The State of the City Analysis

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll unpack Mayor Eric Adams 2025 State of the City Address, which he delivered yesterday at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. The bottom line for Adams, the state of the city is strong. Has anyone ever who delivered a State of the address ever said otherwise, but the work goes on. His goal?

Mayor Eric Adams: I want to talk about how we can make New York City the best place to raise a family, the safest place to raise a family, the most affordable place to raise a family, the most welcoming place to raise a family.

Brian Lehrer: Yet he acknowledged the high cost of living in the city and its toll on ordinary people.

Mayor Eric Adams: Extreme costs are forcing too many people, especially working class families, to make hard choices between groceries or childcare, medicine or clothing, making the rent or moving out.

Brian Lehrer: How does New York City become the best place to raise a family? Well, the mayor had some specific proposals. Let's talk about them. One was a $650 million plan to help homeless and mentally ill New Yorkers. There was an ambitious goal to add 100,000 housing units in Manhattan alone in the next decade, 100,000. We'll hear clips on these policy proposals and a few more excerpts from the mayor's State of the City Address, and we'll take some of your calls. My guests for this are Harry Siegel and Christina Greer, two of the three co hosts of the podcast FAQ NYC.

Harry is also a daily news columnist and editor at the news organization The City. Christina is also a political science professor at Fordham University and author of the book Black Ethnics. Harry. Chrissy, always great to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Christina Greer: Thanks, Brian.

Harry Siegel: Thanks for having us.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, how would you describe the state of the city here in 2025? The state of the city is what? Fill in the blank. 212433, WNYC. If you want to do it in one word or you can offer a rebuttal or a response to the mayor, go your own way and raise different issues than he did or ask our guests a question. It is, after all, FAQ NYC, their podcast is called. 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692, call or text. I want to jump right into what the mayor called the Manhattan Plan. Let's hear another 38 seconds of the mayor on that.

Mayor Eric Adams: This year we'll go even bigger and start bringing a new generation of housing to Manhattan. Over the decades, housing prices in Manhattan have gone up while working class families have been pushed out so we start to use the new zoning tools we secured from Albany, and our City of Yes plan to add 100,000 new homes in Manhattan, reach a total of one million homes in the next decade. One million homes in the new decade.

[applause]

Mayor Eric Adams: We like to call it the Manhattan Plan.

Brian Lehrer: The Manhattan Plan. By the way, I left one thing out when I was introducing Christina Greer, her latest book, which is called How to Build a Democracy: From Fannie Lou Hamer and Barbara Jordan to Stacey Abrams, I owe you at least that. Stacey Abrams.

Christina Greer: Abrams.

Brian Lehrer: I know Stacey Abrams, so I owe you at least that. Christina, 100,000 new housing units over the next decade. How realistic is that?

Christina Greer: Well, I don't know how realistic it is and I don't know how many New Yorkers believe it can happen. This is the complicated needle that incumbents have to thread, which is in this particular layout of Eric Adams, he's talking about the future, but he's also had three plus years to work on certain things that he has not. As New Yorkers go to the polls in June to think about who will lead us for the next four years, I think a lot of New Yorkers want/need new housing. Not just in Manhattan, obviously, in all five boroughs. What has the mayor, I don't know if he necessarily articulated what he has done in the past three years to assist New Yorkers in building affordable housing thus far to date.

Brian Lehrer: Harry, in fairness to the mayor, we've been critical on this show of his City of Yes plan for maybe not being ambitious enough. I think that's only 80,000 units citywide over the next decade. How does he come up with another 100,000 for Manhattan alone? Poof. A couple of weeks after City of Yes passed.

Harry Siegel: Well, City of Yes was maybe insufficient, but a really big and difficult accomplishment that actually took a lot of bribes, if you will, to individual council members to get that across the board. This is some stuff you say when you're running for reelection and you're as talented and slippery as Eric Adams is. You heard him go there from 100,000, which is all penciled in back of the envelope numbers. We're going to use zoning and this and that. What comes from City of Yes and that's going to create 100,000. Then he shifts over to talking about a million. Because there's 900,000 units now.

All this, of course, is over a 10 year time span when, if our historically unpopular mayor, with the criminal trial coming, does get another four years he has that and then he's term limited out. You're just penciling in the biggest number. You think people aren't going to openly sneer and roll their eyes up like most things in most State of the City speeches? Go back and look at previous years, you are from the moon, and then things go on. Many of them don't happen, especially in election years.

It's good that he has ambitions, but this sounded an awful lot like a campaign speech from someone who, as Christy was saying, has not already been in office for three years about all the things he's going to do a lot of the time.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another new policy initiative that Mayor Adams introduced yesterday. 45 seconds of this.

Mayor Eric Adams: Today we're making a new commitment to our families. No child should ever be born in our shelter system.

