NYC Gazette

Commissioner Fred Kreizman, Mayor's Community Affairs Unit: Good evening. My name is Fred Kreizman, commissioner of the Mayor's Community Affairs Unit. The Adams administration is excited to be here today in Washington Heights, home of the largest Latino community, with a strong representation from the Puerto Rican and Dominican communities. This is the second series of community conversations with the mayor. This is our third one in the series. The first portion was from six o'clock until seven o'clock. Having dialogue in each table with a member of the mayor's office, taking diligent notes about the issues discussed at each table. Each person was given a note card for your intake card for a question card that will be responded to within two weeks if your question is not asked. We want to make sure anyone coming to these gets their issues addressed in a timely fashion. So we ensure that within two weeks you get a return phone call if your question is not asked. And we are proud to come here to be able to answer your questions.

I'm just going to go through the days quickly. Who we have represented here, of course, our mayor of the City of New York. We have First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, Deputy Mayor Ana Almanzar. We have of course Congressman Espaillat. We have DOT commissioner, Ydanis Rodriguez. We have our MOIA commissioner, Manuel Castro. Our DCWP, consumer worker protection commissioner, Vilda Mayuga. Our human rights commissioner, Annabel Palma. We have NYPD Deputy Commissioner Mark Stewart. We have Chancellor David Banks. We have our DYCD deputy commissioner, Susan Haskell. DSS Commissioner Molly Park. We have our Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan, Dr. Ashwin Vasan. Health and Hospital President, CEO, Dr. Mitchell Katz. We have our Mayor's Office of Community Mental Health deputy director, Laquisha Grant. ACS first deputy commissioner, Winette Saunders.

EDC senior vice president, Adam Meagher. And Gender Based Violence First Deputy Commissioner Saloni Sethi. We have First Deputy Commissioner Michael Ognibene. Finance, we have Kira Mahoney. We have our NYCEM commissioner, Zachary Iscol. Chairman of Department City Planning, Dan Garodnick. Buildings commissioner, Jimmy Oddo. HPD Deputy Commissioner George Sarkissian. Deputy for Sanitation, Manhattan Borough Chief James Levy. Fire Borough Commander Chief John Soroco. Parks Manhattan Borough Commissioner, Anthony Perez. NYCHA chief operating officer, Eva Trimble. Small Business Services assistant commissioner, Raquel Alvarez. DEP deputy commissioner, Beth DeFalco. And of course we're joined by the commanding officer, Patrol Borough Manhattan North, Chief Stevenson, and the commanding officers of the 3334 Deputy Inspector Natali, Inspector Castillo. And at this moment we want to give an opportunity for the congressman to say a couple words.

Mayor Eric Adams: You don't need to introduce the congressman, I do that. I don't know, even for my days in the State Senate, to when he became the first Dominican to be elected to Congress, watching him speak on behalf of the community in general. But I'll never forget, he and I had some downtime together and we were just talking. And hearing his story, you see his role as a congressperson. You see his role as a senator, as an assembly person. That's his glory, that's not his story. His story is coming here and sitting in school not understanding English. His family willing to do whatever is needed to be done to provide for their family, and watching their son grow up to be a voice on the Hill for all of us. I'm just so happy he's a friend and that he represents this community and city well. And so I just appreciate you, brother, for all that you stand for and all that you do. Congressman Espaillat.

US Representative Adriano Espaillat: Thank you, sir. Thank you, mayor. And welcome to all of you. All of you are stakeholders in this community. And I could only wish that you could turn around and see yourself so that you can see the diversity in this community. And in it lies its strength. And so I thank you for coming out. I know you have it. There's no shortness of opinion here. And you have many good ideas and good proposals that I'm sure the mayor will listen to and help execute. Remember that the mayor took this city under very difficult circumstances, and the pandemic was hitting neighborhoods like this one. And we're just basically getting up from that and dusting ourselves off and moving forward. I know he's made a commitment to me about addressing public safety issues in this community that has unfortunately a troubled history of public safety issues.

Back in the 80s and 90s we had a real rough time here, but we stood by the community and we were able to continue to move forward. And we were able to see the numbers drop and things get better. Education. We built, mayor back in the 90s, over 16 new schools. Because as many as thousands of kids were being bused out of here because we didn't have enough schools. This is one of the last ones to be built for English language learners for new arrivals. And I know that they do very well academically, and that this is a model, an incubator what we must do with young people that come from all over the world. And perhaps don't speak the languages I did. Back in the day they didn't have bilingual education, so you sat in the back of a classroom, they took a year from you too.

They set you back one year and then you sat in the back of the classroom for maybe two years until you really were able to come forward. You had to catch up. This school is one that provides opportunities for young people that are in that situation, and their families. And so I commend you. I know that you're doing these meetings with the communities on a regular basis, and I think it's good that we listen to people.

Because the brightest ideas is the best ideas. Of my 27 years in government now as an elected official, starting as an assembly member, the best ideas that I take to government are the ones that I hear on a street corner from any one of you. And then I go back. And of course my team tells me, "What a great idea." I say, "I know I'm a smart guy, but no, it's you."

You're the ones that bring it to us. And sometimes it's very simple, simple answers to complicated issues. I hear from you in the street, and we take it back to government to make sure that we implement public policy, legislation, funding issues that I know are so important to all of us. Thank you mayor for being here. Your presence here means a lot. And it means that you care about this community and that all these folks that are here, community stakeholders that also care about the community will be part of a team to move this city forward. Thank you so much for your efforts.

Commissioner Kreizman: Thank you very much. Of course we want to thank our principal here, Yecenia Cardoza Delarosa, for letting us use the space. Thank you very much. And I want to give it now to the... I know the borough president's tight on time, but we want to give it to the Borough President Mark Levine to say a couple words.

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine: Thank you. Thank you. Sure. I'll be very, very brief. Thank you, Fred. Thank you mayor for being here. It's a very big city, you didn't have to be in Washington Heights tonight. I think because I live here I'm allowed to play favorites and tell you that there is no more diverse, more dynamic, more vibrant community anywhere in the city than Washington Heights. And you see it out here today. And the truth is, we also are a microcosm of the challenges that the city faces. You see it all here. We have a desperate shortage of affordable housing. I know you know this, I know your team is working hard on this, but we are really at risk of losing the heart and soul of this community by the lack of opportunities for young people to find a home they can afford. And we have places to build here. We have to do it. The future of the community is on the line.

I know you're talking a lot about public safety tonight, and I'll say that we have a lot of issues related to vehicles here uptown. We have a lot of drag racing uptown. I don't know if you knew this, mayor, but we have drag racing along Fort Washington, up and around Fort Tryon Park. We have drag racing on the West Side highway, and sometimes on Broadway. We have a lot of cars without plates that we see parked on the street, which is very concerning. Not just defaced plates, but even no plates. And the challenges you see around the city of large groups of mopeds and dirt bikes on the streets, I think that this is the major transit point because we see them going up and down Broadway, et cetera. This is the kind of work that we need addressed.

And finally, I'll just say we have some amazing young people uptown. We have amazing educational leadership uptown, and I think that they are key to solving so many of these challenges. The more we can mobilize young leaders and the nonprofits serving them to help make our community safer and healthier for everybody, that's going to be a great win. Thank you mayor for coming and for bringing all your leadership. I'm excited for the discussion ahead. Enjoy everybody. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thanks so much, Borough President. We want to maximize the time where you could ask questions. As the Borough President stated, this is the full complement of our operation, and I'm sure it's not lost on you to see the diversity that we have in front of you. Who's running this city now. And they bringing a level of commitment, dedication, and a lifetime of experience. This is our opportunity to really lead and look at those problems that we've faced for years. Let's open up the floor and allow people to engage in the conversation.

