>> With escalating rent, the lack of affordable units and too many New Yorkers sleeping on the streets, our city is facing a housing emergency.

We hear directly from Mayor Eric Adams on what he plans to do to address New York's seemingly never ending housing crisis.

"MetroFocus" starts right now.

♪ >> This is "MetroFocus."

with Rafael P Roma, Jack Ford, and Jenna Flanagan.

Metro focus is made possible by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Foundation, The Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, Bernard and Denise Schwartz, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, and by Jody and John Arnhold, The Dr. Robin C. and Tina Sohn Foundation, The Ambrose Monell Foundation, Estate of Roland Carlin, The JPB Foundation.

Rafael: Good evening and welcome to "MetroFocus."

I am Rafael Pi Roman.

Affordable housing or the lack of it is one of New York City's most constant and pervasive issues.

From perpetual rent hikes, to the city's homelessness crisis, to the never ending fight between those who want more affordable housing and who don't, or at least not in their neighborhoods, the need for innovative solutions to our housing problem has never been greater.

Tonight, as part of our chasing the green initiative, and in partnership with WNYC, we bring you a special conversation aimed at addressing these issues.

Josefa Velasquez, an editor for WNYC, recently sat down with Mayor Adams at New York Public radio's iconic Greene Space, to hear directly from the mayor himself about his plans for the future of housing in New York City.

Josefa: Mr. Mayor, we are -- we are really appreciative of your time here with us, and we know we have you for a limited time.

Housing is a massive subject that probably everyone in this room cares about.

Given that, I want to make sure we talk about your housing plan you have unveiled, the topic of homelessness, which is a huge issue here, and what our city looks like in the future.

I want to start with the impact of the pandemic.

We have seen the pandemic in the last few years spur a sense of urgency, and how important affordability is for all of us.

It has laid bare a lot of inequities that were simmering under the surface.

And because of that, we saw how many New Yorkers are on the brink of being able to lose their house, or not being able to afford living here.

You have unveiled this plan to create half a million units of housing in the next decade.

How do we get there?

Mayor Adams: I think even before we engage in that conversation, being the mayor, sometimes people look at you, you are the mayor, first black State Senator, Captain of the police department, that is my glory, that's not my story.

For folks like your mom who speak it second language, I know what it is like to come up from family coming from Alabama, living in neighborhoods, slipping on the floors in rat infested neighborhoods.

Every week, we went to a new location.

Taking a garbage can bag of clothing to school every day because mom thought we were going to be thrown out and wanted us to have a change of clothing.

I'm not here because I read about homelessness.

I'm here because my family lived it.

When you look at what is happening in this city right now, particularly post-pandemic, this is a city where it is getting more and more unaffordable.

What our plan, and Jessica Katz has donated her life to this housing issue, is to look at, let's properly define what are the problems very clear.

800,000 people moved to the city.

We built 200,000 units of housing.

Josefa: Clearly not enough.

Mayor Adams: Math does not add up.

We have to build more.

We have to build more -- we have to find pathways for more, middle income and market rate.

All three of them.

That is what our plan is looking at, and there are three areas that Jessica and the team, we are focused on.

One, the politics of it.

If you only know how many times I hear people stand on the steps of City Hall and state, housing is a right, housing is a right you know what?

How about me building it in your community.

No, it is not a right there.

I've got my Park, I have my subway station, I have my whole foods.

We don't need another building in our community.

Josefa: How do you change people's minds then?

Mayor Adams: Number one, we have to start asking -- what Barbara Levine did, at the state of the borough, he said, here are the places in my borough we can build.

Eric -- some empowers did it.

Every city Council person, every State Senator, every assembly person should be saying to my office, here is where you can build in our community.

We have a lot of sacred towels, we are communities where we have the loudest, yet they don't want to build any affordable housing in their communities.

That is unacceptable.

We should be building, particularly in places in Manhattan, where you have access to food, access to transportation, access to good schools.

We want to integrate a segregated city, then we need to build in those communities that have access to these good qualities that we are seeing throughout the city.

Josefa: What are the biggest bit -- one of the biggest barriers, aside from people saying I don't want this in my backyard, how do we get to building or converting places?

Mayor Adams: We have to protect what we have.

NYCHA has been abandoned by the federal government.

We are not doing the right thing on the state level.

We need to think differently about NYCHA.

We need to engage citizens in doing so.

We have to ensure that we make NYCHA, that is the best access to affordable housing we have.

Too many units are laying vacant.

It is challenging to determine who controls NYCHA nowadays with the special monitor.

Who is actually in control.

What happened at the house, what I did not like, I could not fire the person who I believed drop a ball in those houses.

