housing challenges, with more than half considered rent-burdened. As the city continues to grapple with a deepening affordable housing crisis, City Council members on Monday sought answers from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration about efforts to support and prioritize older individuals in the city’s housing plan.
At a joint hearing of the Council’s Committee on Aging and Committee on Housing and Buildings, Council members pressed administration officials on affordable housing production and availability for seniors, support against evictions and rent increases, efforts to make housing more accessible, particularly for seniors with disabilities, and more.
“As we continue to govern with the resources of our great city, we must do more, better, faster, not less, slower or in more cumbersome ways,” said Council Member Pierina Sanchez, a Bronx Democrat who chairs the housing committee. “One area in which this is resoundingly clear…is with respect to housing our older adult population, New Yorkers who at times are most vulnerable and face some of the greatest obstacles to accessing even the resources that presently exist.”
Mayor Adams has committed to a major course correction on housing with his plan, “Housing Our Neighbors,” which seeks to align previously separate efforts on homelessness, public housing, and overall affordable housing production under one umbrella. It includes several planks focused on senior housing, and an overarching theme of trying to make government work better to make access to housing easier and more efficient. But when he released the plan, he refused to set a broad target for housing creation, insisting that he be judged on the vague metric of “as many people as possible to get into housing” during his tenure.
The mayor faces some headwinds as the recently released Mayor’s Management Report, which covers the 2022 fiscal year that ended June 30, showed affordable housing creation dip 45% from the previous year. “We are slowing production. We're going in the wrong direction,” Sanchez said at the hearing. “Our seniors need homes that are safe and affordable in order to live healthy lives and safely.”
The latest MMR did set goals of 18,000 affordable housing starts in the 2023 fiscal year, down from 25,000 in the previous year, and 15,000 units completed, up from 13,350 in the previous fiscal year. It did not, however, set any targets for building senior housing. In fact, in the 2022 fiscal year, HPD created and preserved 1,459 units reserved for low-income seniors, about 56% fewer than in the previous fiscal year. That drop was attributed to a one-time increase of nearly 1,000 units of senior housing in the 2021 fiscal year from the conclusion of the Privately Financed Affordable Senior Housing (PFASH) program.
The crisis is even greater for older New Yorkers of color, who are more likely to be housing insecure than older white New Yorkers. “New York City has a long history of residential segregation, and disinvestment in neighborhoods of color, which has left many older New Yorkers of color without the supports needed to age healthily including affordable housing, social support, safety, accessible public transportation and health care,” said Council Member Crystal Hudson, a Brooklyn Democrat who chairs the aging committee, in her opening remarks. “With its high density, urban population, ethnic and racial diversity, and increasing longevity, the city must account for the unique needs of the older adult population.”
The mayor’s housing plan does include several measures to help seniors access affordable housing and remain in their homes, which officials outlined at the hearing. But they struggled to provide specific targets for creating affordable housing dedicated to seniors or to accurately account for the pressures of housing insecurity that seniors face.
The city’s programs for seniors are spearheaded by the Department for the Aging (DFTA), which provides direct social support while also working with other agencies and offices to provide other services such as protection against against eviction and discrimination. The city has also created a Cabinet for Older New Yorkers, which met for the first time on September 21.
“This first of its kind multi-agency collaborative was created to support services, projects, and policies benefiting older adults across New York City with a primary objective to create an age-inclusive New York City,” said Michael Ognibene, first deputy commissioner and COO at DFTA. He promised that when the cabinet produces its report by June of next year, it will ultimately include housing support for seniors.
“Supporting older adults is a top priority for the administration,” said Lucy Joffe, assistant commissioner for housing policy at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), at the hearing.
Joffe pointed to several targeted housing programs for seniors such as the Housing Ambassador program to help older adults navigate the city’s affordable housing lottery, the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) program to freeze rents for eligible seniors living in rent-regulated housing, the Aging in Place initiative to provide free home modifications to seniors for their health and safety, among others. As part of the housing plan, the administration is working to expand eligibility for those programs, while also accelerating the production of more supportive housing that can help seniors transitioning out of homelessness and those with ongoing medical and social services needs.
