Eric Adams

Mayoral Candidate Questionnaire

 

Rebuilding New York City

Question 1

Please describe what steps you will take to rebuild the economy.

To drive down unemployment and create good paying jobs, I will: 

KEEP BUSINESSES OPEN AND EMPLOYEES WORKING WITH TAX RELIEF: Business owners are struggling to stay open as income for many stays low during the pandemic, forcing them to lay-off workers and close-up shop. To keep New Yorkers working—particularly in the service industries—we will allow businesses that pay the Commercial Rent Tax a break for two years if they demonstrate hardship and commit to certain employment levels. 

ATTRACT NEW OUT-OF-TOWN BUSINESSES: The Relocation Employment Assistance Program (REAP) has successfully drawn new businesses here from outside the state by providing a tax credit per employee per year if they locate in certain areas of the city. We will expand that to bring more business to New York. 

BE THE BACK OFFICE FOR OUR SMALL BUSINESSES: It is estimated that on average, small business owners spend 120 work days a year on all of the administrative tasks that come with owning a business. If the City offers “back office” assistance for these small businesses through local Chambers of Commerce, our mom and pop shops and entrepreneurs can save time and money on accounting and compliance needs, and focus on growing their businesses. 

And finally, I would invest significant capital funds to create a local stimulus package that employees unemployed and underemployed New Yorkers to build infrastructure and housing, and fix our parks, our streets, and our schools so that we stay the greatest city in the world. 

We can pay for this with savings from finding government inefficiencies and renegotiating contracts as well as with a “Recovery Share” for ultra-millionaires. We can generate $1-2 billion annually by instituting a modest increase to the income taxes of city earners who make more than $5 million a year, sunsetting after two years. Those funds would go directly into initiatives that help us bounce back from the pandemic, including testing and vaccination programs, anti-hunger efforts, and financial help for those New Yorkers and industries hardest hit by COVID-19. I have also proposed a Data Tax on Big Tech companies that sell New Yorkers personal information for profit.

Question 2

There has been a seismic shift in female representation in the workforce due to COVID-19. Particularly, women of color have lost jobs or have been left to care for their families. What is your plan to spur job growth and small business ownership for women?

There are a myriad of reasons why we saw this seismic shift in female representation and one is because of the lack of childcare. Childcare is essential infrastructure and that is why I have put out a plan to make it available to every parent who needs it. 

• The average cost of private childcare in NYC is sky-high–more than $16,000 a year. 
• The annual cost of center-based childcare for infants and toddlers is one-third of the average household income for families with young children.
• And the cost is two-thirds of household income in lower-income communities. 

The result is that parents do not advance in careers and so do not earn more money over time. In particular, women of color are unable to break into the middle class simply because they cannot find a safe, accessible, affordable daycare provider to place their child with for the day. 

One upside to our current economic crisis is that commercial building owners are suddenly hurting for tenants and rents are going down. The City should take advantage of that by finding cheap space in the lower-income communities most in need of childcare and matching it with providers. Storefronts are also particularly valuable because ground floor access is required for centers that care for infants. The City itself could move to lock in long-term leases under these conditions in order to sub-let to providers at a discount if necessary. 

The City can pay for this by getting out of some of its current leases in office buildings that house City workers we now know can from home. For those parents looking to return to work with young children, it is also often best if they can bring their child to their office building, saving time and transportation costs. The owners of big buildings are hurting and need their tenants back. We can solve several problems at the same time by offering property tax breaks to those building owners if they set aside a certain percentage of rent-free space for childcare. And then that cost savings can be passed along to lower the cost of care. 

The City should also lower its own costs to childcare providers. The Department of Education has actually increased permit costs on non-profit after-school care providers. Permit costs for these programs should go down to lower costs for parents, not up. 

And, finally, we need better coordination between the City and parents. Parents need much more help to navigate the system and connect with services. There should be one childcare czar dedicated to this challenge. And that person should oversee the entire shared inventory of City-contracted and private childcare spots in New York so we can identify which communities need more. 

Then we need to help to ensure we are making our economy fairer as we make it larger, we will hire a Chief Diversity Officer to drive change on equity for minorities and women, and also create a tool to track the share of M/WBE contracts and how much the City is spending on those companies versus 

others in real-time. We will also much more closely track who these M/WBE employers and contractors are employing. And the Officer will be tasked with tracking gender pay equity and the progress we are making toward closing the gap. First they will focus on pay equity within City agencies and then we will push to track it across private employers in the City.