Commissioner Kreizman: Again, we have tables specifically in Spanish here, we have a translator with translation equipment. If anyone didn't receive it, please raise your hand. And we have staff there already assigned to people sitting at the Spanish-speaking tables with headsets. Thank you. First, table one. Alex.

Question: Thank you. Hi, everyone. My name is Katherine Diaz, I'm the chair for Community Board 12, your local community board. And I sat at a table of educators. And so their question is, schools in this district have high numbers of families with housing insecurity, including asylum seeking families. What are the pathways and structural supports being developed so that they can support themselves, their families, and live in dignity? Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you so much. And that is probably in the top three issues in our city right now, housing. It keeps mixing between public safety, the asylum seekers, and housing. What is very important is for all of us to understand how we get housing. We are creatures of the state. The governor and I put in place an aggressive housing plan. Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, we had a moonshot plan of 500,000 units of housing. We sent the legislation to Albany to get the extension in what's called 421-A, that's an incentive to build. We wanted to build higher in those communities that traditionally ... Okay, just give us a moment so we could ask those who rather have their voices heard and not your voice heard. As-salamu alaykum, sister.

And so we needed help from Albany this legislative session. They took no action at all on housing. None at all. Everyone agrees that it's a top issue for our city, but they took no action at all. [Agitator yelling.] We want to you... Who said I raised the rent? Ma'am. I'm sorry, stand up for a moment. I have a three family house in Brooklyn. When my tenants moved in 15 years ago, I signed a lease with them that as long as you in my property, you will never have an increase in your rent for 15... Oh, let me finish and then you can talk. Let me finish. Never.

This is what I do know. Those three and four family houses, eight family houses where people came to this country to buy a house, they are suffering right now. They're suffering. Few costs went up on them, repairs went up on them. They are in a verge of losing their homes. If they lose their home, people will come in and purchase those homes and displace long-term tenants. I think there was a 3 percent recommendation. I don't control the board. I make appointments, they make the decision. Everyone knows I don't control the board.

Question: [Inaudible.] We're not talking about that. We're talking about the rent guidelines for [inaudible]. Before and after you supported those rent increases. In Nassau, they have a 0 percent rent increase. Why in New York City, where the real estate is controlling you, Mr. Mayor, why are we having these horrible rent increases last year and this year?

Mayor Adams: Okay, first, if you're going to ask a question, don't point at me and don't be disrespectful to me. I'm the mayor of this city, and treat me with the respect I deserve to be treated. I'm speaking to you as an adult, don't stand in front like you treating someone that's on the plantation that you own. Give me the respect I deserve and engage in the conversation. Up here in Washington Heights, treat me with the same level of respect I treat you. So don't be pointing at me, don't be disrespectful to me. Speak with me as an adult because I'm a grown man. I walked into this room as a grown man and I'm going to walk out of this room as a grown man. I answered your question. Go to the next table.

Commissioner Kreizman: The next question. Table two, Robin.

Question: Yes. Hi. Good evening. Thanks for having us here. Our question is, our community has experienced high drug use, homelessness, decline in school enrollment, financial stress on our families, and lack of enrichment programs and resources in schools that help and support their families. What are we doing for the future and the future of New York City, especially in light of the budget cuts?

Mayor Adams: You ran down a list of things, and each one of them have an appropriate answer. Number one, I would love for the chancellor to weigh-in on what we're doing around things in the school. And you're right, we're dealing with real homeless issues, and we are going to hit a fiscal cliff next year when the federal money from the stimulus dollars are going to run out. What this administration did, and it's continuing to do, out of nowhere this city was hit with over 70,000 migrants, asylum seekers. We received no help from the federal government like we should. It's going to cost us $4.3 billion. $4.3 billion. You don't see people sleeping on the streets like you see in El Paso, when I went to Texas and other locations. This administration, through all of our agencies working as a team, we were able to bring people in and give them the accommodations.

The federal government is saying to us, you have to pay for food, housing, cleaning, clothing, educate children. We have to do all of this on taxpayers dime. And I've asked the President, I've asked of the White House over and over again, this is unfair to New Yorkers. It's unfair to us. And that's going to come out of our coffers, where we were doing extremely well. But while this is going on, we are still making sure that we put the resources inside our school in this budget. And you're going to see when we announced the final budget, our goal is to try to keep our communities as harmless as possible. But the challenge we are facing on a federal level, and the congressman has been attempting to help us get the resources here.

What they did with FEMA, they gave money to the bordering states, and they're using the money to bus the migrants and asylum seekers here to New York. Instead of giving us the money so that we can provide the care and not take from everyday taxpayers in our city. This is a challenge time, some real economic challenges that we have to decide. But we have been managing the difficulties of the moment and investing in these entities and attempting not to take away from them. Chancellor.

Chancellor David Banks, Department of Education: Good evening everyone. I'm certainly happy to be back here. I want to thank Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, who's really one of the founders of this school, and one of the visionaries behind its creation, for inviting me to be here. I visited months ago. And before I go any further I want to thank him. But I also want to just thank, she was recognized earlier for hosting us, but thanking her for the leadership that she demonstrates here every single day. And that is the principal of this great school, Yecenia Delarosa. Please wave so everybody knows. We can give a bigger round of applause than that.

Because I know what it means to lead a great school. And to walk into a place like this, look like you could eat off the floor. It's a beautiful, beautiful facility. And for those who have not had an opportunity to see a great principal at work, I invite you to meet Principal Delarosa. Her robotics program here is second to none in the city. The arts and the music program that they have, these students are performing all over New York City, and taking their talent to the highest levels. In spite of the issues and the challenges that we have, we are making even greater investments in the arts and our extended day programming. And we are getting more of our students coming back. We were hit really hard by this pandemic. But before the pandemic even happened we were already losing thousands and thousands of students and families.

But as the mayor says, New York is back. We're able to see it. Because the numbers, we've lost far less students this year than we have during the last six or seven years. So the turnaround is happening. And when we make the case for why our folks need to be coming and staying in our schools, we get more students to be here, we get more families to be engaged. And we get more dollars from the federal government to continue to support what we're doing. I'm just finishing my first full year as chancellor.

Yesterday, last day of school. And it's been a great year. And I'll tell you, the best is yet to come. We've got wonderful and amazing things. Manny, thank you so much for being here. Manny Ramirez, one of our superintendents from this area, Washington Heights. Thank you for your leadership as well.

And anybody else that's here in the room now who's an educator, just stand up. Any of the educators who came out today, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know it's been a long last couple of years, but we are here for you and we thank you because you have made a way sometimes out of no way. And you'd figured out how to make lemonade out of lemons. But that's what we do when we love our kids, and that's what you all do. And they're doing it all over the city. Let's not believe the hype that things are not happening in our schools, there are great things that are happening in our schools each and every day, and we're going to continue to make the kinds of investments that we need to make. I'm going to leave one final point on this issue as well. And that is, unless you are here to talk about what we talk about with the schools, I want to talk about what's happening with the schools.

I was with the mayor yesterday in Brooklyn as we made an announcement about mindfulness, which some people probably need to practice. Because mindfulness is, how do you help young people to center themselves in the moments of controversy and moments of trauma? The pandemic was tough, but there're going to be other issues that our kids face each and every day, and they need to be taught the life skills of how to center themselves. And so the mayor has mandated, and we are excited to implement this as we go into September of next year, that all of our schools are going to have two to five minutes of just mindfulness and just practice their breathing. And the mayor talks about this all of the time. It's that very intentional practice, it helps you with how to center yourself. And so you're going to be hearing more about that as we open up next school year, and lots of other initiatives that we're fully engaged in. But thank you.