Sanchez, however, pressed her concerns about the slowdown in affordable housing production, which Joffe attempted to rationalize, echoing the mayor’s sentiments from when he released his housing plan. “We are committing to building and preserving as much affordable housing as we can,” Joffe said, “but we're in the midst of a refocusing on the people that we are serving, reducing administrative burdens to speed New Yorkers’ access to our programs and a real focus on how we can best serve them over unit counting.”
When asked about how annual production of senior housing compares with the overall need in the city, Joffe did not offer a direct response. “We don't have individual program specific targets,” she said. “But we will be reporting out through the MMR on our production, including on our senior housing production, including on all of the various ways that we're going to serve older New Yorkers.”
“I must say it's a little alarming to not have a goal when 1 million New Yorkers are older adults and only growing,” Sanchez said. “We have to be intentional about how we are responding to the crisis for older adults in New York City.”
The officials did identify challenges in the city building more affordable housing specifically for seniors. Between 2020-2023, HPD’s capital commitment plan allocates $508.3 million to build 1,000 units of senior affordable housing each year, or roughly $508,000 per unit. But those costs are rising because of inflation, supply chain disruptions and interest rates increases. The costs also vary from project to project depending on the different programs under which HPD allocates the money, either through low-interest loans or direct subsidies to developers.
Hudson sought to identify the number of seniors displaced by gentrification pressures in the city over the last five years, but the administration had no clear answer. “Unfortunately, tracking this on an individual level would be incredibly difficult,” said Joffe, noting that the city could only track formal notices of eviction but not cases where a senior may be unable or refuse to resign a lease because of rent increases. She did say, however, that the city is working to improve the annual housing survey to better understand patterns of displacement and improve its services.
The hearing also delved into several pieces of proposed legislation and a resolution to support the housing needs of seniors, particularly those with disabilities. The bills — introduced by Council Members Hudson, Diana Ayala, and Justin Brannan, and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams — would require reporting on affordable housing set-asides for tenants with disabilities; require that tenants with disabilities facing eviction be given information on legal services; require reporting on patterns of discrimination against such tenants; require a percentage of housing units in developments that receive city financial assistance to be universal design units and therefore accessible; and more.
The resolution, introduced by Council Member Tiffany Cabán, urges the State Legislature to approve a bill that would automatically enroll eligible seniors in the existing SCRIE program rather than requiring them to sign up. “We owe it to our older neighbors who live with constrained incomes to protect them from rent hikes imposed by profit thirsty landlords,” she said at the hearing.
***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
City Council Redistricting Drama Underscores Dropped Commission Ethics Policy
The NYC Districting Commission at a hearing (photo: @DistrictingNYC)
[Update: On October 6, the Districting Commission passed, by near-unanimous vote, a new City Council map very similar to the one it previously voted down, as discussed in the story below. That map now goes to the City Council for review.]
New York City's redistricting process was thrown into disarray last month after the commission responsible for drawing new City Council district lines voted down its own draft map. The upset came after an aide to Mayor Eric Adams individually lobbied his appointees on the commission to vote no, according to Politico reporting, activity the mayor has denied knowing about.
There are few formal barriers in place to prevent conflicts of interest between the 15 redistricting commissioners and the elected officials who appointed them. The commissioners and their organizations have received millions of dollars from the Mayor and City Council in campaign spending and discretionary funding. Some of them have run for elected office in the districts whose boundaries they are reshaping. Others have business with the city.
The commission's chair, Dennis Walcott, was appointed by Mayor Adams, and while he is a well-respected civic leader and former deputy mayor, he is also CEO of the Queens Public Library, which depends on many millions of dollars in annual city funding. Other commissioners include Joshua Schneps, the local media magnate whose publications received tens of thousands dollars in political advertising last election cycle, and Michael Schnall, whose nonprofit rakes in significant discretionary funding from the City Council each year.
