Our Communities
Op-Ed by Mayor Eric Adams
Mayor Eric Adams: Investing in making New York City the best place to live.
From day one, our administration has been focused on one mission: making New York City safer and more affordable. Every day and everywhere, we are delivering on that mission for working-class New Yorkers and making New York City the best place to raise a family.
We have driven crime down, seized 20,000 illegal guns, removed 80,000 ghost cars and other illegal vehicles off our streets, and shut down more than 1,300 unlicensed cannabis stores. We passed the historic “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” plan, the most pro-housing proposal in New York City history. We have stimulated the creation of a record number of jobs and new small businesses and put billions of dollars back into the pockets of working-class New Yorkers. It is clear: New York City’s economy is booming.
Last week, thanks to our strong, forward-looking fiscal management and strategic investments, we delivered a balanced Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year 2026, that invests in making New York City the best place to live, work, and raise a family.
Our North Star has been and remains public safety, and every day we are making sure our families and kids can feel safe and be safe in our city. That is why this plan invests $137 million to address homelessness and help those suffering from serious mental illness move off our streets and subways and into housing; this includes funding for 900 new Safe Haven beds and 100 additional shelter beds for runaway homeless youth.
And we are launching an innovative new program, “Bridge to Home,” that will provide New Yorkers suffering from serious mental illness with psychiatric and substance abuse treatment and help to secure permanent housing.
This budget also keeps New Yorkers safe on our streets and in our waters by improving road safety at hundreds of targeted traffic intersections and adding more lifeguards to our roster so we can deliver swim lessons to more of our young people and keep our kids safe.
New Yorkers work hard every day to provide for themselves and their families. They not only deserve a safe city, but a fair shot and their fair share, and in this January Plan we are giving it to them.
From investing in legal services to assist tenants who are being harassed by their landlords to supporting our Home Support Unit, which helps New Yorkers secure vacant apartments through rental subsidy programs, we are ensuring that New Yorkers have a roof over their heads.
We know that extra money in your pocket can make all the difference when it comes to essential expenses like food, rent, and school supplies; that is why we launched our ambitious “Axe the Tax for the Working Class” proposal, which brings significant tax relief to working families. We can’t get this done without Albany’s help and we’re calling on them to include our proposal in the Fiscal Year 2026 state budget.
The January Plan also continues to fund monthly “JobsNYC” hiring halls in communities experiencing high unemployment and supports an initiative that works with low-income New Yorkers to prepare them for apprenticeships in the building trades.
New Yorkers love their parks, and we are taking care of our green spaces by adding a second cleaning shift at 100 more hotspots in 64 parks and hiring additional staff to tend to 4,000 tree beds across the five boroughs — helping keep the rats away and our urban forest healthy. And we will open additional school yards to the public after-school, on weekends, and during the summer to put 20,000 more New Yorkers within a 10-minute walk of a park.
This plan also deepens our commitment to New York City kids and their education by extending Summer Rising hours and Friday programming to 30,000 middle schoolers, as well as extending our Learning to Work program — helping students who have fallen behind earn a high school diploma and prepare for college and their careers. And we are expanding our Pathways program to provide additional career readiness opportunities to students at New York City Public Schools.
In our January Plan, we are investing in things that matter most to New Yorkers: safety, generational housing, tackling homelessness and serious mental health, education, our parks, quality of life, and how we can make our city more affordable.
Our administration is working hard every day and everywhere to deliver for working-class New Yorkers and make New York City the best place to raise a family.
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