NYC Mayor Eric Adams touts 'City of Yes' plan for family-size housing, in State of City speech

Mayor Eric Adams said he hopes to encourage families to stay in New York City instead of moving to the suburbs — by building more family-size housing units, updating zoning codes and opening up more public space.

Adams said his plan, called City of Yes for Families, "will change the way we build across the five boroughs" so fewer families relocate to the suburbs, say, once a child is born.

"Let’s keep this a city for families," he said, delivering his annual State of the City address Thursday, the fourth of his tenure, this year at Harlem's Apollo Theater.

Adams said he wants to build more housing that can also accommodate multigenerational families, along with homes near schools, grocery stores, playgrounds, mass transit stations and libraries, as well as subsidies to help families make a down payment on a home.

A previous version of his housing initiative is expected to add more than 80,000 housing units that are to be built under an administration-backed bill passed late last year.

According to 2022 statistics from Internal Revenue Service tax returns, about 49,140 people moved from the city to Long Island, and about 20,015 moved from the Island to the city.

Adams' speech didn't directly address his criminal indictment last year — in which he is accused of trading favors for political contributions and luxury travel — but he said he wouldn't heed calls to step down. Instead, Adams said, he would "step up." 

Adams also proposed adding 100,000 new homes in Manhattan over the next decade, using zoning changes, a plan called the Manhattan project; there are about 900,000 homes currently, as well as building a facility to house homeless people with serious mental illness.

Foes panned the speech for lacking specifics.

Brad Lander, the city comptroller, said he supports encouraging residents to stay but criticized City of Yes for Families’ lack of policy specifics.

"I mean, it’s a great phrase, but I didn’t hear a plan, so I don’t really know what to say," said Lander, who’s among the mayoral challengers seeking to unseat Adams.

Lander said there are "so many things we could be doing" to keep families from relocating to the suburbs, such as affordable co-ops, addressing street homelessness, child care and more.

Making New York City affordable and keeping residents from leaving has bedeviled the municipal government since at least the middle of the 20th century, particularly during white flight to the suburbs.

There was the Brownstone movement, involving middle-class residents who restored, and lived in, dilapidated rowhouses in Manhattan and Brooklyn. A 1969 report by the then-Lindsay mayoralty proposed a multipronged solution that touched on much of the same themes as Adams did Thursday: building more housing, changing zoning codes and fixing "aloof" bureaucracy that’s "too often sluggish."

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.