After rough 2024, mayor looks to 2025 during State of the City speech

Mayor Eric Adams gave his annual State of the City address from Harlem’s Apollo Theater on Thursday. Photo via Mayoral Photography Office

By Ryan Schwach

Looking to turn the page on one of the most turbulent years for a mayor in modern New York City history, Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday touted his record on housing, affordability and public safety during his State of the City address.

Giving the fourth yearly address of his tenure – and his last before he runs for reelection later this year – at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Adams looked to assure New Yorkers that he not only has followed through on his campaign promises but that he will move the city forward in 2025, despite a 2024 marred with scandal, resignations and federal indictments.

While calling the state of the city “strong,” Adams listed out success from 2024, which included the passage of his signature housing proposal, the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, and an overall decrease in crime.

“In the past year alone, our administration passed historic housing legislation, shattered the

record for the most jobs in city history, drove major crimes down, and did so much more to build

a family-friendly city,” Adams said in a statement ahead of his speech. “As a result of all these efforts, the state of our city is strong.”

However, regardless of what Adams was able to accomplish in 2024, it’s likely a year he may want New Yorkers to forge.

Both he and a number of his political allies were charged in federal criminal cases, at least a half dozen of his deputies and commissioners resigned and the mayor clashed regularly with his City Hall neighbors, the City Council in 2024.

But Adams attempted to look past all that on Thursday.

While thanking his “partners” in the City Council on Thursday, Adams ignored his consistent conflict with the body, including their veto override of a pair of public safety bills, budget disagreements and fight over his charter revision commission.

Throughout most of that turbulence, Adams maintained that he was fully capable of running the city and continuing progress the issues he ran on without the scandals becoming a distraction.

It was a sentiment he reiterated on Thursday.

“There were some who said, ‘Step down’, I said, ‘No, I step up’,” Adams said during his speech.

Adams’ State of the City address also included several new policy proposals the mayor plans to roll out in 2025. Many of those proposals appear spun off from proposals made in previous years.

“Despite all we have accomplished, I won’t stand here and try to tell you our work is complete,” he said. “Now is the time for renewed dedication and continued action, because no matter what challenges we face, I promise you this: No one will fight harder for your family than I will.”

The new plans include a new “City of Yes,” this time dubbed the “City of Yes for Families,” which the mayor said will be an “expansive new approach to housing, zoning, and public space that will change the way we build across the five boroughs and create more family-friendly neighborhoods.”

Adams said the state of the city is “strong” while laying out goals for 2025 and his wins in 2024, like the approval of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity.  Photo via Mayoral Photography Office

“We will work across our housing agencies to build more family-sized units and more homes for

multi-generational families so that parents, grandparents, and grandchildren can stay together,” he said. “We will also work with the City Council to build more housing alongside schools, playgrounds, grocery stores and libraries.”

Adams also announced $650 million in funding to tackle street homelessness, including the addition of 900 new safe haven beds and a new housing facility for homeless New Yorkers with serious mental illnesses.

“We must do more to help people struggling with serious mental illness,” he said. “We know that too many New Yorkers cycle between the hospital and homelessness.”

He also suggested eliminating and lowering income taxes for working class New Yorkers, which he said would give “over $63 million back to families to help them afford rent, groceries, child care.”

Despite the positive speech, Adams’ opponents and critics were not letting him forget the issues he faced in 2024.

“For the past 3 years, Mayor Adams and his administration have been embroiled in an endless string of corruption probes and scandals,” the New York Working Families Party said in a statement following the address. “New Yorkers have gotten the short end of the stick with a mayor who seemed more interested in protecting his inner circle than managing the city effectively. Now he wants to pretend that it’s a new day and New Yorkers should simply move on.”

“Let’s be clear about the facts: three years into the Adams administration, New York City is worse off,” the statement continued. “There are more New Yorkers without a safe and affordable place to sleep at night, and even more are struggling to afford the high cost of housing, food and childcare.”

The Working Families Party and most progressive New Yorkers – as well as some conservative ones – already have their eyes on the mayoral primary set for June, as well as a general election in November.

Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, one of those primary challengers, called the mayor’s speech “empty rhetoric.”

“Adams has repeatedly prioritized his own narrow interest and interests of his wealthiest donors – not the working people who elected him,” Mamdani said Thursday.