Question 3

How would you have handled the Amazon deal differently? Please describe your approach to recruiting companies to NYC.

The biggest mistake within the Amazon proposal was the City’s and State’s failure to fully engage low-income communities in the conversation in a meaningful way. The lack of transparency and

inclusion of real input from the neighboring Queensbridge NYCHA Houses allowed the narrative of the project and the tangible benefits it would have brought to highly impoverished communities to be derailed. I would have mandated a community review process like ULURP to be undertaken instead of allowing for a State process that had no real oversight from local institutions.

In order to attract businesses, we must enhance the Relocation Employment Assistance Program (REAP) which has successfully drawn new businesses here from outside the state by providing a tax credit per employee per year if they locate in certain areas of the city. We will expand that to bring more business to New York.

It is far too difficult for innovators and entrepreneurs to start their businesses in New York City. Real estate costs and high costs of living have made some of the most brilliant talent turn to other cities. We have suffered as a result because we have missed out on the job opportunities and the birth of fast-growing industries. So we will incentivize startups to move to our outer-boroughs where property costs are more affordable and to develop fellowship programs with CUNY schools in exchange for tax credits. We will also interview failed start-ups to see how the city could better serve entrepreneurs.

Finally, we will organize the largest employers in New York to develop, fund and implement a marketing plan for our city to the rest of the world unlike any ad campaign we have ever undertaken. In addition to pitching our city as the place to visit, live and invest, we will showcase our commitment to public health and public safety to inspire confidence that this is the place to be.

Question 4

Municipalities across the country have had systems and data held hostage for ransom, do you think NYC is sufficiently protected? If not, what is your plan and what is your position on paying ransom?

Cybersecurity is a growing threat to local governments and the safety of our data systems is extremely serious. The danger that our systems could be held hostage by criminals or the personal information of New Yorkers could be compromised. That is why I will invest in moving NYC onto one data platform so that there are fewer holes in our security, where bad actors can take advantage of them.

Question 5

How do you plan to address the issue of affordable housing when nearly 30 percent of people are spending half their income on rent? How do you define affordable housing?

My siblings and I grew up housing insecure to the point where I often brought a plastic bag of clothes to school with me because of fear of eviction. Housing security isn’t theoretical for me, it is real for me. To tackle this crisis, I would:

ADD HOUSING—FOR EVERYONE—IN WEALTHY NEIGHBORHOODS: For years, our rezonings focused on adding apartments in lower-income areas—which often just led to higher-income people moving in, making communities less affordable, and often forcing out longtime residents. Instead, we will build in wealthier areas with a high quality of life, allowing lower-and middle-income New Yorkers to move in

by adding affordable housing and eliminating the community preference rule in those areas, which prevents many New Yorkers from living in desirable neighborhoods.

REPURPOSE CITY OFFICE BUILDINGS: We will convert some City office buildings into 100% affordable housing by taking advantage of more City workers working from home and consolidating workers that will still be in-person to free up space.

ALLOW PRIVATE OFFICE BUILDINGS AND HOTELS TO BECOME HOUSING: The pandemic has unfortunately left many of our hotels and office buildings empty. In some cases, their owners want to convert the buildings to housing, but current City regulations make that either too expensive or too challenging. By making some zoning tweaks and other rule changes, we can facilitate conversions where appropriate and add desperately needed housing stock—particularly at hotels in the outer boroughs.

THINK BIG BY BUILDING SMALL: Outdated rules prevent New York developers from building the kind of small, cheaper micro-units that are common today around the world. Homeowners in single family zones are also prevented from legally leasing “accessory units” like “granny flats”. And single room

occupancy units, or SROs, and basement apartments are still illegal, despite their common use elsewhere. By allowing for all of these to be built or legally used, we will quickly add hundreds-of-thousands of affordable apartments.

GIVE FAITH-BASED INSTITUTIONS THE TOOLS TO PROVIDE HOUSING: Faith-based institutions have the social vision and local understanding to advance affordable and supportive housing projects with excess development rights on their own properties, but they also often do not have the financial or technical capacity to do so. We will partner with faith-based institutions across New York City to leverage these development rights for a public purpose.

