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Speaker Adams outlines priorities for 2025: housing, mental health, public safety
Summary
Speaker Adrienne Adams used the council’s Jan. 8 charter meeting to frame the council’s priorities for 2025, highlighting affordable housing, child care, mental-health investments, Fair Fares and public-safety measures, and urging continued effort to close Rikers Island.
Speaker Adrienne Adams opened the Jan. 8 New York City Council charter meeting by framing the council’s policy priorities for 2025, saying the body must focus on housing affordability, child care, mental health services and public safety.
Adams said the council must “build on our momentum to preserve and add more affordable housing and home-ownership opportunities” and address barriers that leave many New Yorkers without stable homes. She said the prohibitive cost of child care prevents some working families from staying in the city and urged continued work to “fix and strengthen our early childhood education system.”
The council speaker emphasized the council’s role in advancing transit affordability, noting that the Fair Fares initiative was “a baby and a brainchild of this New York City Council.” She also highlighted CUNY Reconnect as a program that has helped more than 40,000 New Yorkers return to college.
On health policy, Speaker Adrienne Adams said the council has prioritized maternal health and called maternal mortality “a public health emergency.” She urged expanded investments in community-based mental-health programs and a “strong continuum of care” and said the council must avoid short-term responses that fail to produce concrete results.
Adams reiterated the council’s long-standing goal of closing Rikers Island and said improving responses to people in crisis is part of broader public-safety work. She pointed to the city’s creation of recovery centers and expanded funding for crime-victim services as examples of investments intended to help survivors and prevent cycles of violence.
The speaker also recognized recent tragedies and milestones: she noted the upcoming third anniversary of the Twin Parks Northwest Building fire that killed 17 people, including eight children, and referenced a mass shooting in southeast Queens the prior week in which “10 people were shot” at Amazurah Nightclub, with victims aged about 16 to 19. Adams closed her remarks by asking colleagues to join in supporting families and communities affected by those events.
Adams’ remarks sketched a broad agenda rather than announcing new legislation or votes at the Jan. 8 meeting.