We need to get into NYCHA, think differently about NYCHA.

I'm excited about the project in Chelsea.

It is a new way of thinking.

People who are saying we need $35 billion coming from the federal government, we are not getting it.

With Republican-controlled House.

We need to stop lying about it and keep telling NYCHA residents, hold on.

Those bugles we hear, that is not the Calvary.

That is taps.

NYCHA is dying and we need to fix NYCHA.

Josefa: $35 billion, $40 billion, is almost an unthinkable amount of money.

NYCHA's housing is obviously aging rapidly.

What can the city do to make sure some of the fixes that need to occur actually happen, considering the state of NYCHA is so poor now?

Mayor Adams: You look at some of the buildings, it is more expensive.

-- it is more expensive to repair than tearing down and building up.

There is a concept being floated around on the Chelsea area, where a building would be torn down, first build a building that the tenants will go right into the building you built, tear down the building that they are leaving.

Zero displacement.

Place them in brand-new apartments.

I have been in a NYCHA building.

I know some of these buildings are dilapidated to the state of repair is unacceptable.

I gutted my home when I moved in.

If I attempted to fix it instead of complete gut job, it would have been a waste of time.

We need to look at the politics.

Some of the smart things that we presented, 114 different changes we believe we need to do on how redundancy and repeated reviews over and over again, stated in places where we cannot build, where it was not acceptable to build, refusing to build higher.

We have to look at each level, what we can do as a city, what we can do in Albany, and what we can do with the processes that need to be redefined.

Josefa: Going back to your housing proposal, half a million units in 10 years, it sounds great.

I need all the housing we can get.

Is there anything you can do now, six months, in a year, to house people who need it?

Mayor Adams: A couple of things.

We need to have a real conversation about 421A.

Need to look at J 51.

There are things that are taking place now in Albany.

I really take my hat off to the governor.

What the governor is doing about regional.

You need to look at the region, because this is a regional problem.

Then immediately, when we got an office, we had 2500 units of apartments that were vacant.

Jessica Katz came in, immediately put in a plan where we put 1000 people in.

I had the team give me a flowchart of the process, and the redundancy was unbelievable.

There was an antiquated method of how do you take people, to move them into available units, that is unacceptable.

There is an easier way to do it.

Josefa: Just to go back on your housing proposal, one of them is to take these empty office buildings, the pandemic really brought in this era of hybrid work and remote work where people are not spending as much time in mainland Manhattan than they were back in the day.

I'm curious to hear from you how those conversations are going with Albany.

Across the street, we have an empty office building.

How do we turn those into apartments?

Mayor Adams: Did it before, we did it after September 11.

I was a key cop in district two in lower Manhattan.

That area was a basically 926 environment, 6:00 p.m., it was a downtown.

We understood after September 11, we thought differently.

Now you have a thriving community in the area.

Many of these buildings can be converted into housing.

We have about 10 million square feet of real estate.

Right now, that is not being used.

Even folks who do have office spaces, they are downsizing.

They are not continuing to have the large floorplan.

There is a great opportunity, we had a project down in Manhattan off of William Street that is a conversion.

It is being converted into housing.

But the problem is it is being converted into market rate.

Because if we give the incentive to allow it to be converted into affordable housing, there is some great opportunities to do so.

Josefa: How do you define affordable, and how do we make sure there is affordable housing?

Affordable to one person might be different from someone else.

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt.

That is a question I hear all the time.

It has almost become a bumper sticker.

The reality is we have done a great job of increasing the minimum wage for fast food workers.

If you have a full-time person working at McDonald's, and his spouse or her spouse is a teacher, we have pushed them out of the low, low income.

Affordable to me is market, middle, low income.

Because I need my middle income and my market individuals in the city as well.

If we take away the moderate incomes, we are going to be forcing the market rates into those apartments that are in the low income.

Affordable is a combination, it is a diversity of this city.

I need my fast food workers, my deliveries, I also need my teachers, my accountants.

We are 200,000 African-Americans that have left the city.

Because it is too expensive, as well as with the security issues we were facing.

Affordable, to me, is every income level.

Because that is what the city is comprised of.

Josefa: Mentioned earlier for 21/a.

For those who don't know, these are tax programs that give incentives to developers that they set aside a portion of their housing toward affordable housing.

That expired 1, 2 years ago.

Time is a flat circle when it comes to the pandemic.

I'm curious how you are pushing those proposals up in Albany and how -- and why that is needed, why this tax programs are needed now?

Mayor Adams: Any people thought if we took away for 21A, they said it was a devote -- it was a giveaway.

It is an incentive.