The New York City Districting Commission is tasked with redrawing the city's 51 City Council districts every ten years to account for changes in the population found in the U.S. Census. Its 15 members were appointed by Mayor Adams (7), City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (5), and Republican City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (3).
The body must draw lines that adhere to federal, state, and city standards, including the Voting Rights Act and the principle of one-person-one-vote. City law prevents city employees, lobbyists, and political party officials from serving on the commission. But there is nothing in the law to limit lobbying of the commissioners and no limits on ex parte communication with appointing authorities, according to experts.
At the commission's first meeting in March, Walcott said the body would come up with an ethics policy that dealt with potential conflicts of interest.
"I would like to also raise the important topic of the code of ethics, and what I would like to suggest to the body is that once we have our staff in place that we circulate a proposed code of ethics for us to follow, and that way we can have to review it and then adopt it or make any modifications we feel are appropriate," he said on March 29 at City Hall.
"We want to be very clear as far as protecting ourselves and the process as we move forward," Walcott said.
The policy never materialized. Eddie Borges, a spokesperson for the commission, told Gotham Gazette the effort had been scrapped. Instead, the commissioners received a routine presentation from the city's Conflicts of Interest Board at its next meeting.
"The commission explored the feasibility of enforcing an ethics code and determined, with guidance from COIB, that Chapter 68 covers the commission just as it does every other agency," Borges told Gotham Gazette in an email. "In fact, you will find it hard difficult to find another agency that has its own code of ethics separate from Chapter 68."
"Training from the Conflicts of Interest Board, as important as it is, is not a substitute for a code of ethics or a comprehensive conflict of interest policy aimed at reducing outside influence in a process that’s vulnerable to politicization," wrote Ben Weinberg, policy director at the good-government group Citizens Union, in a statement to Gotham Gazette.
Redistricting commissions in California and Michigan have conflicts of interest policies, which in some cases bar certain people from participating as commissioners. In a letter to the commission, shortly after Walcott announced the planned ethics policy, Citizens Union recommended the commissioners disclose any conflicts, such as lobbying current Council members or working on their campaigns, and recuse themselves in those cases. It also recommended commissioners be required to disclose when they discuss maps with people outside the body and its staff and consultants. None of that happened.
"We note that the last scandal concerning a political intervention in the Council redistricting process – a map was drawn to help then Assembly Member Vito Lopez mount a run for City Council – occurred following a private meeting between a Council Member and the Commission’s executive director," Citizens Union wrote.
Politico reported that Mayor Adams’ deputy chief of staff, Menashe Shapiro, had personally lobbied the mayor’s appointees to the commission to vote against the draft map, efforts apparently designed to favor rightward movement in the future City Council and political payback.
The mapping process drew widespread criticism and some support when preliminary maps released in July underpopulated Staten Island while carving up communities in south Brooklyn (where some of the mayor's political foes currently hold office), Manhattan, and Queens. The new maps that came up for a vote last month, altered based on significant public feedback, had largely undone those decisions, including by stretching part of Staten Island into Brooklyn — a nonstarter for Borelli of Staten Island, who appears to be closely allied with the Democratic mayor.
But in an unexpected twist, the maps were defeated when the commission brought them to a vote. To the surprise of Chair Walcott and many others watching, it was voted down by four appointees from the mayor, all three of Borelli's appointees, and one appointee of the Speaker, the commission’s lone Staten-Islander.
Several of the commissioners voting down the maps cited issues with the map-drawing process and concerns about diluting the vote of Latino voters, but offered few specifics. Others, including Schnall, expressed displeasure about including a small part of Brooklyn in one Staten Island district.
The commission is now holding meetings in public to draw maps ahead of another expected vote on October 7, according to Borges. If approved, the maps will go to the City Council for review and feedback, after which they may be approved and certified or sent back to the commission for final revisions and ratification.
