NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams today outlined a bold vision to make New York City the best place to raise a family in his fourth State of the City address, delivered at The Apollo Theater in Harlem, Manhattan. After driving crime down, passing historic housing legislation, and helping New Yorkers save billions of dollars through tax relief, child care, free internet, and more in 2024, Mayor Adams used today’s address to unveil new initiatives that will create a safer, more affordable city for working-class people, especially those raising a family, all across the five boroughs.
“In the past year alone, our administration passed historic housing legislation, shattered the record for the most jobs in city history, drove major crimes down, and did so much more to build a family-friendly city. As a result of all these efforts, the state of our city is strong,” said Mayor Adams. “But there is no denying that many New Yorkers — especially our families — are still anxious about the future. We have to make sure that the greatest city in the world is also the greatest place to raise a family. From keeping young people safe to tackling street homelessness, from building more family-friendly neighborhoods to saving New Yorkers millions of dollars, the initiatives we laid out today will make New York City the safest place to raise a family, the most affordable place to raise a family, and the best place to raise a family. My mother never stopped fighting to provide her family with a better life, and that is why I will never stop fighting to do the same for you.”
Keeping New York the Safest Big City in America to Raise a Family
Under Mayor Adams’ leadership, America’s safest big city has gotten even safer. Overall crime continued to fall in 2024, including a 7.3 percent drop in shootings, a 3.6 percent drop in homicides, and a 5.4 percent drop in transit crime. Since coming into office, the Adams administration has seized nearly 20,000 illegal guns and over 80,000 ghost cars and illegal motorized vehicles, like ATVs and mopeds. The administration has also successfully cracked down on illegal smoke shops, shutting down more than 1,300 illegal shops this past year; tackled car theft, helping deliver 12 straight months of declines in 2024; and reduced dangerous lithium-ion battery fires, implementing strategies that led to a 72 percent decrease in lithium-ion battery fire deaths since introduction of a new plan in 2023. The administration has remained focused on keeping families safe and improving New Yorkers’ quality of life.
Additionally, the Adams administration has made smart, upstream investments to prevent crime in the first place, launching a $485 million blueprint to keep communities safe from gun violence that invests in mentorship, mental health, and job training for young at-risk New Yorkers. In 2025, the Adams administration will build on that work and pursue new investments that engage young people. Following an expansion of the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development’s (DYCD) Saturday Night Lights program that gives families a safe place to send their children and teenagers, the Adams administration will open a $9 million transformation of the 133,000 square-foot Brigadier General Charles Young Field in Harlem. The investments will replace dirt and grass with a synthetic turf field, as well as add new dugouts, backstops, fencing, and lighting for use year-round. In addition to renovating the existing baseball, softball, and football fields, the new field will also accommodate lacrosse and soccer. The field will welcome hundreds of young people at expanded hours and host programming by Saturday Night Lights, the Harlem Children’s Zone, Youth on the Move, and more.
Moreover, Mayor Adams announced that New York City will invest $163 million over five fiscal years to expand five of its most successful programs — Fair Futures, College Choice, Career Choice, GirlsJustUs, and Assertive Community Engagement & Success — that engage at-risk youth and other young people; reach a total of 8,000 participants; and help connect more New York City youth with counseling, careers, college opportunities, and more.
Subways, Serious Mental Illness, Shelters: A New Commitment to Addressing Street Homelessness
From day one, the Adams administration has pursued a bold, new approach to getting New Yorkers living on city streets and subways the help, health care, and housing they deserve. Since the launch of Mayor Adams’ Subway Safety Plan in 2022, the administration has moved over 8,000 New Yorkers from the subways into shelter while, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, the New York City Department of Social Services (DSS) helped a record 18,500 households transition from shelters into stable homes. The Adams administration has also doubled the number of outreach staff working with unhoused New Yorkers, recently launched a new Partnership Assistance for Transit Homelessness initiative, and expanded its Subway Co-Response Outreach Teams with New York state to connect more New Yorkers to care.
Mayor Adams announced today that New York City will invest $650 million to bolster that work and expand support for New Yorkers living on subways, wrestling with serious mental illness, and at risk of entering city shelters.
