New York, 26 Jan. The mayor of New York, Eric Adams, presented this Thursday his Agenda for the Working People, a proposal focused on jobs, security, health and housing, at a time when the city faces a serious crisis of homeless residents.
Adams presented his proposal, which also includes measures to take care of the environment, during his second message on “the state of the city”, a city that wants to be “cleaner and greener”, for which he will require the companies Uber and Lyft to have a fleet of zero-emission vehicles by 2030.
The mayor emphasized having a city that offers good jobs and salaries, and one of the measures he announced is a job training program that by 2030 will have benefited 30,000 young people and adults, which will be accompanied by an educational campaign.
Adams recalled that despite the fact that the city has added more than 200,000 new jobs in the last year, the unemployment rate for the black population is at least three times higher, an inequality “that must end.”
Employment initiatives include creating a center that will help 2,500 people with disabilities find jobs, as well as increasing city contracts with minority and women-owned businesses, investing $60 billion over the next eight years, as well as supporting to the young cannabis industry, among others.
It will also push to make the city the world center for sustainable biotechnology to meet carbon neutrality targets and create jobs.
In the area of security, one of the greatest challenges since Adams became mayor two years ago due to gun violence, he said that they will seek to get some 1,700 criminals responsible for various violent crimes off their streets.
“We are going to use proven methods and intensive community support (in neighborhoods) to prevent gun culture from taking root and taking over,” he said during the address at the Queens Theater in Flushing Park.
“We cannot allow a small number of violent people to continue to terrorize our neighborhoods,” he said.
To solve the affordable housing crisis, which keeps more than 60,000 New Yorkers sleeping each night in public shelters, the city committed to building 500,000 housing units.
In addition, to prevent evictions, the city will allocate $22 million for more personnel to investigate and enforce laws against landlord abuse, as well as create alliances with legal groups, among other measures.
On the subject of health, free medical care will be provided in shelters to the homeless if the person has been in the system for at least seven days, including the thousands of immigrants who have arrived in recent months, of which he said they come “to pursue the American dream, not live in a nightmare.”
This initiative, he assured, would make New York the first city in the country to provide this level of care and support to its residents.
In addition, the city will continue efforts to ensure that every New Yorker has access to the medical services they require, including mental health services for children and families, and the investment of $150 million from the settlements in opioid lawsuits for treatment programs.