Mayor Adams: And then you add on to that, to the Summer Rising program over... I don't know what the numbers were this year, 110,000. You add onto that summer youth employment, over 100,000. People have been asking for years to get to this number. We're the first administration ever to accomplish that task. You add onto the partnership we're doing with Google to allow our young people to get these internships and learn tech jobs. What we're doing with the Brooklyn STEAM Center, dyslexia screening, never has been done before. We are really pushing the envelope to make sure that during these difficult times that we are investing in our children, but also in families. What we are doing because we know these are difficult times for our children and families, and we're fighting to deal with the high cost of living in this city.

Last year, we were able to get the earned income tax credit. No one thought we were going to do it. We got it done. We made childcare less expensive for our families and children. We were able to get billions of dollars from the state and bring down the cost of childcare. First administration to have childcare seats at this level for children with mental health issues, children with special needs as well.

When you start to really peel back what this administration is accomplishing, you'll see how much we're investing in people who are going through a lot because this is an administration made up of people who have gone through a lot. We are going back to correct the wrongs that have been in place for a long time.

Commissioner Kreizman: Excellent. Table number three, Malcolm.

Question: Good evening, mayor, thank you for having me. First I want to thank the people that came out to this table. We got great leaders. The police department is here and a few other people. And just the way they interact with each other really proves that this is what the city's about. Everybody get along, everybody have great questions and stuff. I'm going to really get to the point.

Sanitation problems and the accountability and enforcement is greatly needed, but the disenfranchisement of investment throughout the community, the need of affordable housing, Small Business Services, vocational training is sadly prevalent. In this area, our neighbors believe that it's divided between two. One, it's believed that our neighborhoods is split where one is treated better than the other. Seniors is a large population in our community.

Commissioner Kreizman: Can we just focus down on the key question?

Question: I got you.

Commissioner Kreizman: It's a question, but we want to ensure that we get every table, so let's summarize each table down to one question.

Question: I was setting the mood. No, I'm kidding. Seniors are a large population in this community. Even though the senior centers in this neighborhood does a great job of servicing the community, they need more funding. Social service workers, legal assistance and food insecurities are greatly needed. Are there any plans to stabilize funding to make sure the senior centers and other CBOs can do a better job of empowering and servicing our community members in need?

Mayor Adams: Thanks a lot, Malcolm. I'm going to turn this over to the first deputy mayor because our nonprofits, when we got in office, I want her to share with you what we were faced and what she did in the first few weeks because the non profits, including our senior centers, they filled the gaps in services. Can you share what you did?

First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright: Absolutely. And nonprofits are key partners in government in all the ways that you've mentioned. When we came into the administration, many nonprofits, thousands of nonprofits had contracts with the city and had not been paid for years. When we came in, there was 6 billion dollars owed to nonprofits and we quickly set out in 12 weeks, we wanted to clear the backlog and make sure that we got about 4 billion dollars out of the door. We're committed to making sure that the sector gets paid on time. Last year as well, we had a significant contribution in the budget to increase work in wages and other things for the nonprofit sector and we will continue to work very, very closely with them.

And our commissioner of aging is not here, but the first deputy commissioner I know is here, Michael. I don't know if you want to say a word about the work that we are doing to expand services for seniors.

First Deputy Commissioner Michael Ognibene, Department for the Aging: Yeah, well thank you first deputy mayor. We have nine older adult centers in the Washington Heights Inwood area and they're doing great work. We spent a lot of time virtual programming during the Covid era and we've seen about 86 percent of our participants come back to Vibrant. We had just had a pickleball day with the mayor in Central Park where we invited our older adults to come and play pickleball. They're back. Congregate meals are back about 90 percent to where they were pre-Covid days. People are back. We're doing the best we can and we'll continue to do more with what we've got.

[Agitator shouts.]

Commissioner Kreizman: We want to be respectful to everyone here because you know what? Everyone took out their time to come out this evening. We want to respect our neighbors as well as our issues. When we get people jumping out of their chairs, we are showing disrespect to the people here next to us. Thank you. Next table. Socrates, next table.

[Shouting continues.]

Grandstanding on your neighbors is not respectful for your neighbors and we want to give everyone who took the time to come out here today an opportunity to ask things that they took their time to come here to ask. We really appreciate you coming out today and voicing your concerns, but we're going to move on to people who are respectful to their neighbors.

Mayor Adams: This is the same 12 people that follow me around the city. There's about two more so we'll get to what we have to do the same 12 people. I have more selfies with the 12 of them. We got a few more, but we'll get to everyone. They follow me all over the city. I'm never lonely with them.

Commissioner Kreizman: Thank you. Next question.

Question: Good evening. Welcome Mayor Adams and everyone to the Heights. My name is Caroline Jose. I'm representing as a resident, a child of the heights, a mother of two children in the heights going to district six schools. And my question for you is, as a parent and a parent leader in this community, I'm extremely concerned with the alarming amount of smoke shops surrounding our neighborhoods. Thank you. Specifically, the smoke shops across the street from our schools and in children's safe spaces, especially after this pandemic took almost every inch of that away. Sorry, I'm very emotional about this. Safe spaces like playgrounds and parks.

What is the mayor's office planning to do to regulate and enforce the licenses, locations, and frequency of these smoke shops in our neighborhoods? Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. That's why these town halls are so important because when people see things that happen in the city, the first thing they want to know, "Hey mayor, what are you doing?" And it's important for you to know what are the barriers? We were talking about housing, what they did this year in Albany around housing was terrible. How could we not have done anything on housing?

Now let's move to smoke shops. I could clear up the smoke shops problem in 30 days. They haven't given us the power. We went to Albany and said, "Let us do it. Let us go and clear up the smoke shops." Right now, we go in, someone is selling something illegal. We only give them a small fine. They laugh at that fine. It's the cost of doing business. We go in anyway and we've confiscated hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal marijuana and other items that are sold in the smoke shops.

But to go in and go after the criminal enterprise, because I personally believe there's a venture capitalist that is opening up all these smoke shops all over our city and putting people inside there. We want to track this down. We don't have anything to prove it, but that's what I believe is happening. I could rid this city of illegal smoke shops that's undermining the legal cannabis business. I would be able to do it in a month if they just give me the power to do so. They have not given us the power. They stated that their state office would do it. They don't have the manpower. They don't have the drive that we have. That is what is in the way. We will clean this up within 30 days. I commit to you, I would be able to clean this up if Albany gives me the ability and the right to use my law enforcement agencies to do it. We need to send a message to them, "Give Eric the power to do it so Eric can clean these darn smoke shops up."

Commissioner Kreizman: Thank you. We have table number five, a Spanish-speaking table. Leo, if you would ask the question on behalf of the table.

Question: Buenas noches. My name is Luana Ferrera. I'm a lifelong Washington Heights resident and also a Community Board 12 board member. And I was tasked to ask this question in English to eliminate the barriers in translation. First and foremost, thank you for providing language access to this community, which is very important. Gracias.

Mayor Adams: De nada. [Laughter.]

Question: The question is what specific initiatives pertaining to youth development will the mayor design and implement to offset truancy, high school attrition, juvenile delinquency, but also teen usage of cannabis?

Deputy Commissioner Susan Haskell, Department of Youth and Community Development: Hello. I really appreciate that question. I think young people need to be engaged more than ever in enrichment and activities. And as a chancellor and the mayor said this summer, the biggest Summer Rising program ever. 110,000 young people K to 8, a hundred thousand young people in the Summer Youth Employment Program. We've also expanded Saturday Night Lights program, community centers. We have in this community, including from some of the great partners here, more than a dozen afterschool programs, Beacon, Cornerstone. The investment has been amazing and we want to keep doing more for young people. I appreciate that question.