Question 6

How will you reinvest in and expand public housing, ensuring that all have a decent home? What are your specific plans to expand and revitalize public housing in NYC?

We can’t simply rely upon the federal government. While I plan to work with our representatives in the Federal government, history has proven the cavalry is not coming from DC.

I am not supportive of developing private, luxury housing on underutilized land. However, I do support selling air rights to fund repair of existing stock and to fund the development of permanent affordable housing. We can’t grow more land in New York City so we must find ways to maximize the benefits out of our existing footprints.

By selling the developable “air rights” over NYCHA properties to builders within the same community district, we will raise up to $8 billion that can be used to make badly needed repairs and quality of life improvements for NYCHA tenants. Local community developers—especially non-profit groups—should get first shot at these air rights if they want them.

Question 7

With the cost of living rising at nearly three times the rate of wages, 2.5 million working-age New Yorkers are struggling to provide food, housing, and other basic necessities for their families. What specific plans do you have to address poverty and the vulnerability of the working poor in NYC?

I have proposed the NYC AID (Advanced Income Deployment) initiative to get struggling individuals and families their Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) in advanced monthly payments, while also substantially increasing the amounts of the credits to deliver the high level of aid needed during our financial crisis.

Under my plan, a New York City family with two children on the edge of poverty earning $30,000 a year would receive approximately $3,000 annually or about $250 a month from a boosted City EITC program. Currently, that same family would receive about $250 for the entire year from those same credits. Credits would be paid out monthly as an advance by the City on qualifying New Yorkers’ past annual earnings.

We also need to better manage our food resources to fight hunger. There is an overall lack of information of available food resources throughout the five boroughs. Poor communication and information sharing negatively impacts efforts to connect food insecure individuals with SNAP benefits, food pantries, soup kitchens and other food resources. We will form an integrated and community-engaged structure to coordinate food policy in NYC. A critical component of this structure will be to create and maintain easily accessible databases that New Yorkers and public officials can use to monitor and ensure equitable access to nutritious food across all of our communities.

In addition, we must help the unbanked and underbanked increase access to resources and build wealth. New York City has 350,000 households that are unbanked and another 680,000 households that are underbanked, meaning they must rely on services such as check cashing or payday loans. Without access to proper banking we are sidelining thousands of people from our economy and we are allowing industries such as payday lending to flourish that profit off of poverty. Community-based banks in lower-income areas that remove minimum balance requirements and overdraft fees will be granted property tax relief, or their landlords will, in exchange for sharing that relief as a rent break.

Public Health & Safety

Question 8

How do you plan to address the rise of hate crime incidents in NYC? How will your office engage with communities to promote hate crime reporting and prevention? Do you consider gender-based violence a hate crime? If so, how will you reduce and prevent it?

To combat the rise of hate crime incidents we must take a comprehensive approach, starting with grassroots engagement. My office has been undertaking the needed cross-cultural community building, like our Breaking Bread, Building Bonds conversations that have brought hundreds of New Yorkers together from all walks of life. But we also need to put real resources into combating these crimes.

We need to ensure that the NYPD’s recently-formed Asian Hate Crimes Task Force gets the resources it needs. As part of this, the NYPD must prioritize language justice for victims to make it easier to safely report hate crimes. I would also expand my office’s successful Operation Safe Shopper program which provides funding to create local camera coverage to protect soft sites from attacks. Finally, we should ensure every district attorney’s office across the city has a robust Hate Crimes Unit to properly investigate these crimes.

To prevent gender-based violence, young people — especially young men — have to be taught in school and at home about gender equality and human rights. We also need public safety that is not just reactive, and that instead adequately protects women who are targets of violence and survivors of domestic violence, who don’t just need help from police but also need social services, housing and legal help.

We also need to address domestic violence abusers’ trauma so they stop perpetuating violence. My 100+ Steps Forward for NYC plan includes my initiative to reduce domestic violence in our city by addressing this trauma. The NYPD responds to approximately 230,000 domestic incidents each year and 18% of homicides in NYC are due to domestic violence. Many abusers are repeat offenders. We must acknowledge that current programming to change abusers’ behavior is insufficient and doesn’t deal with root causes, which are often traumas experienced by the abuser themselves. To address this, we will launch the “Family Violence Perpetrator Program”, based on cognitive and behavioral therapy, in order to evaluate abusers’ traumas and treat them to prevent further violence.

