NEWYORK: New York city Mayor Eric Adams said that more than 2,500 New Yorkers attended NYC job fairs where 200 jobs were offered to date.
Talking to media, Mayor Adams said that there were decreased in Black unemployment for the first time under 8 percent.
“When you look at the fact that we have an 80 percent satisfaction rate of New Yorkers that go to our hiring halls, they really feel empowered. Employers say they’re likely to hire people from our hiring hall. Been a real win. We’re going to continue to push it out.”
He said that 64 office building owners stated that they’re interested in converting their properties into housing.
“138 million square feet of available office space cannot continue to sit idle. We did it back during 9/11. We changed downtown into a 24-hour community. We want to do the same in the parts of the city. Of the potential of converting, up to 21 new apartments to convert 20,000 empty offices into apartments in the next decade. Real win for us.”
“Even as we build safe spaces, we are very concerned about the mental health crisis we’re seeing in the city. We’re seeing over and over the byproduct of that encounter a young man had with police officers. We know that we have to be more proactive.”
“That’s what Teenspace is about. Dr. Vasan and the entire crew have really leaned into that. Six months ago, we announced New York City Teenspace, and we’ve already had more than 6,900 teenagers from 13 to 17 years old. They sign up with this service. They’re using the devices that they are familiar with. My son is on his device all the time, and he talks about how using devices for mental health support is crucial. 80 percent of those teens are teens of color. 65 percent of the youths reported improvement in their mental health. We wanted to target those communities that were hit the hardest, and we were able to do so.”
He said that NYPD sealed over 200 smoke shops, and now we’ve tackled a major source for these shops.
“We’ve always stated this over and over again. Someone is supplying these shops. They open too quickly, and they’re just too structured. You’re seeing similar products, and we need to not only go after those shops that are open, but our goal is to go after, where’s the faucet? If we don’t turn off the faucet, we’re going to constantly be chasing every glass that’s being filled, and those glasses are being symbolized by these shops.”
Mayor Adams said that summer youth jobs is a real win, it is over 100,000 and we want to make sure we get the young people to be employed.
“We’re doing it more than just employing them. We’re giving them life skills,” he said.
Mayor Adams said that there are certain cases where you have mental health professionals to respond and there were some where you don’t. “I’m not going to send civilians into places where there’s an immediate threat. I’ve responded to calls of someone that’s dealing with a severe crisis,” he said.
To a question about the Randy issue, Mayor Adams said that once we make the determination on who we’re going to put in front of them, we’re going to announce it publicly. “It’s all part of the process and it’s going to be fine. In response to wrestling power away from anyone, other mayors have put in place commission. I respect the role of the Council and I respect the role of the City Hall.”
Mayor Adams said that there was always things that we can do to run our city agencies better. “I want them to look at everything. This is exciting when you do a Charter Commission. I’m excited about the potential of how do we run our city better and leave our signature on what we could do to manage that.”
“Public safety is key. This is what they raise. Those communities, often people talk over communities around public safety. When we sat down with the cross section of people, public safety was very important to them and they are really concerned about fiscal stability. I want them to look and come up with suggestions around fiscal stability and how decisions we make, how it impacts the city financially. There’s a host of other things, but those were two of the topics that they raised.”