Mayor Adams: And it is about investing in young people in the real way and real alternatives and I think that's what Chancellor Banks has been doing. And don't underestimate that we've never had a hundred thousand summer youth employment jobs. Never. Deputy Mayor Wright and her team, they have sat down with the corporations. We are moving to get 30,000 paid internship programs for our young people all year round. It allows them exposure. We have Google. Chancellor Banks was able to get Google on onboard. We're going to get other tech companies on onboard. We're leaning into the vocational training, the tech training getting our young people certifications so they can go right into some of these jobs that even without college they can be gainfully employed.

And then what we're doing in the schools, we are going to invest something that I did as the borough president, the extended use where we said to nonprofits, everyone talks about building new community centers, but we have enough locations in our schools where we need to use our schools after school hours, Seven to three, we tell our children, "Welcome." 3:00 pm,, we say, "Get out and don't come back until the next day." I say no to that. I want to have school buildings open and say to the nonprofits, "You do not pick up the fee for the school safety ages for the cleanings, for the insurance. We pick up that course. You come in with your human capital and we pay the price of utilizing this space," because it's your space, it's your building. Why are you being double taxed? And so finding those safe spaces for children based on the resources we have is something that we are creative and we are good at doing.

But let me say this one more thing on this issue. We can be the coaches. If you are an accountant, start a financial literacy program with young people. If you are a person that's a nurse, start a health practice with young people. If you are with Department of Sanitation, start a project of cleaning our blocks together. Let's not only want government. Let's do it the good old-fashioned way and say the change is going to start with me. These young people need mentorships. And as Chancellor Banks did with the Eagle Academy, which was unbelievable. All of us in this room can take 10 young people and say, "I'm going to be your mentor and show you some of the basic quality things that you could learn." Government has a role, but you know what? We all have a role also and I want us to understand the empowerment of giving back based on the knowledge that we have.

Commissioner Kreizman: Excellent. Thank you. I also want to acknowledge the use of Street Corner Resources Cure Violence group that's here today. We're going to go to the next table. I appreciate it. We have Angelica, your table.

Question: Good evening sir. Our seniors are highly concerned about homeless men sleeping and engaging in dangerous behavior by 168th Street at the men's shelter. Can you bring back DHS officers who used to patrol Project Renewal Men's Shelter?

Mayor Adams: Yes. Which street is that on? 168 and —

Question: Fort Washington.

Mayor Adams: Fort Washington.

Question: It's called Project Renewal Men's Shelter, 168th Street.

Mayor Adams: I'm going to stop by there and see exactly what's taking place over there. I'm going to stop over there. And we are finding out, because there's an obligation that those who are running these shelters, they need to make sure the conditions are right and there should be a DHS ... Molly, are you here? Molly, do we have DHS police there?

Commissioner Molly Wasow Park, Department of Social Services: All of our shelters have 24/7 security. At that particular site, it is provided by Project Renewal. They bring in their own staff and contractors and they're in addition security cameras, other measures of keeping security. The DHSPD are concentrated at the DHS city run sites. But absolutely, want to echo what the mayor said that safety and security, both within the shelters and for the community as a whole is a priority for us. I will follow up certainly with you and with the site to make sure that we're responding appropriately.

Mayor Adams: And I'm going to take a trip over there. Mother always said you have to inspect what you expect or it's all suspect, and so I'm going to let me take a trip over there to see exactly what's going on.

Commissioner Kreizman: Thank you. Next table, Ray, if someone has a question?

Question: Good evening, all good evening, Mayor Adams. Thank you for coming to the Heights. As we call it.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Question: Washington Heights has the largest population of English language learners. And we would like to know if the city is planning to give additional funds to assist immigrant students, asylum seekers and refugees this coming school year?

Mayor Adams: We have to. First of all, I want to take my hat off to the principals. I remember chancellor, we were on the phone with principals who this was dropped in their laps and instead of them saying, "We don't want these children," they did just the opposite. The school community stood up. They got on a call with us and they were doing everything from doing clothing drives to helping these children. It just was really a remarkable moment from educators and the school community that stepped up because all of us came from somewhere and all of us know the challenges of coming to this country. And I just think it's unfair that the president and others are not allowing them to work. People just want to work. They don't want handouts, they just want to be able to work.

But our commissioner, Commissioner Castro, was a dreamer, came in with his mother from Mexico and just to show you the beauty of the American dream, now he's in charge of all of the immigrants in this city, Commissioner Castro.

Commissioner Manuel Castro, Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs: Thank you mayor. Thank you for the question. Really important one. We work closely with DYCD, who operates a very robust program for English language learners. We also plan at the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs to expand our We Speak program, which supports English language learners online and with partnership with community based organizations, many of whom are here today. I want to shout out NMIC here in CPC and other providers who are supporting our immigrant communities in this neighborhood. But look out for a RFP for our We Speak New York program, which is meant to provide these very much needed classes for asylum seekers and others. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, thank you. And he has added to my voting base. He had a baby recently. Congratulations to you.

Question: Mayor, if you can excuse me. My wife's principal, she's an educator, is here. I don't know if the [inaudible] principal. My wife teaches at the schools, so I just want to shout them out. She's on maternity leave.

Mayor Adams: Love it. Love it. And it's important, as the commissioner stated, we want you to apply for some of these RFPs. We don't want people coming into your community delivering services. We want you to apply for these RFPs as well.

Commissioner Kreizman: And Commissioner Stewart, you wanted to add something on the ASL program?

Deputy Commissioner Mark Stewart, Community Affairs Bureau, NYPD: Yes. How you doing? Listen.

Commissioner Kreizman: Identify yourself.

Deputy Commissioner Stewart: Deputy Commissioner Mark Stewart. I'm in charge of Community Affairs Bureau. We had a program about a month ago, a month and a half ago with the congressman where the NYPD, we did an ESL program for six weeks. At the PAL on 165th Street. And we've been trying to get our community to these programs. We only had 30 members to come out in the community to these programs. My question to you is how do we get the information that these programs exist? We thought about putting up a QR code that you could come and you could register and get it out. We have people from 12 to maybe 70 that's coming out to these programs. I just spoke to the congressman today. We'll be back to set the program off. We'll let you guys know again. But from you, I want to know after this is over, how do we get the information out? We do a lot of programs. The problem is how do we get the information to you?

After this I'll be on the side. If you could put me to the side, give me numbers and we could talk about it. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Now I don't know if we heard what he just stated. He's the deputy commissioner of Community Affairs in NYPD. He started an English as a second language program because his thought process is let's not wait until someone commits a crime. Let's prevent the crime by giving people opportunities. He has started one of the largest baby showers where mothers who are in need, he partnered with to give those startup kits for mothers, diapers and those other things. Hundreds of mothers have come out through the program. What he's doing, he did this entire community event with children, opening our parks, partnering with parks. The whole mindset that we have in this administration, because you are in one agency, does not mean you should be doing everything as a team. And no one personifies that more than this commissioner and what he's doing in community affairs. We got to thank him for that.

Commissioner Kreizman: Thank you. Next table. Next table.

Question: Yes. Hello. Thank you so much, mayor, for being here. Thank you everyone for being here. My name is Mino Lora and I'm the executive director of People's Theater Project, a cultural organization serving our community here in Washington Heights, working closer with the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs and many of our amazing schools in the district.

Our question is this brilliant table here of leaders, can we count on you and your administration to not make cuts in the FY 24 budget for essential services that are equalizers for young people in our city? And we specifically want to hear about education, arts and culture, mental health and preventive services. Gracias.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you for that. And I can tell you in the theater some way, because you are theatrical.