[applause]

Mayor Eric Adams: This year we'll launch a new program to connect soon to be parents applying for shelter with services that help people find permanent housing before their child is born. We must stop the cycle of poverty and housing instability before it ever begins and ensure mothers and babies do not go to a shelter after leaving the hospital.

Brian Lehrer: No child should ever be born in our shelter system. That's a worthy goal, we got to say. Christina, right? How specific did the mayor get about how the city will pursue that aim or how many children are actually being born when their mothers live in the shelter system now?

Christina Greer: Right. I agree with you, Brian. As with many things that the mayor lays out, I think lots of New Yorkers agree with them in theory, but what the state of the city and the past few months of the Adams administration has been pretty light on the devil's in the details. We've talked about this for years together, you and I and also Harry and I on FAQ, which is there are lots of New Yorkers in theory who believe that that is the case. When we start the conversation of possibly building new shelters or putting more money toward families and communities who need this type of support, this is where you get pushback from well meaning New Yorkers who like the idea, but they don't necessarily want new shelters in their community.

They don't necessarily want their tax dollars to go toward people who need those services. That's where I think the mayor's speech and some of his policies have fallen short over the past few months during his tenure.

Brian Lehrer: Harry, same question on no child should ever be born when the mom lives in a shelter.

Harry Siegel: I asked about that. How many children are born inside the shelter system and didn't immediately get an answer. I suspect that it's a fairly small number. Interestingly, Adams brought that up in his speech right after he was talking about people with serious mental illness, who he is pointing to for the reason why New Yorkers feel more afraid. Even as he says crime is down on the subways, although it depends on when you're counting from, many violent categories. It's been up a bit. I'll note, he said, no child should ever be born in our shelter system. He called that a new commitment.

It's not clear. He said, we're going to be introducing new services to connect parents, but I don't know how many are and I don't know how many will be. This seems something less than an actual vision zero or a plan for that. On this ambitious mental health thing, which is $650 million over 10 years, he's talking about a mega shelter to help some of these really disturbed street people who have trouble taking care of themselves, but there's not actually even a location for that. The devil always is in the details and the implementation.

I am interested to see how much governing he does after three often distracted years, but with some real accomplishments while he's also running and how much follow through we see on some of this. I think that'll be a signal going forward about having purged all these corrupt people from his administration after they were raided by the feds and all these other things. If he is serious about delivering on some of these things he's talking about, or if we're hardly going to remember what they are in just three months.

Brian Lehrer: People are texting more than calling on the state of the city is fill in the blank. Listener writes, the state of the city is meh. Another one, the state of the city is filthy. The state of the city is greedy, landlord infested. The state of the city is chaotic. The state of the city, another one, not the same person, is out of control. Another one, the state of the city is loud and expensive. There's one good one. Of course, that's people's tendency. You give them that kind of invitation, all the negative is going to come out, but then the next person wrote, the state of the city is as beautiful as ever.

Chrissy, do you want to keep going on what Harry was just talking about? The mayor's plan for helping mentally ill people?

Christina Greer: Yes. This is where I'm curious to see what the next few months really look like for the city because as the mayor tries to cobble together not just money from the state and federal government, but also support. To my previous point, I think a lot of New Yorkers agree with many of these ideas in theory. It's just, how do you figure out how to assist people who are having mental health challenges? I do think that in the past few weeks, we've had lots of conversations with new administrators that have come into the Adams administration.

I think the reshuffling of the deck has been productive for Adams. Now we'll actually have people who can think in a 360 degree way about how to incorporate social workers and police and hospitals to think through what are not easy issues at all. I think the larger sort of shadow behind the entire state of the city yesterday is that many New Yorkers feel as though Eric Adams has been and continues to be distracted by his own legal woes, but also the people that he's chosen to surround himself with and dabbled down with over the past few years.

How do we actually get these complicated issues across the finish line if we have a mayor who does not necessarily seem as though he's fully present in taking the job seriously? I think the speech yesterday was solid. Eric Adams is largely great at giving these types of speeches because they focus on him in many ways, but the details of many of these plans to actually get them through the finish line, I think is still very much a gray area for many New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: A listener, by the way, says he has the answer to how many babies are being born in the shelter system. Listener writes more than 1,400 babies are born to mothers living in city homeless shelters each year, according to data cited by the Bridge Project. A 2020 report from the Coalition for the Homeless found that 1 out of every 100 New York City newborns moved from the hospital to a homeless shelter. Harry, I don't know if those numbers are accurate, but a listener wrote them in and cited specific sources.

Harry Siegel: Wow. If that's so 1,400 and 1 in 100. Although those numbers can't both be right, just Thinking them through. 1,400 is an awful lot.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Too many babies are being born.