Question 9

What is your vision for preventing and reducing the crimes of sexual assault and rape? Other than improving the transparency and effectiveness of the criminal justice system, what multidimensional and innovative plans of action will you specifically implement?

Preventing and reducing crimes of sexual assault and rape starts with acknowledging the pervasiveness of these crimes and overcoming social and sometimes cultural barriers to discussing them and addressing them effectively and appropriately. This must include education of young people, training for police, and ensuring our criminal justice system recognizes the full scope of the crisis, including rape and sexual assault crimes committed against transgender men and women, children and non-binary individuals. Law enforcement must also commit to clearing rape kit backlogs and developing specifc plans for dealing with pervasive race and gender descrimination that leads to injustice for survivors of sexual assault and rape.

Question 10

Violent crime has risen to alarming levels, and home burglaries are up. What is your plan for reducing gun violence, sex crimes, and assaults/muggings that instill fear in the public and harm quality of life for city residents?

The scourge of gun violence is one that requires a 24 hour response. I have outlined a plan that would work to curb the cycle of gun violence as well as address the flow of illegal guns into our City. To do this I would: 

• Form a tri-state commission to formulate policy proposals that would stop the flow of illegal handguns into our communities
• Rebuild a modified version of the New York City Police Department (NYPD)’s plainclothes unit
• Fully fund the City’s Crisis Management System and allow for more centralized coordination between different organizations throughout the city
• Convene citywide clergy leaders and law enforcement officials to partner on public safety initiatives in hotspots, and
• Create a comprehensive employment program targeting young men and women ages 18 to 25, focused on those who are unemployed and out of school 

We must also deploy our officers to undertake real public safety to combat sex crimes, assaults and muggings. We can do that by civilianizing the NYPD to move officers away from activities like barrier deployment and into the business of public safety.

Question 11

How will you work to rebuild trust between the community and law enforcement, while also ensuring accountability for police misconduct, police brutality and sexual assault?

The crisis of COVID-19 is inextricably linked to the unrest in our city’s and nation’s streets due to the decades-long crisis of police brutality. Righteous protesters, fueled by outrage over a litany of racial inequities, are demanding lasting reform that is inclusive of — but not exclusive to — a robust defunding of the NYPD. In addition to working to reallocate funding in the NYPD, I would also: 

TACKLE THE TRAUMA THAT FESTERS IN COMMUNITIES EXPERIENCING GUN VIOLENCE: Living in a high-crime community and experiencing gun violence creates trauma that impacts a youth’s ability to perform in school and achieve in life. Without adequate services that address trauma and allow for healing, youth are placed at higher risk of incarceration, teenage pregnancy and homelessness. Prevention and follow up measures that serve to heal and support these youth are best delivered by trauma-trained credible messengers paired with mental health professionals, social services and violence interrupters. We will recruit, hire, and train community residents who have real-life experience to provide an immediate post-crisis healing space for, and to develop a working relationship with, affected youth. This helps reduce feelings of isolation and mistrust, cultivate shared investment of community-centered healing, and reduce the fear often associated with living in a high-crime, high-poverty neighborhood. 

ADD LOCAL BLACK AND BROWN OFFICERS WHO WILL RESPECT AND PROTECT NEW YORKERS: One reason the NYPD continues to be plagued by incidents of bias and brutality is that the department still needs to become much more diverse. We will address this by recruiting from the very same neighborhoods that are suffering from crime, which are mostly Black and Brown, and by allowing peace officers at City agencies—who are not police officers and who are also more likely to be Black and Brown—to be promoted to the NYPD. 

PUBLICIZE THE LIST OF COPS THE NYPD IS MONITORING FOR BAD BEHAVIOR: The NYPD keeps its own “monitoring list” of cops with records of complaints and violent incidents. We will make it public to be transparent and build trust. 