We made it clear when we did programs to eliminate the gap that we cannot cut services and we would do no layoffs, no furloughs, because we knew that would only aggravate the problem. I think when you see this budget that we just announced, you'll see those areas that we made whole. We continue to make sure we provide the services. We have done what no one else has done, and what we have put into the arts and culture. We know the role of arts and culture. We know the role that it plays, but not only those who are on the Fifth Avenue mile, we need to reach out. As Congressman Espaillat has said over and over again, we need to go to those cultural organizations and groups that are in the outer area.

Commissioner Rodriguez from DOT, we were doing the open streets that was just limited to downtown Manhattan area. We said, why is it only stand downtown? We moved to all five boroughs, we moved it to the Bronx, we moved it up into the Harlem area. Our belief is that out in Queens, every borough is now having the open streets. We believe the same things they want on Park Avenue, they want up here on Dittman Avenue.

Question: We deserve it.

Mayor Adams: And you deserve it and we are going to make sure you get it. No mayor in the history of this city has been on Dyckman Street more than me. You know that?

Question: Hi. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. This table of community members is very concerned about the safety… I'm here, Mr. Mayor. Very concerned about the safety of the children with all of the drug uses and the parks in the streets. But they actually had an exact location where across the street from PS 128, they said that there's people that's been sitting outside there, with a menu selling drugs directly across the street. And that's actually on 168th Street and 169th Street on the east side directly across the street and they want to know what you can do about it.

Mayor Adams: Well, I'm going to stop over there. You know the rule, inspect what you expect. And chief, y'all better make sure when I get there, don't have me have someone meet me. We are going to stop over there, but the chief is here and as I walk through the city, all I do is hear how well you are doing up here and I really appreciate that, but let's deal with that specific area because that can't happen. We are not going to surrender our streets to dysfunctional behavior. That is not going to happen.

And I think the commissioner just handed me a note, going back to that illegal smoke shops. Since the start of the administration, we have conducted 705 inspections and issued over 300 summonses and really suspended 28 licenses. We have to go after those owners of establishments that knowingly allow people to open smoke shops in their areas. If we don't go after them, then we're just really just going after the low hanging individuals, so that's what we were trying to get Albany to allow us to do and really add your voice of compelling them to give us the power to close up these smoke shops. I am so frustrated and angry that our children leave home, stop by the smoke shop, get cannabis and other items, and sit in classroom every day. We have to stop this. This is a major issue that I want to clean up and I need you to add your voices to give us the power to do so.

Question: Good evening, everyone. You guys can hear me loud and clear, I hope. So, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, everyone up here. Our table here is covered by leaders, we have parent coordinators, we have social building leaders, community affairs, non-for-profit organization representative, and we covered the umbrella of safety, so I want to thank you because you did answer a lot of the questions that we had, but three items that we wanted to highlight. The first one is the concern with the large motorized vehicles that speed up and down schools and sidewalks. The second is the lack of safety agents and crossing guards, but more importantly, police patrolling the school community before and after school. And lastly, the chronic issue with homeless people and drug users in front of schools. So just want to know what's being done about that. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: So let's take them off. One of the things we did on January 1st 2022, when I became the mayor of the greatest city on the globe, New York, we realized that we were losing control of our streets.

The number of cars that had paper plates, illegal plates, the number of unregistered and stolen bikes, the number of people who were totally disregarding the basic speed rules, just dangerous behavior. This city was in any and everything goes, and we said no to that. So we immediately put in an operation of going after those paper plates. We found that those paper plates were being used to do robberies and other crimes, and we cracked down on them. We had... Just seeing it. Well, you write like a doctor, man.

Commissioner Kreizman: Yeah, I do. [Laughter.]

Mayor Adams: We removed off our streets over 5,000 of these illegal bikes. I remember you and I did a press conference together, Congressman, when you were almost hit by someone flying down the sidewalk.

We zeroed in on these illegal bikes. We took thousands of cars off the streets with paper plates, unregistered, and you know what we found inside? We found guns, we found multiple plates, we found people that were arrested repeatedly for doing robberies and other serious crimes. These same people that were driving around with these illegal paper plates, illegal unregistered vehicles, were committing crimes in your community and we went after them wholeheartedly. We haven't stopped, but the results are clear.

Thousands of guns off our streets, double-digit decrease in homicides, double-digit decrease in shootings. We're seeing a decrease in the major crimes, right in this community only, and I'm going to let you say it so I don't have to try to figure out your handwriting.

Commissioner Kreizman: No problem. So 1,600 ATVs, scooters, dirt bikes have been confiscated this year in the city. 1,330 just in Manhattan North, predominantly the Washington Heights area, thanks to the work of the PD. Of course, we have crime down in the Three-Three by 5 percent in crime. We have our gun collars. 42 guns in the Three-Four Precinct, 14 guns in the Three-Three Precincts, over predominantly. The Three-Four precinct is up 90 percent this year in gun arrests. So we would want to thank the great work of the chief of the borough and the precinct commanders here that are sitting here in the front.

Mayor Adams: And think about that. That number of guns, the total guns we've removed off the streets, it's a several thousand, but here's the problem. We arrest them on Monday. You know what happens on Tuesday? They're back out. We're saying let's go after the extreme recidivists. We're not saying just because someone does a petty crime, they need to go to jail. No, but those extreme recidivists who have made up their mind that they're going to inflict violence in our community, we need to send a strong message.

And people can't say, "Well, Eric, you're just trying to be hard on people committing crimes." I have been on Rikers Island talking to inmates and correction officers more than any mayor in the history of this city. I have attended the graduation of those young people on Rikers Island. I've sat down with the young lady who had a baby and she was inside on Thanksgiving Day. I went to spend time with her. I don't want people in jail, but darn it, if you're shooting up my community and you don't decide to turn your life around, I believe in the prison ministry. You need to go to jail for carrying out those actions.

Question: Good evening, Mr. Mayor and all the leaders up there and my fellow concerned citizens here. My name is Beatriz Coronel and I'm here representing an organization called Communal Life, a nonprofit organization. It's called Life is Precious, and I'm the EVP, and this is a Latina teen suicide prevention program. One of our sites is at 4186 Broadway, between 177th and 178th. You're invited to come visit us whenever you'd like. And so I just want to start off with some stats that the Center for Disease Control pulled out recently. Every two years, they do a study with youth, and these are for Latina... Not actually just Latina, but all female identifying teens who have seriously considered suicide, and so these stats are from 2021.

Asian population of female identifying teens, 18.40; black, 19.60; Latina, 22.80; White, 17.10. And I shared these stats with first deputy mayor, Ms. Sheena Wright, so I encourage you to review those, there's other stats there too. And so our question is we are increasingly experiencing more challenges for our youth. There are increasingly more risk factors. Many here are addressing the illegal drug dispensaries, that's just one of them. There are so many other root causes, and so our question is what is the city doing to address this and how can we best work together to address these issues?

Mayor Adams: Well, thank you for that. And Dr. Vasan, who I am just really impressed with and he's going to show what we're doing, but first, I would like to come visit your location, and this issue is very dear to me. I would like to, if you do take private contributions, I would like to make a contribution to what you're doing, but I would like to come up there. I am so concerned about the mental health of our young people and we really need help around social media. Social media is destroying our children. It is having them do antisocial behavior. To sit down with the mother who lost her child to subway surfing, these children are getting 30 million views on subway surfing.

The number of depression, the number of attempted suicides. What we are seeing, a few weeks ago, a young man from a prominent family on Mother's Day got in an argument with his dad. He went in his room and he jumped out the window and took his life. Our children are hurting and they're being fed by this social media that is profiting off of the health and wellbeing of our children. But Dr. Vasan has been a real leader in this and thinking differently, and so I want him to go into some of the things that he's doing.