“The Commission heard public testimony from different communities across the city who were concerned about the dilution of their voting power and the risk of diminished representation in city government,” said Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for the mayor. “We applaud the independent redistricting commission for their willingness to continue their great work and address these concerns now, while the public process continues to move forward.”
At a press conference, Adams denied knowing about any lobbying efforts. "If the deputy did, I'm not aware of that," he told reporters last week about Politico’s reporting on Shapiro’s influence campaign. "We're going to continue to advocate to have fair maps and I'm not aware of anything other than us complying fully with the rules of mapping. Redistricting is important, and so we want to make sure that we have fair maps and I trust my appointees."
Speaker Adams declined to comment on the mayor's involvement during a recent interview. "I stayed away," she said of her own involvement with the commission and her appointees to it. "Legally and morally, I have to stay away."
But the speaker, along with a number of other current Council members, including Finance Committee Chair Justin Brannan and others with influence over city funding, have not been shy about publicly criticizing the preliminary maps. Brannan and many other Council members released statements, made social media posts, and testified publicly before the commission, mostly arguing against changes the commission had made to existing lines, and all part of the feedback the commission received between the preliminary map and draft map that was voted down.
None of the mayoral appointees who voted no on the latest map responded to requests for comment for this article.
Mayoral Appointees
Dennis Walcott was appointed by Mayor Adams and selected by the commission to serve as chair. He is the CEO of the Queens Public Library, which received three-quarters of its $165 million budget from the city last fiscal year. The library system has 66 locations across Queens. Walcott voted in favor of the failed draft map in September.
In a recent interview on WNYC, he declined to say whether he was contacted by a representative of the mayor. "The conversations I've had with a variety of people I'll just keep to myself. I think my vote speaks for itself," he told host Brigid Bergin.
Borges, the commission spokesperson, said Walcott recused himself from directly lobbying City Hall and the Council for library funds while serving on the commission.
Joshua Schneps is a mayoral appointee to the redistricting commission and the head of local news giant Schneps Media, which has dozens of publications in New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Philadelphia. The publications received hundreds of thousands of dollars from City Council candidates for political ads in 2021, including $74,000 from current members, according to a Gotham Gazette analysis of campaign finance records.
Schneps, who voted down the draft map, also has close ties to Mayor Adams, having supported previous campaigns for borough president and, in 2019, publishing the then-Borough President's self-promotional newspaper, "One Brooklyn," distributed with tax dollars and generating ad revenue for Schneps. Adams appointed Vicki Schneps, Joshua’s mother and co-owner of the media empire, to his mayoral transition committee last year. In 2021, Adams' mayoral campaign bought $69,800 in advertising in Schneps publications, including a single $45,000 payment in December 2021, after he had won the general election.
Lisa Sorin is the president of the New Bronx Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), an association of close to 100 businesses, some of which have city contracts. She was appointed to the commission by Mayor Adams and voted against the draft map. Sorin serves on the mayor's COVID-19 Recovery Roundtable and Health Equity Taskforce and with NBCC is part of a $1.5 million partnership to launch the city's Small Business Resource Network. The Chamber of Commerce works closely with the city's Department of Small Business Services and other city agencies.
Maria Mateo, Esq., is a Queens-based immigration and family lawyer from the Dominican Republic. According to her website, Mateo has received a number of awards and recognition for her legal work in immigrant communities, including from former City Council Members Eric Ulrich and Fernando Cabrera, both of whom have since joined the Eric Adams administration, and Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, a Democrat representing northern Manhattan and a portion of the Bronx. Mateo voted against the draft map, citing the splitting of Dominican communities in Manhattan's districts 2 and 7.
Kai-Ki Wong recently served as assistant chief plan examiner at the New York City Department of Buildings after holding other roles at the agency over the past nearly four decades, according to a Linkedin profile with his name. He was appointed by the mayor and voted no on the map.
Monsignor Kevin Sullivan is a mayoral appointee and the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, a network of human services agencies that hold numerous city and state contracts. Catholic Charities recently received city funding for Hurricane Ida relief efforts and immigration services. At a recent City Council oversight hearing, Sullivan testified that Catholic Charities had served 1,100 new immigrants in the recent wave of arrivals that Adams has blamed for straining the city's social safety net. He voted to advance the draft map to the City Council.