When you look at what is in the pipeline, there is a complete drying up of the pipeline.

And we can't be so idealistic that we are not realistic.

Incentivizing and being smart about where you want to do the incentives, would allow us to get the housing in the pipeline.

Event that is so important.

Then building out our transportation systems.

This crucial.

J51 -- it should not have set on sunset.

It was a smart way of ensuring that we will -- we were continuing housing repairs.

I grew up in Brooklyn.

I knew what to brush woke Avenue looked like.

They started fires and burned on the community because it became too expensive to manage those apartments.

It's crucial that we look at, in a smart way, incentive to continue repairs and building in the city.

Josefa: If you can put your State Senator hat on for a second, what does 421a look like, or does -- or what dozen symptoms for developers look like to get affordable housing at the rate the city needs?

Mayor Adams: If you look at certain locations where it has been slower in developing, you look at places like Donovan Richards is doing out in Rockaway.

You look at what is happening in the Bronx.

They are getting ready to build out a new train station in that area.

We can do some real development around that area.

You look at even places in South Jamaica Queens.

Some of the projects near the septum Boulevard station.

When you have the Long Island Railroad and the train to the planes.

If you strategically layout where you are going to do the development and the incentives, it could be a real win.

Josefa: It is funny you mention that, that is where my mom and I landed when we came to the U.S.

It is where my dad lives now.

My brother and I drive up and down the street -- hey, Danny -- and talk about, how is it possible this area had not been developed?

There is a subway close by, it is not touched almost by development.

Maybe that changes.

It is such an interesting community and so robust.

Mayor Adams: Here is what I heard when I was campaigning.

No matter which community I traveled in.

You think about it also.

People ask two questions when they go to move somewhere.

How good are the schools?

How safe is the community?

Public Safety is the prerequisite to our prosperity, and making sure our schools are good.

When you look at the safety issue in Rockaway that we have been tackling, and the qualities of the schools, when you are looking to raise a family somewhere, the first thing you want to know is how good are the schools, how safe is the community.

Make the community safer and we -- we improve on the school system, like what Jessica Banks is doing, you will see people rushing to that beautiful waterfront community.

Josefa: There is one thing that sticks in my mind, and it is the words of Jimmy McMillan, the perennial candidate, saying that rent is too damn high.

It is not just rent, it is home prices.

I'm curious if anything the city can do to bring down those costs?

Mayor Adams: It is a combination.

We have to get back into business of homeownership.

Time blown away, when I was -- I am blown away, when I was a child, that mom was able to purchase a home in Queens.

We lived in a four-story rat infested tenement, and she was able to purchase that home by cleaning the homes of others.

That dream is snatched away when you look at this city.

The cost of purchasing a home.

We put around $9 million into assistance in down payments in fiscal year 2022.

$53 million in expanding homeownership.

The goal is really to do a combination.

Allow people the opportunity, the pathway of homeownership.

And being creative in doing so.

Finding those different opportunities.

My first ownership was a co-op.

I was able to have a co-op, and low income co-op, was able to move into -- I went from renting to a co-op, to purchasing my three family homes.

My three family home, I have tenants in there for the last 15 years.

When they signed their lease, I signed into the lease, I could never raise your rent, as long as you are in my building.

We have to stop talking about it and being about it.

Josefa: And actually do it.

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Josefa: We have a question from one of the folks in our audience.

Judith from the West Village.

She wants to know, how do you envision the conversion of commercial buildings to residential, to include very affordable housing?

Mayor Adams: It is a combination.

If we do the right changes in Albany, we could have a conversation and move away from the market rate that we saw downtown.

I believe in a concept, something I saw in other countries.

Instead of we work, we live.

My son lived differently.

He has a stove in his department.

I don't think he knows how to turn it on.

He eats out.

He loves his shared living.

Why can't we do a real examination of the rules in the state that every bedroom has a window?

Instead of doing that, have studio apartments, shared living and working spaces.

My son enjoyed that whole dormitory setting.

I think we have to reinvent our conversation, a modern-day SRO concept.

There are great models across the globe.

It is a portable -- it is affordable, and then we need to allow the cross-pollination of ideas and people living together.

Josefa: Gotcha.

I want to shift gears to talk about homelessness.

In the last few years alone, we have seen a rising number of homeless people.

Part of that is due to the fact that we have this influx of asylum-seekers who have been coming into this country over the last year.

I know you have asked for federal assistance.

Absent that, what can the city do to bring down the number of people who are living without shelter?

Mayor Adams: Great question.

I think -- I am a big upstream thinker.

When you look at our policies, you will see we are rooted in upstream.