Commissioner Aswhin Vasan, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Thanks, mayor, and let me first say thank you for having me in this community. This is in many ways my community too. I've learned most of what I know about medicine in this community. I continue to practice medicine in this community on 168th. I trained here, I practice here, I see patients here. I may have seen one of you in my clinic as well, so I'm grateful to be here. The statistics are damning. We are in a youth mental health crisis. You don't need even the numbers to tell the story. I think anyone who engages with young people, either in our schools or as a parent myself, realizes that something's different. Something has happened to our kids through this pandemic and may have even been brewing prior to the pandemic.

And so the mayor has led a citywide mental health plan that we launched in March, and one of the principle focuses is youth mental health and addressing this crisis, and the way we're doing this is multifold. Number one is access to care. There isn't enough care to go around. It's not always culturally and linguistically competent and it's not always affordable and accessible, so working with Dr. Katz, working with the Mayor's Office of Community Health, working with [inaudible] Life as well. We know you well, we partner with you well. Expanding care inside schools through school-based mental health centers and making sure that those are linked to community sites.

Number two is creating an easy front door for our young people. We are going to, before the end of this calendar year, launch the largest digital mental health program for teenagers for, I believe there's 350,000 high school aged students in New York City. Every single one of them will have access to mental health care in the palm of their hand, not through an adult mediating the relationship, but when they need help, they can text, they can call, they can FaceTime and get the kind of help and connect it into care.

And then lastly, and this is just a start, right? We're not even a year and a half into this administration. We were the first local government to have a national convening on social media as a public health crisis. Why is it a public health crisis? As the mayor laid out, it's a risk factor that is currently entirely unregulated. In the same way that when you buy a toy for a child, there's a package insert that says, "Don't swallow these pieces," or, "Parents, watch out for this." We have none of those guidance for parents, and the social media companies are designing their algorithms to keep our young people on their platforms as long as possible.

It's an entirely unregulated industry. The only other industry that I can think of that is as unregulated as social media is guns, and it's time. Much like gun violence is a public health crisis, so too is social media, and we are going to bring our tools to bear to both hold companies accountable, but also give parents, give young people themselves, and give school administrators and teachers the tools they need to better modify the relationship between our young people and social media. There's so much at stake. The future of the city is at stake if we don't get our head and our hands around this, and I'm very proud of the mayor and this administration for leading on it.

Mayor Adams: And so that's why Chancellor Banks raised what we're doing around mindfulness and breathing. Some people want to dismiss it, but go in and go do some reading on the power of breath work, and we all could use it. We're all hurting. Trust me, all of us are feeling something. All of us lost someone, if not multiple people during Covid, and so we are saying we are not going to be afraid to go with things that work. Having our children start their day breathing, learning breath work, meditation, mindfulness, dealing with stress. Watch, your children are going to come home to you and say, "Mommy, just breathe."

We are going to empower these children not only to be academically smart, but emotionally intelligent.How do you survive this ever-changing world that they have faced? We didn't face this stuff. If I did something dumb, it stayed on the block. Imagine a child having 30 million people watch them surf on top of a train. We've got to really think about what we're doing to these kids.

Question: So at our table, and thank you for being here, Mr. Mayor. At our table, we had many of the same issues that you've already heard - public safety, youth mental health - and it seemed that we also agreed that housing affordability is a critical, critical, longstanding problem in our community. So our question is how can we count on you to create housing opportunities, housing choice and housing stability for all households, but particularly households that are low income, meaning under $65,000 annually? And this includes our rent stabilized households. As you know, this community primarily consists of rent stabilized households, and we are also paying more than 30 percent of our income towards our rent. So a 7 percent increase is just something that will lead many of our households to make hard choices or to evictions. So we are just asking you, how can you help us stabilize, anchor ourselves in our homes in quality housing? And how can you get the state to help fund the deeply affordable housing that we need?

Mayor Adams: Thank you for that, and again, housing is one of the top three issues that we are facing every day, and I need help to get Albany to match the urgency. It is unconscionable that we did nothing to incentivize housing in Albany. Now, Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer is now trying to find creative ways of doing that, but one cannot say that housing is the number one issue. Think about this for a moment. Everyone is saying housing is the number one issue, but we did nothing to incentivize it in Albany. Nothing at all.

Borough President Levine, who was here, he identified places throughout the city that we could build that we want to build on. We want to raise the heights of buildings in areas that don't have affordable housing in them to find low-middle income units, but if we don't get Albany to sign off on this stuff, we're handcuffed. We're going to still build housing but nowhere near the levels that we'd like to. Innovation Queens, a project that we did. Willis Point, 100 percent affordable. You start going down the line. Bruckner, they didn't have any affordable units for the most part up there. We went up there and the local Councilwoman Velázquez was able to do it.

So we need help from Albany to assist in getting this housing that we need, and that's why these town halls are important, because right away, people see me on the train or they see me on the block and they say, "Eric, why aren't you building more affordable?" I need you to understand what is in the way of us building that housing that you're talking about so you can go and say, "My local elected, my senators, my assembly persons, y'all need to get this bill passed and get this housing incentives in place." Because I'm with you, we need more housing.

Mayor Adams: Dan Garodnick. Do you want to add to that, Dan?

Dan Garodnick, Chair City Planning Commission: Sure. Thank you, mayor. All I wanted to add beyond your excellent points about the challenges that we're facing in Albany, which include artificial limits on how much density we can have in residential development, incentives to build more, the way that the housing crisis connects to the tenant's rights challenges that we have in the city is that there really can't be tenants rights when you don't have sufficient supply of housing. If you don't have an option as a tenant, you are in a vulnerable position relative to a landlord. And the point about people who are rent burdened, 50 percent of New Yorkers are rent burdened today, which means that they pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Our housing has not kept up. This is not a recent problem, this is a many decades long problem and we need to catch up, and the mayor has set some very ambitious goals.

We are putting together our own proposals. Absent what Albany is not doing, we are developing our own plans as to what we can do here in New York City separate and apart from Albany, and we look forward to having that conversation with this community and communities around the city where we are going to say, "Well, look, the moment has come for us to create more housing for the sake of tenants' rights, for the cost of housing, the challenges of gentrification and homelessness, and we really want to take this moment to advance the wall and make sure every community is doing their share. We really need to take this moment now, so we are developing our own plans, a citywide text amendment to be able to promote housing growth in New York City and that's coming in the next few months.

Question: I feel really lucky to ask my question after you just said that because I don't think we need to build more housing in New York. We have a lot of housing in New York but it's been illegally destabilized, and we have tens of thousands of warehouse departments that are rent controlled that their landlords are holding onto. So my question to you, Mayor Adams. Without even going into the building part, we could have hundreds of thousands of apartments that people can afford. Would you be willing to promise to us today to immediately form a branch in your office to look at all the rent controlled buildings in the boroughs and give this branch the power to restabilize illegally destabilized apartments and unwarehouse the tens of thousands of rent control apartments so New Yorkers can live peacefully, safely and within their budget now. You don't have to build more buildings.

Mayor Adams: We heard you. You could take a seat now. We got you.

Question: Okay. I was just going to say…

Mayor Adams: One of the most important statements I learned from my mommy was sometimes, idealism collides with realism. We need to build more housing. The number of people who come to this city does not equal the number of available inventory that we have. I know being idealistic, it sounds like overnight, we could just make this happen, but you are on the right road. When I was Brooklyn Borough President, I met with the state and the city and stated that we need to build out a system using technology that would show our entire stock of affordable units. Have it in the green, yellow, and red, green being in every apartment that is normalized, that people are living there, there's no problem. Yellow is if they're in the threat of being in court, so we can immediately get the services there, we allocate the money there. And red is if they're in the process of being evicted. I would like to revisit that.

