Adams Pushes More Housing Goals In Last State Of The City Before Trial, Election

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in his annual State of the City address Thursday afternoon, called for more development of housing on city-owned sites, including a 2,000-unit project in the Financial District.

Adams used his annual address, a closely watched speech that serves as a guideline for the mayor’s top legislative and policy priorities for the coming year, to discuss plans to tackle homelessness, public safety and mental health.

But the speech — Adams’ fourth and potentially his final, as he faces a federal corruption trial in April — also laid out plans to advance the mayor’s much-touted housing goals, building on measures passed last year.

“From the brownstones in Harlem to the high-rises in Midtown, we will say yes to more housing and yes to a more family-friendly city,” Adams said onstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, announcing a new platform that plays on last year’s rezoning push: “City of Yes for Families.”

The goal is to work with the city’s housing agencies to build more family-sized units, allowing for parents, grandparents and children to live under the same roof, he said. That includes redeveloping the Bloomingdale Library with 800 units and a new library facility.

Adams has bigger plans for Manhattan too. 

“We’ll 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 and reach a total of 1 million homes in the next decade,” he said. “We call it ‘The Manhattan Plan.’”

Adams said his administration had exceeded promises made in last year’s address to build 24 housing projects on public sites totaling 12,000 new units. He committed to more in 2025, including a 2,000-unit housing development at 100 Gold St. 

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development occupies the nine-story, 1960s-built office building near City Hall, which would likely be replaced by a mixed-income project under Adams' plan — a move praised by advocacy group the New York Housing Conference.

“The Mayor’s proposal to convert the City housing agency’s decades-long headquarters into housing is symbolic of the extent of need for housing supply and the depth of our crisis,” Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, said in a statement.

NYC commercial real estate leaders praised Adams’ initiatives to build on City of Yes, the citywide zoning amendment that passed a city council vote in December and will allow for as many as 80,000 new units to be built throughout the five boroughs.

“This new housing agenda will allow us to use neighborhood rezonings, publicly owned sites, and underutilized areas to make housing more available and more affordable for New York’s families,” Carlo Scissura, president and CEO of the New York Building Congress, said in a statement.

Adams also said he plans to advance housing projects on city-owned sites at 395 Flatbush and Coney Island in Brooklyn and in St. George on Staten Island.

But the newly formed New York Apartment Association, an advocacy group for landlords of rent-stabilized apartments, formed by the merger of the Rent Stabilization Association and the Community Housing Improvement Program, said creating more units is only part of the city’s housing affordability crisis. 

“We are hopeful that the Mayor’s office will advance regulatory reforms and targeted investments to help thousands of struggling rent-stabilized buildings to make sure we don’t lose housing just as quickly as we build new housing,” New York Apartment Association CEO Kenny Burgos said in a statement.

Adams also announced plans for an additional 900 new Safe Haven beds for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness and said he would launch a pilot program designed to place expectant parents at risk of giving birth in a shelter into permanent housing.