Marilyn Go is a former federal magistrate judge for the Eastern District of New York, having served from 1993 to her retirement in 2019. She was appointed by the mayor and voted in favor of the draft map.
Speaker Appointees
Michael Schnall is a Staten Islander and the only appointee of Speaker Adrienne Adams to vote against the draft map. That updated map included many of the changes the speaker and other Council members pushed for in the preliminary map released earlier this year. As part of making those changes, it extended a Staten Island district into part of Brooklyn, a boundary opposed by Republican appointees on the commission and Schnall.
Schnall is a government relations consultant at Asphalt Green, which has secured $182,500 in City Council discretionary expense funds over the current and last fiscal years. Until the end of 2020 he was also the vice president of government relations for New York Road Runners, which receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in discretionary expense funding each year. In 2021, Schnall himself unsuccessfully sought a Council seat in District 49 on the north shore of Staten Island.
"Once appointed and sworn into office, I immediately recused myself from any meetings or interactions with The Council and individual Council Members since that appointment," Schnall told Gotham Gazette in an email after this article was published. "I've even recused myself from any mapping discussions involving Manhattan due to the location of Asphalt Green's two pools and sports fields in the borough."
The rest of the speaker's appointees voted in favor of the recent draft map.
Maf Misbah Uddin is a Bronx resident and treasurer of District Council 37, the largest public sector union in the city, and president of AFSCME Local 1407. Uddin is not on the city payroll but his union represents thousands of municipal employees and makes endorsements in City Council and mayoral races. Uddin voted in favor of the draft map.
Yovan Samuel Collado, the director of community relations for the Carpenter Contractor Alliance of Metropolitan New York, was appointed by the speaker and approved the draft map. According to the New York Post, Collado is married to Ariana Collado, the executive director of the Bronx Democratic Party, which is involved in virtually all political machinations in the Bronx and often beyond.
Gregory W. Kirschenbaum is a lawyer at the Arce Law Group, P.C. Phillips & Associates, PLLC. Kirschenbaum's appointment raised eyebrows earlier this year because of his ties to second-term Council Member Keith Powers as treasurer of his campaign. Powers, a Manhattan Democrat, is the chair of the Council Rules Committee. Kirschenbaum voted yes on the draft map.
Kristen A. Johnson is a civil rights attorney and a pro bono counsel at the international law firm Cooley LLP. Johnson voted in favor of the draft map.
Minority Leader Appointees
Marc Wurzel is the general counsel and assistant secretary of Grand Central Partnership, which manages Manhattan’s Grand Central Business Improvement District. Like Borelli's other two appointees, he voted against the draft map in September. Wurzel has been on two previous districting commissions.
Kevin John Hanratty is bank compliance consultant at BlackWatch Argus Consulting LLC and a perennial Republican candidate for Civil Court judge in Queens.
Dr. Darrin K. Porcher is a former NYPD officer and currently an adjunct professor at Pace University School of Criminal Justice and Monroe College School of Criminal Justice.
***
by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
Samar Khurshid contributed to this story.
This article has been updated with additional comments from districting commissioners and spokespeople.
Correction: This article was updated to reflect that Schnall is a former vice president of New York Road Runners and no longer works there.
Note: Gotham Gazette is an independent publication of Citizens Union Foundation, sister organization of Citizens Union.Council Speaker Outlines Priorities, Weighs In On Key Issues Facing the City
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (photo: Gerardo Romo/NYC Council Media Unit)
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said she wants more transparency at the Department of Education, more discretion for judges in setting bail, and more federal intervention in the city's current shelter crisis – and weighed in on a host of other issues during a public appearance on Wednesday.
Speaking at a breakfast hosted by good-government group Citizens Union, the speaker discussed some of the most pressing issues of the day along with the nuts and bolts of policy. She drew key distinctions with Mayor Eric Adams (no relation), her fellow Democrat, and outlined some of her top overall priorities in her powerful position.