MAKE IT EASIER FOR GOOD COPS TO IDENTIFY BAD COPS: Most police officers could tell you about a few bad cops they work with or have run in to—and most cops resent their behavior because it brings down their profession and makes it harder for them to do their job. At the same time, it is dangerous for cops to report those bad apples. So we will make it easier for cops to anonymously report bad behavior by their colleagues that results in swift action through an outside system overseen by the Department of Investigation, protecting whistleblowers and exposing problem police 

CONNECT PRECINCTS TO THE COMMUNITY: To make precinct houses more accessible to the communities they serve, we will revamp them to be more welcoming; improve them with public high-speed internet and wi-fi access; and hire specialized outreach and public information staff to change the culture of the houses into places where residents can come to learn about and participate in social and NYPD services and programs, particularly for families, children and youth. 

EMPOWER COMMUNITIES TO HAVE A SAY IN THEIR PRECINCT LEADERSHIP: Community policing is just a slogan if the NYPD is not, in fact, acting on what a community wants and needs. We will empower community boards and precinct councils to play a role in approving and vetoing by supermajority any precinct commander candidates and community affairs officers within their respective areas.

Question 12

In 2019 alone there was a 52% increase in DV homicides and 911 received upwards of 800 DV calls a day. What is your plan to prevent, identify and keep women safe from abusive intimate partners?

As someone who lived through domestic violence as a child, these issues are deeply personal to me. During my time as Borough President, I have held annual resource fairs for survivors of domestic violence to connect these survivors with the support they need and I recently introduced legislation in partnership with CM Alicka Ampry-Samuel to establish a committee on female genital mutilation and cutting.

However, in order for New York City to truly address domestic and gender based violence we must not only support the survivors, but engage the perpetrators and abusers. We must acknowledge that current programming to change abusers’ behavior is insufficient and doesn’t deal with root causes, which are often traumas experienced by the abuser themselves. To address this, we will launch the “Family Violence Perpetrator Program”, based on cognitive and behavioral therapy, in order to evaluate abusers’ traumas and treat them to prevent further violence.

In addition, I called for and helped secure the expansion of the Family Eviction Prevention Supplement (FEPS) program to include New Yorkers who were forced to leave their homes as a result of domestic violence. What we must do now is increase the subsidy provided to families to match fair market rental values for New York City.

Finally, I worked with AMs Paulin and Williams to allow residents of domestic violence shelters the ability to vote in their current districts so survivors can still participate safely in elections. At the city level I have urged the Mayor’s Domestic Violence Task Force to actively engage the voice of survivors in a leadership capacity, ensuring the survivor perspective is part of the decision-making process as well as advocated for expanded information and training for survivors to facilitate renewing orders of protection, focusing on matters such as the process to obtain and renew orders, criteria for renewal of orders, as well as agencies and organizations available to assist with renewals and violations.

Question 13

Opioid deaths have ravished communities throughout NYC. In the first two months of 2020, 440 people died. How will you tackle this continuing public health crisis? What will you do differently than the outgoing administration to save lives?

A public health approach to drug use is the only way we will treat addiction as the disease it is.

I have championed the siting of additional rehabilitation centers in Brooklyn as a way to provide the needed support services that those living with addiction need, with a focus on an equitable distribution of these sites and supportive services that promote the health and safety of clients and community residents alike.

I have championed harm reduction strategies by organizing and conducting dozens of Narcan trainings to combat the scourge of overdoses in Brooklyn, and we are in the final phases of certifying Borough Hall as an official Narcan distribution site.

Finally, I have put my money where my mouth is allocating $600,000 to help finance VOCAL’s new headquarters and syringe distribution center in Brooklyn. DOHMH must do more to support the expansion and operation of such programs.

Question 14

NYPD and EMT responded to all 154,000 mental health calls in 2020, how will you expand and strengthen Mayor de Blasio’s test programs to keep NYC police out of mental health crisis calls?

I believe that the police need to have a reduced role in responding to some emotional health crisis calls and I’m willing to explore pilots that utilize teams of peer responders and EMTs. I have firsthand experience responding to mental health crisis calls and I have seen both situations: the ones where my presence exacerbated the situation and the ones where I needed to protect a person from bodily harm. However, asking even more of our overtaxed EMS workers while paying them the same salary as they were paid before the pandemic is completely unfair. Our paramedics and EMTs deserve more than applause. They deserve real pay parity that acknowledges the depth of their sacrifice, and their contributions to New York.

