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Opinion

New Yorkers can’t afford this city: Everyday life has become too
costly under Eric Adams
By Tiffany Cabán
New York Daily News • Published: Aug 23, 2023 at 5:00 am

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New York Mayor Eric Adams (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

New York’s affordability crisis is spinning out of control, and the mayor is the one spinning it.

By now, the morbid facts are familiar:

Our city’s median income would need to double to afford the median rent.
Affordable apartments — priced under $1,500 a month — show a vacancy rate of just 1%.
Hundreds of thousands of tenants throughout the five boroughs owe their landlords back-

Evictions are on the rise , and with the city deliberately under-funding legal services, some
New Yorkers are forced to represent themselves in housing court, in violation of their “Right to
Counsel.”
The shelter system’s population is at a record high , and the vast majority of homeless New
Yorkers who get kicked out of subway stations or off the streets, finding no better options
available, go right back to those same stations and streets and wait to be kicked out again.
To make matters worse, Con Ed and the MTA are hiking costs as well.
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New Yorkers are at their breaking point, and every facet of their mayor’s approach to housing NYC Crime
intensifies, rather than alleviating, their strain: Teen girl shot, wounded by
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For the second year in a row, his hand-picked Rent Guidelines Board imposed rent hikes on
45m
regulated units.
His relentless series of budget cuts and vacancy eliminations have starved the city’s housing NYC Crime
development agency of staff, forestalling affordable housing development. (He managed to cut Brooklyn woman, 58, found
dead in apartment doorway
an additional $47.3 million from that agency in the recently-passed FY24 budget.) was stabbed
He allocated less than 5% of what right to counsel providers say they need. 1h

He is fighting tooth and nail to dismantle New York’s sacrosanct right to shelter.
Education
His “homeless sweeps,” destroying camps and forcibly removing thousands of people, wound
Two-thirds of NYC public
up securing permanent housing for all of three people , according to an audit by Comptroller schools not fully accessible
for students with physical
Brad Lander. disabilities: report
His direction to police to forcibly hospitalize homeless New Yorkers who pose a danger to 3h

themselves was ill-conceived from the start: How were law enforcement officials to make such a
clinical determination, far outside their areas of expertise? The mayor set up a hotline for them
to call — no one ever did .

He has repeatedly botched the city’s response to an influx of asylum seekers, needlessly
forcing hundreds to sleep on sidewalks, secretly rejecting offers of assistance from Albany,
spending finite city resources with little regard for sustainability, and more.
And to top it all off, this summer he vetoed common-sense, cost-effective legislation designed
to move struggling New Yorkers from shelters into permanent housing more efficiently. (As the
lead sponsor of one of the bills, I am especially proud to say we easily overrode that veto.)

Given this escalating crisis, what are working class New Yorkers supposed to do?

The mayor’s advice is clear: go away. To those who would solve the affordability crisis by taxing
those who can afford it, in defiance of their threat to leave, Adams offered a resounding
response: “ No, you leave ! I need my high-income earners right here in this city.” (It only makes
sense, given that “his” high-income earners work so hard on his behalf, going so far as to break
campaign finance law, according to indictments handed down by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.)

This approach is especially obscene for a self-styled “public safety mayor,” as almost nothing
could be worse for public safety than this affordability crisis. The essence of public safety is

reliable, longstanding communities with fibrous networks of interpersonal relationships and

trusted elders who can intervene to de-escalate conflict and prevent violence. The mayor’s
approach is extremely effective at destroying such conditions.

While a recent Cornell University study concluded plainly that “eviction prevention is violence
prevention,” it’s not just researchers — and research nerds like me — saying so. The mayor’s
own survey, touted as the largest in New York City history, found that New Yorkers’ top priority
for enhancing public safety was affordable housing . If only the “public safety mayor” were as
committed to public safety as the New Yorkers he’s sworn to serve.

It is time for Mayor Adams to make a complete about face. Commit to a city whose housing
system prioritizes housing New Yorkers, not delivering windfall profits to billionaire
developers, corporate landlords, and other campaign mega-donors. Swiftly build up the city’s
stock of social housing, democratically owned and controlled by the people who live there, in
conjunction with the public. Show some mercy to struggling renters who simply cannot afford
any further rent hikes.

For public safety, for racial justice, for a sustainable economy, and to rise to our highest
aspirations and proudest legacies as a city, it’s time for a New York City that New Yorkers can
afford.

Cabán represents parts of Queens in the City Council.

2023 > August > 23

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