| Photo by Kazuend on Unsplash
I am proud to be a New Yorker, and as your mayor, I am even prouder to announce that our city is getting safer, stronger, and more affordable every day. Look at the numbers, but you don’t have to take my word for it. We just released our city’s annual Mayor’s Management Report card. It details how much progress we have made over the last fiscal year. We’ve driven down crime, removed tens of thousands of illegal guns and mopeds from our streets, built record amounts of affordable housing and new school buildings, and, most importantly, helped put billions of dollars back into the pockets of working-class New Yorkers.
Our economy has never been more robust, and our rising job numbers and falling crime rates signal a new era of safety and economic opportunity for all New Yorkers.
Overall, crime rates have fallen over the last fiscal year, driven by another year of double-digit decreases in murders and shootings. Our police officers are working harder than ever to keep New Yorkers safe, with more felony crime arrests, quality-of-life summonses, and transit enforcement. Last fiscal year, we also earned the authority to shut down illegal smoke shops and immediately started “Operation Padlock to Protect.” Since then, we’ve shut down more than 1,000 illegal cannabis shops.
We know that public safety is more than just what our police officers do. We are determined to keep people safe as they walk, run, and bike our streets. That’s why we installed 27 percent more protected bike lanes and 94 percent more speed reducers. And it’s why we have seized over 20,000 illegal mopeds and scooters—four times as many as last fiscal year. We are seeing positive results, with fewer traffic fatalities for pedestrians and traditional bicyclists over the previous year.
We are also keeping our city safer and cleaner. To protect New Yorkers from flooding, we doubled the rate of lead abatement at NYCHA properties and cleared catch basins 24 percent faster.
“Our city is moving in the right direction — and I am proud to lead the team of city workers helping us get there. Thanks to this administration, New York City isn’t just coming back; we’re not just back — we’re better than ever.”
At the same time, we are creating jobs and prosperity across the five boroughs and expanding services to make our city more affordable. Unemployment is down by 8 percent from the previous year, reaching just 4.8 percent, with an approximate 30 percent decrease in Black and Latino unemployment.
Our city is also helping put money back in your pockets, with 25 percent more families signed up for subsidized child care, 19 percent more young people who live in NYCHA housing getting connected with jobs, and 20 percent more New Yorkers without insurance enrolled to receive low-cost or no-cost health services through NYC Care.
We are also building more affordable and supportive housing than ever before. In fact, we more than doubled the number of affordable units we built and preserved for seniors. We also helped more New Yorkers in shelters get into permanent housing.
It is a small sampling of the good work we’ve delivered to New Yorkers over the last fiscal year. Looking over this report, we can see the previous three years of hard work paying off and delivering results. We know there is a lot of work left to do, and we are committed to shining a light on every aspect of city government so we can do an even better job delivering for New Yorkers in the future. Our city is moving in the right direction — and I am proud to lead the team of city workers helping us get there. Thanks to this administration, New York City isn’t just coming back; we’re not just back — we’re better than ever.