Question 15

According to the Coalition for the Homeless, “In January 2021, there were 55,915 homeless people, including 17,645 homeless children, sleeping each night in the New York City municipal shelter system”. What do you plan to do differently than the current administration to combat the issue of homelessness, particularly houselessness among women and households headed by single women with children in NYC?

We must tackle homelessness at every level, but the most immediate thing we can do is to ensure we keep those that are housing insecure in their homes so they never enter the shelter system. New Yorkers on the brink of homelessness and in shelters need far greater assistance than is available now to transition into permanent housing. One way we will accomplish this is by increasing the value of the City FHEPS housing vouchers so they reflect the value of the housing that is actually available in our city. There was a time when $1,323 for a one bedroom and $1,580 for a two bedroom was sufficient, but that time is long gone. And when the cost of a person in the shelter system is $124, and the cost of a family is $196 per day, increasing the value of vouchers is common sense governing.

It should also be noted that the many people in shelters right now just need an affordable place to live. Many say the lack of affordable housing is the main driver of our homelessness crisis, and without a doubt we need to be creating more affordable units in the coming months and years for our extremely low-income neighbors.
 But we also know there are many available affordable units throughout the city right now. The problem is we don’t have any publicly available data on how many of these units there are, where they are, how long they’ve been vacant, and who is eligible.
 This lack of transparency and urgency means homeless families are left to languish in the shelter system.

The Department of Homeless Services’ annual operating budget is $3 billion. 70% of that budget goes to operating the shelter system. If we took even a fraction of that budget and put it toward providing affordable housing opportunities for working families in the shelter system, we could help lift families and individuals out of homelessness instead of keeping them there.

Additionally, when New Yorkers currently fall on hard times and are behind on rent, their options to get help involve navigating a long trail of red tape and bureaucracy with the City’s One Shot Deal and CBO’s rent relief programs. It is an unnecessarily demoralizing process to endure multiple long application processes while feeling the threat of eviction. Rent relief programs largely need similar information from applicants such as amount owed, proof of residence, and a summary explaining the hard times fallen upon. The City can create a common application for those in need of rent relief and allow approved CBOs access to the information. It will also allow an applicant to go to one place to see the status of their various applications for help with paying back arrears.

Lastly, we must connect street homeless with resources to assist in keeping them safe and assistance in getting them back on their feet. One of my proudest investments as Borough President was in a mobile shower bus and care unit that outreaches to street homeless to provide them with warm showers and social services. We must build this model to make sure we are connecting our most vulnerable to the resources they need.

Education & Childcare

Question 16

In NYC, less than half of 3rd to 8th grade students are meeting proficiency standards on ELA or Math state exams. Rates are far lower for Black and Hispanic students. What is your plan for achieving an educational system where all public school students are meeting or exceeding basic standards, regardless of race, income or zip code?

There are a few ways I would work towards creating a more equitable education system.

1. Prioritize schools investment in low-performing communities

There are both tangible and psychological problems created for students by a poor physical educational environment—and student outcomes are clearly linked. That is why we will prioritize Department of Education schools capital dollars to go toward the construction of state-of-the-art buildings in particularly low-performing communities. Additionally, less than 20% of our schools are fully accessible to children with physical disabilities. All new construction would be fully accessible.

2. Move to a full-year school year

Three hundred years ago, when children worked alongside their families on an agrarian calendar, it made sense to take a few months off a year to tend to the crops. Those days are long over. By moving to a full-year school year, we can much better utilize our education infrastructure by creating more flexibility for parents in how — and when — their child receives their education. This calendar change will also ensure our school buildings stay open year-round and can be utilized for day-long activities, including childcare, soft skills instruction and local programming. Learning during the summer months also does not need to be limited to the school buildings; it can be a time when teachers and students are encouraged to see the city as their laboratory, their theater, and their museum.

3. Institute a robust program for culturally aware professional development

Nearly one-half of all New Yorkers speak a language other than English at home, and new New Yorkers from hundreds of different countries move here every year. Their kids may have very different cultural norms that affect how they learn and their ability to succeed in an American classroom. We will create a professional development program for educators to ensure they are culturally responsive to those students.