The event, sponsored by the public relations firm Cozen O'Connor, was part of Citizens Union's Civic Conversation series and hosted by board member and CNN political analyst John Avlon.
Adams, who represents a southeast Queens district, is finishing her ninth month as speaker presiding over a mostly new, first-time female-majority City Council. Adams herself is the first Black woman to lead the Council. She has developed a reputation as a collaborative speaker and has notched some early legislative achievements including passing bills on fire safety in the wake of the Bronx Twin Parks fire, reproductive rights, and maternal health. She also negotiated her first city budget as speaker, a record-high $101 billion spending plan, with Mayor Adams, and while the two are long-time allies their early relationship in their new top posts has been rocky.
On Wednesday, Adams said her top two priorities as speaker are housing and education equity.
"Our legacy should be the legacy, quite frankly, that a lot of my colleagues ran on and that was building housing," she said, saying the focus needed to be on mixed production of affordable, very-affordable, and market-rate units. "We cannot be the Council that does not build housing for the city of New York when we need it so desperately."
On education, the speaker said she wants to increase capacity in the city's gifted and talented programs, which lines her up with the mayor who has reversed the late de Blasio-era decision to replace G&T with universal school enrichment programming. Speaker Adams has also been pushing the Department of Education to restore funding to schools after passing the budget earlier this year, which she said was cut despite the administration's guarantees to the Council.
"DOE has been a very, very tough nut to crack," she said Wednesday. "A lot of those issues happen because of the lack of transparency within the DOE."
She said the Council would be seeking more units of appropriation on education spending within the DOE’s roughly $38 billion budget. "There are going to have to be explanations around fair student funding formula, around equity towards individual schools," she said.
The speaker said homelessness in the city has gotten worse, a problem exacerbated by the pandemic and economic climate. The stream of refugees from Central and South America in recent months, some of whom have been sent on buses from southern states, has further hampered a shelter system already under strain.
"We've seen an influx of individuals coming into our shelter system into a system that really was taxed, burdened, prior to the pandemic," Adams said, calling the situation "dire."
The city is erecting tents in a parking lot in the Orchard Beach section of the Bronx to serve as emergency shelter for 1,000 single, newly-arrived adults. Mayor Adams has suggested the facility may fall outside the city's legal right to shelter, which guarantees shelter access and standards for all, and would provide temporary, voluntary stays.
The speaker didn't say whether she thought the plan, which involves barracks-style congregate settings with few amenities, met the city's shelter requirements.
"The right to shelter is the law in New York, so we can just start there. We don't have a choice. We've got to embrace anyone and everyone coming to our city," she said.
Earlier this year, the City Council held an oversight hearing with the Department of Social Services, which runs the shelter system, focused on shelter intake issues after the administration admitted to violating the right to shelter for over 60 individuals and families. On Friday, the Council is holding another oversight hearing, this time on resources for asylum-seekers.
"We're wondering, why Orchard Beach? We're wondering what else besides Orchard Beach, because we're going to need more than just Orchard Beach to accommodate the influx of people seeking asylum here in New York City," Adams said.
The solution, she said, is for the city to continue building shelter capacity and for the federal government to dissuade conservative governors from sending individuals to New York, a situation enabled by a political environment she blamed on former President Donald Trump.
"We need for President Joseph Biden to kind of take the reins and right this thing," Adams said.
The speaker also weighed in on the city’s legislative redistricting process, which hit a wall last week when the commission responsible for redrawing New York's 51 City Council districts voted down its own draft map. The new lines have the potential to recast the political landscape but must first be submitted to the City Council for feedback (the Council may accept the map or send it back to the commission with notes to come up with final lines).
The no vote, which took place after an aide to the mayor reportedly lobbied members of the commission to reject the proposal, meant the body had to postpone submitting the draft to the City Council.