Harry Siegel: To something Chrissy just said. This was really a speech about New York and with some attempts to have a vision there about making this a city for families and a truly affordable place for families. Clearly this election is going to revolve around affordability and public safety as the two issues. Then Adams had this insert at the end that was not in the prepared remarks they sent out just before the speech part when he's talking about the 400 years in New York City and making this place better year after year and generation after generation.

Greatest city in the world must also be the greatest place to raise a family. Then in the middle of that, he sort of shoehorned his own narrative, as he has it, of unfair persecution into that. Which was striking. [crosstalk] Yes. It's sure to speech that started off notably with a lot of there's people offering prayers and songs. It's actually a very nice ceremony if you end up watching the whole thing. A lot of powerful labor unions and leaders that you could see there and you could see how even as he's in this tight corner and people feel like the state of the city is meh or worse in many cases.

The remaining significant parts of his support and his institutional support, like he's still his honor, he's still the mayor, the power that is. He's been pretty good to labor. As he keeps saying, he's not going to get outrun. You could feel it in this speech and as he's connecting his own travails to those he says he's helped New York City overcome and will promise to do more of that in the year and years to come.

Brian Lehrer: Some more texts coming in. The state of the city is too much luxuriezation. The state of the city is lawless despite a bloated police budget. The state of the city is, I'm looking forward to leaving like so many others have. The state of the city is, the good is great, the bad is terrible. The state of the city is ambivalent. I love that one. The state of the city is ambivalent. Another policy proposal from the mayor, Tax relief for the people with the lowest incomes in the city. Here's the mayor on that.

Mayor Eric Adams: We know that working class families need more relief and they need it now. That is why we put forward an ambitious proposal to eliminate income taxes for working class families making 150% of the federal poverty line or less. It's time to get rid of city income taxes for a single mother making $31,000, a family of four making $46,000 and other new Yorkers making do with less, it's very clear. Time to ax the tax.

Brian Lehrer: Ax the tax. Harry, how much power does the mayor have to offer tax relief at that level?

Harry Siegel: With city taxes, he needs to get the council on board and that is potentially a doable thing. Naturally, everyone always prefers let's tax a little more from the wealthy and offer relief there, but it's striking to have a Democratic mayor in an election year winning that hard as the governor starting to in her own ways toward affordability and toward reducing the burden of government on at least some New Yorkers. I'll point out that those city taxes are generally not a significant share of the-- The lion's share of the taxes most people are paying, and for the sort of lower income examples he makes, these are not huge numbers, but those things add up.

If he's able to make things more affordable, that's beautiful. The question, of course, is how you either make up that revenue or where you're finding savings and how all the rest of that works in conjunction with it. Hearing him running for reelection and shifting into that register like we need to get him more money back to you, is a clear signal of how he'd like to frame things.

Brian Lehrer: Christina, I'm not sure. Well, I was surprised to learn from his stats that a single mother making only $31,000 a year, so that's one adult with at least one dependent even has to pay city income tax. I'm not sure that federal income tax would apply at that low income level.

Christina Greer: Right. I defer to Harry when it comes to the nitty gritty of taxes. I think this is we're shifting into campaign rhetoric, and we know that Eric Adams has been very successful as far as being a politician on the stop governance. Eric Adams is obviously a different question for certain New Yorkers. We will now see the evolution of the mayor in the next few months, switch from governance mayor to a very detailed hybrid of politico campaigning Eric Adams, because he is still very clear that he's very much in this race.

The fact that many electeds keep jumping in, lets us know that there's not one formidable opponent to the mayor. The shadow of Andrew Cuomo is still out there, but he has yet to jump in officially. The mayor right now is serving as the more moderate centrist candidate and many of the other challengers are running to the left of him. I think he's still very much in this. Problems and issues and indictments all on the table as well. He's not down for the count just yet in his mind. Obviously many donors and the business community and the real estate community as well.

Brian Lehrer: A listener writes, the state of the city is cold. Another writes, the state of the city is more collectivism of spirit that you can find in most of the country these days. Another one writes, the state of the city is up-- Where did it go? I was going to finish with this one. They're coming in so fast. The state of the city-- There it is. The state of the city is beloved, energizing, but too expensive for many. There we leave it. On the day after Mayor Adams State of the City Address with Harry Siegel, FAQ NYC creator and co-host of that podcast.

He's also a daily news columnist, editor at the news organization, The City, and Christina Greer, political science professor at Fordham, also co-host of the podcast FAQ NYC, author of the books Black Ethnics and her new one, How to Build a Democracy: From Fannie Lou Hamer and Barbara Jordan to Stacey Abrams. I know I said Adams before, but obviously in this segment I had Adams on the brain. It is Stacey Abrams. Harry and Christina, thank you very, very much.

Christina Greer: Thanks, Brian. Happy New Year.

 

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