Adams unveils $115 billion preliminary budget that makes housing a priority for NYC
- The proposed budget sets aside $325 million for rental assistance program CityFHEPS
- Critics said the mayor’s preliminary spending plan ‘simply does not reflect reality’
Mayor Eric Adams kicked off the city's budget negotiation process on Thursday, which will run until July.
Photo courtesy: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Mayor Eric Adams unveiled a preliminary $114.5 billion budget for New York City on Thursday, prioritizing spending on housing and public safety while avoiding spending cuts of years past.
“Thanks to the savings we achieved and revenue growth, we have been able to apply almost $1.2 billion to protect critical services that benefit our working class families,” Adams said in his budget address.
Over the next fiscal year, the mayor’s proposed budget reserves $325 million for the rental assistance program CityFHEPS, $64.2 million for supportive housing, and $7.6 million for a program that investigates landlords who harass tenants. Those investments come as NYC could face cuts to certain programs—including federally-funded housing vouchers—under a new presidential administration.
Unlike previous years, Adams did not call for cuts to city agencies such as the city’s libraries, and his proposed budget would spend about $2 billion more than the budget passed last year, Gothamist reported. Adams’ more optimistic spending plan comes as he faces a reelection battle this year as well as federal bribery and campaign finance charges.
Adams’ budget wasn’t without its critics. NYC Comptroller Brad Lander—who’s running to unseat Adams in this year’s mayoral election—said the city’s budget savings were largely due to Adams overestimating how much the city needed to spend to assist immigrants seeking asylum in NYC.
“Perhaps the biggest gimmick here is that $2.4 billion of the $2.7 billion that the mayor is claiming in savings is merely correcting for his past overbudgeting of asylum seeker costs,” Lander said in a statement.
And the city is still short around $4 billion to fund current services, said Andrew Rein, president of the watchdog group the Citizen Budget Commission. “Next year’s spending plan simply does not reflect reality,” Rein said in a statement.
Adams’ proposed budget kicks off the budget negotiation process, which involves negotiations between the City Council and the mayor to determine the city’s final spending plan.