"Our work now is pushed off," Speaker Adams said, "but they tell us that they're going to be coming back to us next week." A spokesperson for the New York City Districting Commission said the body expected to hold another vote on October 7.
"The timeline really isn't that terrible to deal with," Adams added. "But these are uncharted waters, and you just can't make this stuff up."
The speaker would not comment on the reporting by Politico that the mayoral administration attempted to sway commissioners' votes, including those by Mayor Adams’ own appointees. "I stayed away," she said. "Legally and morally, I have to stay away." The mayor appoints seven members of the 15-person commission, the speaker appoints five, and the City Council minority leader three.
With public safety grabbing headlines for much of the pandemic, the speaker weighed in on the impact of recent state bail reforms on rising crime.
"While it plays a role it's been scapegoated, as well, as being the end-all be-all issue and problem," she said of state bail reforms.
In 2019, state lawmakers removed misdemeanors and most non-violent felonies from the list of bail-eligible offenses. The changes, intended to reduce race and class disparities in pre-trial detention, have been the subject of debate and modified a number of times since they were first enacted.
Asked whether she felt recent changes to the state bail law have contributed to rising crime she demurred. "I guess my answer is a little bit of yes, a little bit of no," she said, taking a position that is supported by the available data, which shows a very limited change in rearrests for those released pre-trial.
Adams said she believes judges should be given more discretion to set bail, joining similar calls from the mayor and governor. "I think that our judges have the mind to deal with this issue," she said. "This is what those robes are for in those chambers. And I think that we need to afford them the full capacity to do what it is that they are supposed to do."
Avlon and members of the audience pushed the speaker on election and voting reform, perennial issues in a city with chronically low voter turnout and dysfunctional election administration.
Adams told the audience she was supportive of the concept of an open primary system, in which party-unaffiliated voters would have a voice in selecting nominees to the general election. She also said she would "definitely" support moving New York's municipal elections to even-numbered years, in line with state and federal elections, to help boost turnout.
Adams' response to questions about reforming the New York City Board of Elections – the maligned agency responsible for numerous, in some cases major, administrative blunders in recent years – was more tepid. "Yes, there is room for improvement. Yes, it certainly is something for us to consider to take a look at," she said.
Asked whether she supports making the city's Fair Fares program, which provides discounted MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers, open to higher income levels, Adams said the city must first focus on public education to ensure the currently eligible population participates.
Adams also talked about quality-of-life issues like the ubiquity of scaffolding (she supports time limits), speeding e-bikes (she wants more enforcement), and outdoor dining (she's OK with sidewalk eateries but wants curbside sheds removed).
"Outdoor dining is a beautiful thing for the city of New York, I think that the characteristics of New York have to be maintained," Adams said. "So we would have to rein in those types of structures that we allowed during the pandemic, which were meant to be temporary."
Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, subsequently criticized the comments in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon.
“Streeteries were initially intended as a temporary solution to save restaurants and jobs during the worst of the pandemic, but due to its popularity, the city is now going through the legislative process to develop a standardized roadway dining program to complement the successful sidewalk cafés that the city’s had for over 45 years," he said. "Outdoor dining with streeteries has incredible supporters including Mayor Adams and many City Council members who have planned to enact an enhanced outdoor dining system that will be a successful and an essential feature of the city’s streetscape for many years to come.”
The city is expected to soon issue new regulations around the outdoor dining program.
Speaker Adams rejected the mayor's recent Program to Eliminate the Gap (PEG) plan, which called for across the board cuts to city agency budgets this fiscal year and beyond. That funding, she cautioned, may be crucial to the city's economic and social recovery.
"I'm hoping for them to retract that plan," she said. "I understand having to tighten our belt, having to be frugal. My hope is that the administration has a plan behind the payment plan."
"What we can't do is jeopardize coming out of this thing stronger by reducing headcount in places where we need headcount the most," she said of city agencies, many of which have struggled to fill vacancies amid questions about the mayor’s workforce policies and about the ability of the city to deliver needed services.
***
by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
|
Tweet |