What happened was the state said to us, "We can't turn over information to you of who lives in a rent stabilized apartment out of their right to privacy." If we can get the state to give me that power, I can put in a mechanism that will use technology that will allow us to stop the hemorrhaging of affordable units.

Because you are right, we're hemorrhaging too many affordable units, and by the time we learn that we lost it, we're looking in our rear view mirror. I would like to be more forward-thinking to say every affordable unit that we have, we need to be protecting it, and anytime we are in threat of losing it, we need to throw our full force behind it, and then we need to aggressively go after those folks who illegally take apartments off of our rent rolls for doing so.

So I'm with you. You are 100 percent right. I'm going to revisit that concept that we wanted to put in place, and if I could get the governor to allow us to get that information, I think we can make a real impact. So I thank you for that question. We are 100 percent on board.

Make sure, get her information please because I'm into this volunteer stuff. So one of our team members, I don't see anyone walking towards her.

Commissioner Kreizman: Kevin's sitting there.

Mayor Adams: Oh, okay. All right. Thank you. What's your name?

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: Okay, thank you. Thank you. Make sure you give your info. Love it, love it.

Commissioner Kreizman: We have a staff member at every table to get your information. So next table, [inaudible] in the back corner, if you have someone at your table to ask a question?

Question: Thank you. Good evening.

Commissioner Kreizman: Good evening.

Question: So we are here representing educators, parent coordinators, teachers, and we have the Department of Probation present at this table. So our question is... And thank you mayor. Thank you. This is a great venue and very good stuff happening right now. Our question is around the Summer Rising program. So we love to hear that many students and families are interested in sending or attending summer school. We were wondering if there are plans for opening new sites to accommodate more students currently wait-listed.

Deputy Commissioner Haskell: Thank you so much for that question. 110,000 K-8 students, it is, as we said earlier, the biggest summer enrichment program probably anywhere. If you have been unable to find a seat, we are identifying programs that may have availability on the DOE website, nyc.gov/summerrising, and you could look there to see if there's a suitable space near your home or your place of work that would potentially accommodate your young people. If you applied and you didn't get a seat, your information is going automatically to the school and community-based provider as a wait list, so that if somebody does give up their seat, they already have your information, you expressed interest in those locations, and they can reach out to you if a space is available.

Chancellor Banks: Let me just also point out as well, the mayor should be really saluted, I think, for what he's done with Summer Rising. This is a great program. And the demand far exceeds, right now, our ability. So while it's the biggest that we've ever had, it can be even bigger, that's how many people are looking to be a part of this. It has been rolled out because of the coordination between City Hall, New York City Public Schools, and DYCD worked hand-in-hand in the coordination and the development of this. The website didn't crash. And so, things have just worked really, really well. And we're going to take a look at this for next year to figure out how can we potentially expand it because we see the demand is just so great.

But I will tell you, I don't want you to leave with false hopes. It's highly unlikely that we'll be creating more sites at this time. It's getting ready to launch in a few days. But again, if you had somebody very specific, feel free to come and see us before it's over.

Mayor Adams: It was a real win. And I was just saying to the first deputy mayor that we would love... I'm a big all year round school person. I don't think our children should be out of unstructured learning for two months and have the summer loss at the end of the month. Affluent communities, they have a well-structured environment for their children. Our children deserve the same, the sister that said it, we deserve the same. We need to figure it out. First of all, I'm happy that in about two, three days, we were at capacity.

So if we can find a way to expand it, I'm with you, I would love to expand it. Having these children in a safe space over the summer months, it's just a real win. Allowing them to get that education, that structure throughout the summer months, it's just a real win. We got to figure it out. I agree with you 100 percent. And we just got to find a way. Even if we can get some private entities to help us, to put up the money. We're dealing with some fiscal challenges, but this is a real good investment. We love the Summer Rising program.

Question: Good evening, Mr. Mayor and every commissioner. Thank you for having us here. Our table actually had all the same concerns that everybody had here and you guys already addressed it. I brought up one and it was not in this list, so I took the liberty to bring it up to see if you could say something about it. I worked for a nonprofit on 131st and Park. And my journey going from my house into 25th and Broadway to 131st is terrifying, because the 125th and Park, Lexington. I'm very nervous.

And I just wanted to know what can be done. Because being in the bus and waiting for the bus that takes forever to arrive is like, "Oh my God, am I going to make it home or one of these people here in the streets is going to..." It's very scary. It is really scary. So I just wanted to know if there's something that you could say about that. Because I'm very sure that you guys are aware because I believe Adriano, you have an office over there, Mark Levine has an office around there too. So, I know that you guys are aware of this. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: I think it was... Was it February? It was a rainy day. It was a rainy day that the congressman asked me to come to Harlem and walk the 125th Street strip. It was cold, it was rainy that day. And we did just that. Barbara Askins, right? Barbara Askins used, I think it was a motel location, to open up a community response team there. I was there with Shams DaBaron a few months ago, around November, December. Because I wanted to go there at night. You know where that bus drops off everyone that comes from Randall's Island, I met there with them. I took the bus over to Randall's Island, it must have been about one o'clock in the morning, to look what was going on. But I was just there at, it's either 1:30 or 2:00 am, last Friday, just there. Went to the train station. The area was filthy. The streets were filthy, garbage was everywhere.

So we're going to do what we did about the encampments. I told them we're going to put together a multi-agency task force, and their reps are going to meet me there 1:30 in the morning, I'm there at 1:30 in the morning, and look at the conditions. The conditions are deplorable. And you lead to disorder when you create disorder.

And we were there Friday, I was there with the chief of patrol, the commanding officer there. We were in the train station, we were walking the streets. We just need to clean up. We need to do a power wash there, clean the area there. We need to figure out what we are going to do with that bus that drops everyone from Randalls Island in one location there. There's the treatment center around there, Dr. Vasan, there's an injection site there. So, there just needs to be some focus there. I know exactly what you're talking about. I walk that streets with the residents. Because they have too many treatment centers also there, where people are coming from outside Harlem to go to those locations. I was just there Friday. I'm with you. I was walking the streets there and I know what you're saying is real.

US Representative Espaillat: On that issue, we're going to be having another meeting with Oasis, which is the state agency that licenses the treatment centers. That neighborhood has been redlined with about 10 or so programs that bring people from really the entire city there. And we want to decentralize that. We're not saying that we're not going to carry our load, but we shouldn't have more than we deserve to have. And 10 is too many, and we're looking. We're speaking to Mount Sinai and the private operators. We met with them already once. The next meeting is going to be with OASIS, which is a state agency that licenses those programs, to see if they could be decentralized to other neighborhoods across the city, where those folks that are getting the servers live as well.

And then, today, we had a round table with the MTA. The second avenue subway, second phase is coming. That should make that area cleaner. Because money is going to be invested in the viaduct there on 125th Street and Park. It is a $7 billion project. Three subway stops ending on 125th Street and connecting to Metro North. That should help out with the area there.

But at the end of the day, that area has been redlined. And there's just too many programs in one particular neighborhood. And the community cannot carry the load there. So, we're asking the state which issues the permits for these programs to look for other sites, including Mount Sinai, the hospital that runs a couple other programs, so that the neighborhood could be released of some of the stress there.