To help move more New Yorkers off subways, as well as city streets, and into shelters, the Adams administration will add 900 new Safe Haven beds that offer a more flexible, personalized option for New Yorkers experiencing unsheltered homelessness and have proven a highly-effective tool for moving New Yorkers from homelessness into permanent housing. To help break the cycle of homelessness and hospitalization, the Adams administration will open an innovative facility specifically to support unsheltered New Yorkers with serious mental illness, offer psychiatric care and substance use treatment, and help secure permanent housing. Finally, Mayor Adams today set a new goal: No child should ever be born into New York City’s shelter system. To make this goal a reality, the Adams administration will launch a pilot program to connect soon-to-be parents applying for shelter with services that help them find permanent housing and prevent homelessness before their child is born, moving new families into stable homes more quickly and preventing lifelong cycles of poverty and housing instability before they begin.
These new investments — which will take place over several fiscal years — will help New York City tackle street homelessness by supporting New Yorkers living on subways, helping connect individuals with serious mental illness to care, and keeping families out of city shelters.
Additionally, Mayor Adams today reiterated his calls for Albany to pass the Supportive Interventions Act in an effort to give those experiencing severe mental illness the care they deserve and provide assistance to those who can no longer care for themselves, potentially posing a danger to themselves or others.
Helping More Families Find Homes in the Five Boroughs by Turning New York Into a “City of Yes for Families”
Since 2022, the Adams administration has made historic progress creating new affordable housing, connecting New Yorkers to affordable housing, and keeping New Yorkers in the homes they already have. The Adams administration has shattered affordable housing records two fiscal years in a row; financed the construction and preservation of over 79,300 housing units since 2022; and connected a record number of New Yorkers to affordable housing through City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement and the city’s housing lottery.
Additionally, to bring long-overdue change to New York City’s zoning code and build a little more housing in every neighborhood, the Adams administration introduced and passed “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,” the most pro-housing zoning proposal in city history. This historic legislation will create up to 80,000 new homes and invest $5 billion in housing and infrastructure over the next 15 years. Coupled with significant new housing production tools secured in Albany in 2024, the administration has focused on building more housing to address the decades-long crisis. To further tackle the city’s historically low housing stock, this year, Mayor Adams announced New York City’s first-ever Charter Revision Commission focused specifically on solving the city’s generational housing crisis and tasked the commission with examining the City Charter to determine how to create and preserve more affordable housing.
Despite these landmark achievements, too many families still struggle to make rent or purchase a home in New York City. Mayor Adams today unveiled “City of Yes for Families,” a multi-pronged approach to housing, zoning, and public space that will create more family-friendly neighborhoods and build new housing. Under City of Yes for Families, the Adams administration will work within agencies to build more family-sized housing units and multi-generational homes, as well as work with its partners in the New York City Council to introduce new tools to build more housing alongside schools, playgrounds, grocery stores, accessible transit stations, and libraries.
As part of City of Yes for Families, the Adams administration and the New York Public Library will move forward with the largest co-located library project in New York City history, bringing over 800 units of mixed-income housing and a new facility to the Bloomingdale Library location in Manhattan Valley. City of Yes for Families will also include new tools to support homeownership, help families make a downpayment on a home, add an additional dwelling unit to their property, and count rental payments towards credit history.
At last year’s State of the City, Mayor Adams launched “24 in 24,” an ambitious initiative to advance 24 housing projects on public sites in 2024 that will build 12,000 housing units. Last year, Mayor Adams surpassed his goal and advanced 26 housing projects on public sites. This past summer, Mayor Adams also issued executive order 43, requiring city agencies to review city-owned and controlled land for potential housing development. In 2025, the Adams administration will continue that work and advance the first sites for development, including 100 Gold Street, where over 2,000 new homes will be created just steps away from City Hall. The Adams administration will also advance housing projects at 395 Flatbush in Downtown Brooklyn, on the waterfront at Coney Island West, and in St. George on Staten Island. Collectively, these housing projects and others are expected to produce over 8,700 units, with additional public sites to be announced later this year.
In 2024, the Adams administration not only passed its Bronx Metro-North plan, but also advanced four other additional neighborhood-specific plans to create 50,000 housing units over the next 15 years. Mayor Adams today announced that his administration will unveil additional neighborhood plans throughout 2025 and — as part of City of Yes for Families — launched “The Manhattan Plan,” an initiative to review zoning across the whole of Manhattan, unlock potential housing sites