Mayor Adams' State Of The City: 2024 Will Bring More Jobs, Housing

NEW YORK CITY — Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday made ambitious promises to New Yorkers to the tune of five million jobs, lower crime rates and a multi-pronged development project on New York's harbor.

In his third State of the City Address at Hostos College Wednesday afternoon, Adams promised New Yorkers 5 million new jobs by 2025 and 24 new public housing developments by 2024.

Adams made some old-school New York City promises, like continuing his epic war on rats which, apparently, Adams and the rat czar are winning.

But he announced new projects and priorities, too — like a new "department of sustainable delivery" to handle the scourge of lithium-ion battery fires, and four new major skate parks in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Adams also announced a $40 million "women-forward plan" will soon be released outlining new health, safety and support systems for New York City's women and a task force to handle online safety for young New Yorkers.

Here are three key takeaways from Adams' State of the City address:

Law Enforcement & Crime

Just days after controversially vetoing an NYPD reform bill lauded by its supporters as a necessary accountability safeguard, Adams said public trust in law enforcement is of high importance in 2024.

"Public safety means public trust too. Our police officers are always held to the highest possible standards," Adams said. "Right now, some internal discipline cases in our police department can take as long as a year to resolve, if not more."

To make headways on that trust issue, the NYPD will reform its internal case process and eliminate redundancies, Adams said.

Adams said his government supported law enforcement with better training, pay and benefits in 2023. He also made sure that police were largely spared from sweeping budget cuts that hit nearly every city agency hard, including the culling of Sunday service at libraries across the city.

The former cop lauded his mayoral tenure so far as a huge win for public safety — noting that crime dropped in 2023.

Overall crime fell 0.3 percent last year compared to 2022, according to NYPD statistics.

Adams noted that shootings and homicides were down and that cops had removed a huge number of illegal guns from New York City's streets.

Even still, major crimes remain at levels unseen in New York City since 2006.

A key dichotomy in New York City is the disparity between crime levels and New Yorkers' sense of safety, Adams said.

To attack the tale of facts and feelings, the mayor said he wants to start cracking down on illegal cannabis stores, do more to face the "rising tide of antisemitism and Islamophobia," and ensuring ongoing protests remain peaceful.

"Our city has gotten safer, but we need people to feel safe too," Adams said.

Development

New York City's harbor will become the nation's "harbor of the future" through a series of development projects Adams claims will have a $95 billion impact on New York City's economy.

"We are transforming the waterfronts and shorelines that first made New York the economic engine of this nation into the harbor of the future," Adams said.

In the Bronx, the Hunts Point Produce Markets — the borough's largest food distribution center that received huge federal and state financial investments in recent years — will soon run on only renewable energy, Adams said.

Part of the harbor revamp also includes a climate innovation hub at Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, first announced in September 2023, that will ultimately total to a four-million square foot campus, "turning Sunset Park into a center for clean tech innovation and manufacturing," Adams said.

In Kips Bay, a city block will be turned into a life sciences and health education center, and Brooklyn Navy Yard will become a hub for sustainability and green tech startups, Adams said.

Governors Island will become the site of a $700 million climate campus — what Adams called the first center for climate research and job training in the country.

And don't worry — Adams hasn't forgotten Staten Island, which will soon host a mixed-use waterfront community. That development should create 7,500 jobs, he said.

Housing

Beyond the harbor, Adams promised to deliver 24 public housing projects in 2024, which will create or preserve over 12,000 residential units — a step that could help him meet his already-ambitious goal of creating 500,000 new units in the next 10 years

Adams declared his housing plan includes prioritizing building over preserving, cracking down on deed theft and canceling medical debt that burdens New Yorkers from affording rent.

Development momentum in New York City grew in 2023, according to a report from New York YIMBY which found developers had filed for 14,010 residential and hotel units in the third quarter of the year, a big jump from the previous months.

And Adams announced last week that city agencies closed on financing for a record-breaking amount of affordable homes.

"We're committed to helping New Yorkers stay in their homes or find a new one if needed," Adams said Wednesday.