Question: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, thank you for being with us tonight, and to all the incredible city leaders here. My name is Nicole McVinua. I am a proud resident of Washington Heights. And I'm also the director of policy at Urban Pathways. We are a homeless services and supportive housing provider. And our table talked a lot about the importance of social services. We are relying on human services and social services now more than ever before. But nonprofits are seeing an incredibly high turnover rate and also a lot of difficulty staffing up our programs. Some programs have as high as a 30 percent staff vacancy rate, which makes it difficult to provide the services. And we're seeing really incredible multi-year, multi-billion dollar wage increase deals with UFT, with NYPD, which is all incredibly important. But human services don't want to be left behind. My question is, what are you doing to support the human services programs to ensure we can be fully staffed? And will there be a cost of living adjustment for the nonprofit human services workers in the upcoming budget? Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you for that. My first deputy mayor ran United Way for years. She came in with a real mission about how do we make sure those nonprofits are treated fairly. And we even opened an office of nonprofits to help the nonprofits navigate the bureaucracy of government. We cannot reveal everything that's in the budget because we haven't finished it, but we hear you. And I will say that you're going to see that we heard you loud and clear. The budget is being finalized now, but this has been an issue that we are very much aware of, and we want to be fair in the process.

Question: Hello. I'm close to the speaker, so. Good evening everyone. My name is Carlos Guzman. I'm the principal of MS 324 located in Washington Heights. I want to thank our superintendent, Manny Ramirez, Deputy Superintendent Camille Wallin, and the district team, for supporting us principals here. Chancellor Banks, thank you so much for supporting our schools. Senator Espaillat and Borough President Levine, thank you so much for fighting for resources for our school. And Mayor Adams, thank you so much for leading our schools. I want to thank our members at Table 18. They had so much to speak about and multiple perspectives on many issues. Our question is, public safety and a shortage of school safety agents is an ongoing concern. What is being done to incentivize joining the NYPD to combat these issues and support our young people?

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Chancellor, you want to respond to the school safety piece about it. But let me tell you what I'm real proud about. And the chancellor will go into the school safety issues. When I was running for mayor, there were many people who said that we don't need school safety agents in our schools and they wanted to take them out. We have been doing a series of youth town halls throughout the city with DYCD and some of the crisis management teams. Do you know that's the number one issue that young people were saying? Number one issue, these young people were saying they want to be safe, they want school safety agents. And the second, I think Dr. Vasan will tell you, was dealing with trauma and trauma-informed care.

I believe the prerequisite to our prosperity is public safety and justice. We have to be safe, our children must be safe. And we believe in building a collaboration. Under this chancellor, he has the school safety agents, the principals, and the police department, all doing something revolutionary, talking to each other. They speak on a regular basis, they try to prevent the problems from happening. Our goal is to get more young people to become school safety agents and be part of the process. School safety agents are unbelievable. They do more than just security. They do clothing drives, they talk to the young people, they know how to gauge if there's a problem. I'm just really impressed with our school safety agents. Chancellor, you want to talk about the specifics around that?

Chancellor Banks: Yeah. I don't think there's ever been a mayor and chancellor who supports school safety more than we do, and school safety agents in particular. I'm the first chancellor in history that was a school safety agent. I've worked in Brooklyn, at Clara Barton High School, and I wore that uniform, and working to try to keep.... Yes. Somebody said, "What? I've never heard that before." It's true. Before I even became a teacher and an educator, I was a school safety agent. And so I know what school safety agents mean.

And in schools that work well, school safety agents are every bit as part of the success of that school as the third grade teacher or the eighth grade teacher or anybody else. They are part of the entire family and the fabric of a successful school.

We have increased, by hundreds, the number of school safety agents since we started in this administration. And we're still bringing on more classes to bring folks on. So, a lot of work that we still have to do.But the work of keeping our kids safe is not simply school safety agents. It is in fact the community, it is in fact the village. It's one of the reasons why we're really proud of one of our biggest initiatives called Project Pivot, where we got dozens of organizations, close to 150 community based organizations, who we have given contracts to, to work with us to support our schools, to provide safe passage to and from schools. We're going to be expanding those programs as we go into the next school year.

One of the things that the mayor did was to ensure that all the school principals and commanding officers of your precincts are talking by Zoom on a regular basis so that you can find out where there are issues that we can get ahead of it. Principal Guzman, where are you again? Let me just ask you a question. Are you part of the regular meetings with your commanding officer from your local precinct?

Question: Yes. Every Monday, with Bryan Natale and his staff.

Chancellor Banks: That's what I'm talking about. This is something that the mayor put in place. The chief of the department and I speak regularly. Building that communication is critically important. And when we have that communication, we should be able to find out from the principal of the school about that smoke-shop across the street or the folks that are selling the drugs right across the street from the school, so that we can move on that. And we don't have to hear about that at a town hall meeting, that we've already been made aware of that and people are already moving to make sure that things like that are happening. So, it's a comprehensive approach. We're all in, we're fully committed. We appreciate your leadership at your school as well and thank you. And hoping you'll have a great summer as well.

Question: Thank you.

Mayor Adams: What's interesting is that you mentioned by name who your commanding officer is. That was not in the past. You have these two important entities in our community and they did not know each other. I believe the principals of a community, they're the quarterback. Every agency in the city needs to respond to the needs of the principal of the school.

I'll never forget Tracy telling me the story when she was a principal in 316. There was a problem at her school and she called the precinct, the person who picked the phone refused to put the desk officer on. She identified herself as the principal of the school. The desk officer refused to get on the phone and speak with the principal. And when she went to the precinct, the desk officer said, "Find out what this young lady wants." She's the principal of the school in the community. That's the level of disrespect that we had in this city. We don't play that in this administration. That principal calls you, you better pick up that phone and you better find out what she wants and what he needs.

There's a couple of things. One, we have 12,000 jobs. 12,000 jobs. We're doing something called hiring halls. What we did? 15?

Deputy Commissioner Haskell: Yes.

Mayor Adams: 15 hiring halls. Going around the city, right in your community, bringing the agencies there. Dawn Pinnock, our commissioner of DCAS, showing all these jobs that are available, where people can be hired on the spot. People are being interviewed and hired on the spot. This is our moment to diversify our administration. And all of us know somewhere, someone. That cousin, that son that's been sleeping in that room all this time, tell him to get his butt up and come to one of these hiring halls and fill out these applications for these jobs. Good retirement benefits, good health insurance. Let's start hiring some people.

I came to this community when I was running for office, spoke with Congressman Espaillat. And it was important to me that our city had diversity. We had the first Filipino-American to be a deputy mayor, first Indian-American to be a deputy mayor, first African-American woman to be the first deputy mayor, second African-American woman to be the chief of staff, first Hispanic to run the Department of Correction. We had all these firsts, but I had one more first I had to finish. We've never had a Dominican to be a deputy mayor in the city of New York. We said that is over when we appointed Deputy Mayor Almanzar to the position to be the deputy mayor. I tell people all the time, "I was born in Alabama, but I'm Dominican baby." And she brings a knowledge of skill, of attitude, of discipline.

When Chancellor Banks stated that he was a school crossing guard, people were saying wow, a school safety agent. You go down the line and you speak to the people here. This is the first administration... Do an analysis of other administrations to see where the leadership came from. These are real people. This administration is made up of real people, people who have gone through some stuff. And they're now coming back and saying, "I know what you're going through."

You just spend the time of talking to each one of them and ask to hear their story, you will be blown away at the lives that they had to live to get here. Our commissioner of immigrant affairs, his story is just so profound. When he is talking to the asylum seekers, he's seeing his mother, he's seeing him. When you speak to Detective Stewart, when you speak to Dr. Vasan. You listen to Dr. Vasan's story, it just sends chills up your spine. These are real people that are solving real problems.

Ana, what you got? 10 brothers and sisters? Nine brothers and sisters? When you see her mother not understanding English, to be standing there at that announcement and watching her daughter become the deputy mayor of the most powerful city in America?

This is our moment and opportunities. And a lot of people are upset with that. They're hating every day. But you know what? Better get over it. This is our time to run this city, how we were being denied for so long? Thank you for coming out tonight and we look forward to continuing the conversation.