After a year of COVID, crime, and the controversy over the influx of asylum seekers, Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday unveiled an ambitious agenda during his State of the City Address. MKramerTV reports.
Below is the full text of Mayor Adams' second State of the City Address as prepared for delivery. A year ago, I was sworn in as your mayor. We've climbed a lot of mountains since that day.
Today, I stand before you here at the Queens Theater, in the borough where I grew up. Home to an international working-class community to say to you, my fellow New Yorkers: The state of our city is strong. As strong as the police officers and first responders who have made this city safer, as strong as the legions of city workers who have laid the groundwork for the future, and, above all, as strong as the working people of this city who make it all possible.
That's why we are expanding the social safety net, making it easier to access public benefits and health care, no matter who you are or where you live. We're changing how we get things done for New Yorkers - building success at the source, solving problems upstream instead of reacting to crises downstream, moving beyond recovery into a new era of abundance and equity.
So as I said, our Working People's Agenda starts with jobs - not side hustles or occasional gigs but jobs with good pay and good benefits, jobs you can support yourself and a family on, jobs you can build a life around. New York City has added more than 200,000 new jobs over the last year, and our employment growth has outpaced the state and the nation.
Today, I'm proud to announce that we will connect 30,000 New Yorkers to apprenticeships by 2030, thanks to our new Apprenticeship Accelerator. This is on-the-job experience with an opportunity for permanent employment in high-demand careers, and it will ensure employers can tap the talent they need. Our city and country are already facing a nursing shortage, and the federal government estimates we will need 275,000 more nurses nationally by 2030. So I'm proud to announce a new Nursing Education Initiative - in partnership with CUNY - that will help more New Yorkers enter the nursing workforce, stay in the profession, and climb the career ladder.
We're also going to make sure more of the money that our city spends goes towards creating good jobs for New Yorkers right here at home. That means working with our partners in Albany to finally give New York City the power to require companies that benefit from city contracts to hire local community members. Promoting community hiring will allow us to help 36,000 economically disadvantaged workers connect to good jobs every year.
We are making three fundamental commitments to our young people. One, every child will get the support they need to become a strong reader, at or above grade level. Two, We will establish a whole-child approach to education, factoring in social-emotional learning and other supportive services. And three, every student who graduates from a New York City high school will have a clear pathway to the future - whether that is a job, job training, or continuing education.
Second, academic success is important, but we must also take a whole-child approach to education - supporting our children with healthy food, physical education, social-emotional learning, and mental health services. This year, we are rolling out a new, comprehensive mental health program for our students. We will provide our high school students with everything from telehealth care to community-based counseling, depending on their individual needs.
Our city is determined to make sure our students graduate from high school with skills, strategy, and purpose. That's why we are expanding our FutureReadyNYC program to 90 schools and 7,000 students next year. We want our students to get the experience and support they need to transition to college and career paths before they graduate. So when you get your hard-earned diploma, you will get more than a handshake - you will get support, direction, and a path to opportunity.
Americans have had enough. We must get this done. Because ending gun violence means stopping it before it starts, especially when it comes to our youth. By the time a young person gets a gun, the system has already failed. We're not going to let that keep happening in our city. And we will make better use of our most powerful tool in the fight against crime: Our communities. We're bringing CompStat meetings to the community level. These are the monthly meetings where local precincts and NYPD brass go through the data to determine how to address crime block by block. We're going to give New Yorkers direct access to a version of these meetings for the first time, so they can interact directly with local and citywide NYPD leaders.
We look forward to working with the Governor and the legislature to make changes in the law that ensure defendants are provided with the speedy trial that our Constitution guarantees and that victims and their families are provided justice in a timely manner. That means making sure our district attorneys and public defenders have the resources they need to clear the backlog of cases and finding ways to expedite the discovery process.
We will also continue to save lives by expanding protected bike lanes, cracking down on illegal placards and placard abuse, and ensuring swift and serious consequences for those who drive with suspended and revoked licenses. crime, rats, trash, traffic. When we allow quality of life to deteriorate, it is working-class New Yorkers that suffer most. It also hurts our economic recovery.
Quality of life improvements won't stop there. We're also going to replace unsightly construction sheds - requiring all buildings to use newly designed structures that preserve the vibrancy of our streets - and increase enforcement against those that leave those sheds up for years at a time, blocking sidewalks and windows.
That's why we are committed to reducing building emissions to create a healthier and more sustainable city. We're also electrifying our city vehicle fleet. The future of New York City will be cleaner, greener, and healthier for all, including our wildlife and marine life, like the dolphins who recently visited us in the Bronx River. That's the future of our city. More dolphins, fewer rats.
We got the NYCHA Trust passed, unlocking billions of dollars for long overdue renovations. But we never would have gotten it done if we didn't have tenant leaders like Barbara McFadden leading the way. She helped organize her neighbors at Sheepshead-Nostrand Houses. Along with so many other NYCHA residents, they took the long ride up to Albany and spent day after day meeting with state legislators. Barbara, you got it done for us. Now we are going to get those repairs done for you.
At Willets Point, just a short walk from where we are now, we are working with Councilmember Francisco Moya to build the largest new 100-percent affordable housing development in 40 years. This visionary new development will feature much more than housing - it will have a world-class soccer stadium, public space, and good jobs, too.
Building new housing is essential for our future, but we also need to address the housing crisis in the here and now. That means protecting tenants and helping New Yorkers stay in their homes. So we are investing over $22 million in tenant protection programs - including more staff to increase investigation and enforcement against bad landlords and stronger partnerships with community groups and legal service providers to protect tenants from being pushed out of rent-regulated apartments.
And we are working to pass legislation that will allow individuals to keep public benefits for up to six months after they take a new job, easing the transition to financial independence. Ronald, I hope you're coming back this year, because we are going to get you and your family the money you deserve.
While we will continue to provide care for new arrivals, we will also deepen our commitment to every resident of the five boroughs. We are going to fundamentally change the way we provide care for our citizens. We're moving from a system that waits until New Yorkers are in crisis before offering help to one that focuses on upstream solutions. That means eliminating bureaucratic barriers and focusing on the structural challenges that so often force people into crisis.
And we will move mountains to address the growing problems of untreated serious mental illness and social isolation. A few months ago, we laid out an initial approach for connecting the most severely mentally ill New Yorkers with needed care. This work is driven by the dedicated heroes who are out on our streets and in our subways, night and day, helping New Yorkers in crisis.
We also want to keep New Yorkers healthy by making sure they have access to fresh food, including fruit and vegetables. We will fight the continuing crisis of obesity and chronic disease by expanding city investment in healthy food access for lower income New Yorkers, including the launch of Groceries 2 Go and Green Stands.
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