4. Make dyslexia screening universal

Studies show that up to 30-40% of inmates in prisons are dyslexic, indicating that students whose learning challenges are not discovered are also not addressed, leading to avoidable negative outcomes. By making dyslexia screening universal in City schools, we will identify these challenges early and better ensure success for students.

Question 17

Five years after graduates filed a complaint that their Yeshivas didn’t provide a basic education as required by law, the city produced a report that found 26 of 28 Yeshivas investigated still did not meet Substantial Equivalency standards. Beyond “working with Yeshiva leaders” what will you do differently than Mayor De Blasio to get compliance?

I believe that every child deserves a well-rounded education that maximizes their universal potential and prepares them for college or career success, regardless of their geography or identity. The City should work in partnership with community ambassadors to assess yeshiva instruction, clearly communicate expectations and baseline standards according to State education law, as well as enforce compliance where necessary.

Question 18

Teen pregnancy, dating violence, prostitution and online sex harassment continue to derail students’ abilities to learn and live free of violence and abuse. What is your plan to ensure age-appropriate sex education and a healthy relationships curriculum is mandated and delivered to every NYC child?

I support a statewide curriculum on age appropriate sex education and healthy relationships.

Question 19

What will you do to address the child care crisis that hinders women’s workforce participation, economic stability for families, and access to quality and affordable early education for children?

Childcare in New York is outrageously expensive—and lack of affordable childcare is harming parents’ ability to work and their children’s futures.

Children without adequate childcare—especially during the first 1,000 days of life—are much less likely to succeed, and are much more likely to be Black and Brown. It is a moral imperative that we provide childcare for every parent who cannot afford it, starting with children ages 0 to 3. This will

close a massive gap in care for the youngest New Yorkers at the most critical point of their brain development, and free up parents—especially women of color—to power our economy and excel in their own careers. We can start by removing the biggest cost to childcare providers of young children: space. We will do this by prioritizing space in City-owned buildings for childcare, offering density bonuses to residential building developers who guarantee permanently free or low rent to providers, and with a tax break to office building owners and other private building owners who create free space for providers—savings which will be required to be passed on to parents. But we must also get much more out of our federal government.

Question 20

Please describe what steps you will take to address the disproportionate amount of Black and Brown girls who are pushed out of school and into the juvenile detention system. What do you intend to do to stop the school to prison pipeline?

Diverting wasteful spending from the NYPD’s operating budget in our city is essential to combating our deficit, and ensuring that budgetary waste is redirected toward Black and Brown communities is necessary for a real recovery, one where the City goes upstream to proactively tackle the feeders of the criminal justice system. That includes funding for our local health care safety net, investments in

early childhood development and doula home visit services for new parents, and targeted allocations for initiatives that impact at-risk populations, such as the extending Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) into a full year program, investing in life coaches for foster youth through Fair Futures, and screening universally for dyslexia in schools.

Question 21

Do you support decriminalizing sex buying and promoting prostitution, and why? If decriminalized, would you designate a sex trade zone? Would you license brothels and collect taxes? What would be the process to decide which neighborhoods would be deemed commercial sex districts?

No, however, I support Mayor de Blasio’s efforts to shift how we address the negative externalities of sex work, namely by taking the approach where the buyers are the targets of policing, not those in the sex industry themselves. In addition, I believe we must provide resources for workers to secure health insurance, regular and free STI testing, structures that allow them to unionize, and once again targeting bad acting buyers. Finally, we must provide resources and support for victims of sex trafficking.

Question 22

Please describe what makes you uniquely qualified to lead New York City at this time.

I’ve lived in New York all my life. My single mom struggled to make ends meet for my five siblings and me. We didn’t always know if we would come home to an eviction notice or food on the table. And that is why I’ve spent my entire adult life in public service. Because I lived the life of the people I want to help. I remember what it was like to live with crime. To be hungry. To be on the edge of homelessness. To be forgotten by the city you love.

That’s why I put on a bulletproof vest as a police officer and walked the streets. That’s why I fought racism in the department. That’s why I stood up for human rights in Albany. And that’s why I have spent my Borough Presidency making government work better for the people who need it the most.

And during my 35 years in public service, I have seen what works and what doesn’t in New York. And the problems we face existed far before COVID hit. Because inefficiency leads to inequality. Mismanagement creates crises. We can’t continue to run this city the way we have been.