In the comic book universe, Gotham City and Metropolis are safeguarded by masked superheroes, superpowers, but in real life, New York City, on which these fictional cities are based, is under the charge of its 110th mayor, Eric L. Adams. An unlikely superhero, he has taken on all monsters―be it Covid-19, crime, inequality, financial downturns, racism and other evils that imperil a big city. He has brought New York back from the brink.
Adams, 62, has battled adversity; he and five siblings were brought up by a single mother who cleaned homes to make a living. From having battled dyslexia to making it to the dean’s list, Adams has seen both sides of life, and managed to transform outcomes.
Arrested and beaten as a teenager, he went on to combat injustice by joining the police force and rose to the rank of captain. As a founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, he worked on changing the system from within. Adams later became a state senator and was the first person of colour to chair the senate’s homeland security committee. In 2013, he was elected president of the Brooklyn borough, and while working to bring diverse groups together, public policy and good government became his mantra.
Adams is all about taking creative action to solve problems. When he temporarily went blind in one eye and was told he had type 2 diabetes, he took radical action, transforming his diet and losing 35 pounds.
It is said that when Adams was growing up in Jamaica, Queens, he would often carry a plastic bag of belongings with him for he never knew if he may be returning to an eviction notice on their home.
As mayor-elect, one of his first acts was to nominate five deputy mayors―all of them women, and two of them of Asian heritage (Meera Joshi is his deputy mayor for operations).
Affordable housing is an acute problem in New York City but Adams says he has set “a moonshot goal of building five lakh new homes for New Yorkers over the next decade―and to achieve this goal we must fight for new housing, new zoning, and innovation.” This entails out-of-the-box thinking in converting office space lying vacant after the pandemic into apartments for daily living, keeping the business districts vibrant.
Searching for bold and creative ways to solve the problems of a big city seems to be the mantra of Adams. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:
Q You have often been called the Hindu mayor because of your affinity with all faiths. Good Hindus are supposed to love all religions, all people. Do you believe these are universal ideas, that more people should be adopting?
A Yes, I believe the universal principle of being kind, of being just, of being benevolent is more than just actually being a loyal worshipper―being a practitioner. That’s why I say the city should be a city where God is present. No matter how you define God, no matter what way―be it the Buddha, through meditation, breathing; or if it’s through Christ, Jehovah, any of the deities that are worshipped in different philosophies.
When I sit inside a Sikh temple, when I sit inside a synagogue or church or mosque, I still feel that universal principle of kindness, of justice, of caring, of leaving that place of worship and going out and fulfilling our obligation as spiritual beings. We are not human beings in a spiritual place. We are spiritual beings in a human place. And we need to continue to manifest that spirituality.
Q As a former police officer, one of your campaign plans has been decreasing the crime rate, and that has happened. But while the shootings and homicides have decreased, the assaults and robberies have risen.
A When we came into office, we saw an over proliferation of guns, homicides and shootings. That was our primary focus―to make sure that we put in place the right police personnel to go after those guns. We took and removed over 8,000 guns off the street since I’ve been the mayor. We saw shootings go down, we saw murders go down. But we have also seen something else: we are seeing robberies go down.
Our subways have become safer because of our subway safety plan. Our customer satisfaction surveys are showing that people are feeling safer on our system. They see the presence of police.
We announced recently that we are asking Kia and Hyundai to get a better safety system and we are encouraging people to get their safety system installed in cars. Crime is going down, jobs are coming up and that is what we are committed to.
Q What do you say about New York City’s financial forecast? What is the post-Covid recovery plan being implemented?
A It starts with efficiency. We went to our agencies when I first took office and stated we must do what everyday taxpayers are doing. And make sure we balance the budget of our house, which are our agencies, like everyday taxpayers are balancing the budget of their homes.
You know, my mother used to say, this is the amount of money that comes in. This is the rent, and if we are going to spend something over what was taken in, we need to decide what we are going to take off the list. And that’s what we’re telling all our agencies. We did something called the peg program to eliminate the gap, told the agencies to look for efficiencies.
We did two rounds of that. And we are going to have to do another round because, unexpectedly, we were hit with a $4.2 billion bill from our asylum seekers. That money was not factored into how we’re going to deal with our budget crisis. Add that to the fiscal clip of the money we were receiving from the federal government which is going to run out next year. There is going to be some pain. But we’re not going to do away with services, we’re not going to do layoffs. We’re just going to find those efficiencies within our agencies.
Q What else are you implementing for the city?
A We are really focusing on continued safety as we cycle out of Covid-19. All of us would admit that it caused serious mental health issues and we must address those issues. The number of suicides among young people has increased; the number of drug overdoses has increased. We’re looking at young people having a particularly hard time post-Covid. But we also want to look at our ageing population. Loneliness is really a part of the social determinants of health, and so we want to make sure we care for our older adults.
Our focus is on housing. And so in dealing with our mental health crisis, and continuing to make our city a safe city as we encourage people to come here, and we’re seeing financial success―99 per cent of all jobs we lost pre-pandemic―roughly 9,58,000―are back.
We are also seeing new companies come here and open shop. JP Morgan is opening a new corporate headquarters. We’re seeing Pfizer, and we’re leaning into biotech on 11th avenue and on first avenue. So there’s real excitement.
Tourism is up: 56 million tourists―we are predicting 65 million this year, which is a major economic boost for us. People are back on the streets, you’re seeing them back in our restaurants, and Broadway is up and operating. So, we’re excited. Financial recovery is going to be a difficult one but we know we’ve done it before, in 2008. We did it before that in 2001 and we know that this city is resilient.
Q The Indian-American community has been delighted that you are championing the cause of Diwali as a school holiday.
A You know, there are levels to bring in the success of the Diwali holiday home. The first level was to find a date that we could trade off with. And we did that. The chancellor and I, and many others, we all agreed to look at what was called Brooklyn-Queens Day, and trade that off for the Diwali holiday, because there were no more days on the books. The state law requires the department of education to have a certain number of school days, and we had the maximum amount of holidays and days off, but we were able to creatively come up with the trade-off.
We presented it to the state lawmakers helped by the amazing work of Jenifer Rajkumar [member, New York state assembly] to move this forward. And now it is up to the state lawmakers to actually vote on the change of moving it from the Brooklyn-Queens Day to a Diwali holiday. We’re hoping they do it this session but is still in negotiation.
Melwani is a New York-based journalist who blogs at Lassi with Lavina.