Archbishop Desmond spent a lifetime pulling people out of the river, instead of going upstream and preventing them from falling in the first place.

We have to think differently.

That is why we are forced to care.

Also investing in those other issues that are upstream thinking.

A young child growing up in a homeless shelter is three times less likely to graduate from high school.

If you don't educate, you will incarcerate.

That is why we see 80% of our inmates don't have a high school diploma.

We are feeding the criminal justice in the homeless crisis.

When we took off -- took office, I spent January and February in the streets.

People criticize our plan.

But I'm to the streets January and February at night, by myself, visited people in encampments and intents and boxes -- and in tents and boxes.

I saw drug paraphernalia, human waste, bipolar, stale food, unkept.

It is on acceptable.

Our mission, and the subway system, when I rode the subway system, we had a woman sleeping under the stairs in the subway system and we normalize that.

We normalize people on the trains, living in unkept condition.

That was unacceptable for me.

4000 people, we were able to get off the subway system, over 1000, roughly 1200 are in wraparound services.

One of the most touching stories I know of is a woman who lived on the street for almost 25 years.

I'm hoping to go see her in the next day or so.

We now have her in a wraparound service, she is off the streets, she has been there for a while, stabilizing her.

Dr. for song, a master at this concept, rolled out the second phase of our homeless issue.

Many of our homeless individuals are dealing with severe mental health issues.

We have to give them the services they deserve.

Because you know what happens?

Close to 48% of the people on Rikers Island have mental health issues, and 18% have severe mental health issues.

We wait until they commit a crime and then we give them the support.

The audacity of Erika saying, I will help you before you commit a crime, before you go to the emergency room, before you harm yourself, we have to be proactive and not reactive.

That is why we are focusing on homelessness we are seeing in the city.

Josefa: Is there a point where we can claim or the city can claim, yes, this is a success?

Having wraparound services and following someone through treatments, that takes a long time.

Mayor Adams: Yes, it does.

Josefa: It takes a considerable amount of money.

At one point can we claim, we have this under control?

Josefa: I'm hoping we can.

This is a forty-year problem.

To add on the forty-year problem, think about what happened January 1, 2022.

When I became mayor, we had about 35,000 people in our homeless systems scattered out.

And one year, we are now having 51,000 people on top of that.

51,000 that came in a little over a year.

Not only did we give them food, shelter, clothing, education, health care, we treated them with dignity that they deserve.

And every one of them that I visited, you know what they said?

We don't want free food, we don't want free health care, we want to work.

And when you add that on, no one else in the country is doing what the people of New York City is doing.

No one else.

I visited El Paso, Los Angeles, other cities.

We are the only place in the country that are treating people who are fleeing persecution to come here with the dignity they deserve.

Josefa: What happens next to all these folks?

It seems that Congress has been deadlocked on immigration reform for as long as I have been alive.

Is there anything that the city can be doing to make sure that they are finding work or integrating them into this neighborhood or into their neighborhoods?

Mayor Adams: They want to.

We wrote -- rode out today with the governor today.

It is really calling us all to play our part.

To go to the young person in the homeless shelter.

Go speak with an assignment speaker, and help -- an asylum speaker and help them understand English.

If we volunteer, 8.5 million people, if we volunteer one hour a week, every Wednesday night at 9:00 p.m.

I'm on 34th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, handing out food to people who are down on their luck, going through a difficult time.

You know what it means for them to walk and get a plate of food from the mayor of the city of New York?

Knowing he is there, and then we go to the side and I speak with them about what their issues are, engaging with them one-on-one.

We all can do that.

Everyone can donate just one hour a week.

Everyone is talking about Rikers Island.

I don't see them on Rikers Island.

I have been on Rikers Island more than any mayor on the history -- in history.

I spent Thanksgiving day with a woman who gave birth on Rikers Island.

We need to all volunteer.

We need to all say, here is where I am in my life.

I'm a believer, you deposit into the social bank of life.

And while government does its job, there is a responsibility for citizens to do their job.

We need to step up, and we are not stepping up.

We have to be honest about, are we stepping up?

This is a Michael Jackson moment.

Got to look at the man and the woman in the mirror and see what you can do.

♪ Rafael: Thanks for tuning into "MetroFocus."

you can take our award-winning program with you wherever you go with better focus, the podcast.

Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode.

.

Simply ask your smart speaker to play it.

Also available at met rofocus.org, and on the NPR one app.

♪ >> MetroFocus is made possible by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Foundation, The Peter G Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, Bernard and Denise Schwartz, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, and by Jody and John Arnhold, The Ambrose Monell Foundation, Estate of Roland Carlin, and The JPB Foundation.

♪