On the Issues

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Affordability

New York City faces a crisis of affordability. Our City has always been expensive, but today it is rapidly becoming unaffordable for millions of hard-working New Yorkers at all income levels. Andrew Cuomo’s plans for New York City, including those addressing housing, childcare, health, transportation, economic development, and job creation, will make the cost of living more affordable for New Yorkers.

Andrew Cuomo’s affordability plan for New York City will:

  • Increase the supply of affordable housing.
  • Expand access to affordable healthcare. Connect all New Yorkers to primary care and specialty care when needed. Assist New Yorkers who are denied coverage by their insurance plan.
  • Guarantee universal 3-K and increase childcare options.
  • Make transportation more affordable by expanding discounted access to buses and significantly increasing the percentage of New Yorkers who enroll in the subsidized Fair Fares programs for which they are eligible.
  • Provide targeted tax relief to lower income and middle-class voters, including homeowners.
  • Improve incomes through job creation, workforce training, and worker protections and via tax cutting measures.

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Public Safety

A safe New York City will be the first priority of the Cuomo Administration and is a precondition to achieve the progress our city must make in other areas.

Andrew Cuomo’s plan for public safety will:

  • Increase the size of the NYPD. The current force level of 34,000 NYPD officers is lower than in 29 of the past 30 years. Our city is not secure.
  • Deploy police officers based on proven, data-driven strategies, focusing on recidivists who are responsible for a disproportionate share of crime and on the locations where most crime occurs.
  • Crack down on nuisance and quality of life crimes. Tackle retail theft, identify habitual offenders, disrupt fencing operations, and increase enforcement.
  • Increase accountability for e-bike and moped violations by beginning traffic enforcement that has been absent, and holding businesses responsible for infractions.

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Subway Safety

Subway safety is essential. To make the subways safe and to restore rider confidence, a comprehensive approach will be implemented with consistent enforcement and strong accountability.

Andrew Cuomo’s subway safety plan will:

  • Increase permanent presence and deployment of NYPD and MTA officers in stations and on subways. Add substantially more officers to NYPD Transit to reduce mandatory overtime while restoring the force level to match the scale of the task. The police presence will be robust and respectful, ensuring rider safety and confidence.
  • Prevent unlawful entry through better infrastructure. Upgrade turnstiles across all stations and improve training to prevent fare evasion. Work with District Attorneys to address crimes on our subways, including vandalism, drug use, and disorderly conduct.
  • Increase outreach to homeless individuals on subways. Partner with mental health services, shelters, and diversion centers to provide alternatives for those removed from the subway system.

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Housing

New York City is in a housing crisis. The existing supply of housing is increasingly unaffordable and its quality is deteriorating. As Mayor, Andrew Cuomo will use every lever at the City’s disposal to accelerate the pace of construction of affordable and workforce housing, while protecting the rights of tenants and keeping families from falling into homelessness.

Andrew Cuomo’s plan to address Housing will:

  • Build more housing across all income levels. Increasing the supply of housing is essential to stabilizing and ultimately reducing rents, as well as creating the workforce housing that cannot be built by the private sector alone.
  • Leverage public land for housing development. Identify and redevelop underutilized city-owned lots for affordable and mixed-income housing.
  • Improve the quality of life in NYCHA Housing. We can improve the quality of life in NYCHA Housing while working with tenants to explore redevelopment in a way that increases the supply of housing. We will include resident input and leadership in every decision we make regarding NYCHA.
  • Protect renters and keep families in their homes. Enhance enforcement of rent-stabilization laws to prevent illegal rent hikes and landlord harassment. Ensure that every tenant facing eviction has counsel in housing court to reduce evictions that result in homelessness.

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Mental Health, Addiction, & Homelessness

Many low-level violations and crimes on our streets and subways are attributable to individuals who are seriously mentally ill or suffering from addiction, many of whom are homeless. The status quo acceptance of this as a condition of urban life is not compassionate. It leaves the suffering of these individuals untreated and diminishes the quality of life in New York City. Fixing the many flaws in the current mental health and substance use disorder care system will reduce hospitalizations, homelessness, and incarceration among individuals with serious mental illness or substance use disorders, while improving the quality of life for all New Yorkers.

Andrew Cuomo’s plan to address mental health and homelessness will:

  • Expand access to mental health and substance use disorder services, particularly for the homeless, with a focus on community-based services.
  • Meet the mental health needs of children and adolescents. Prioritize schools as key access points for mental health services.
  • Restructure inpatient psychiatric bed capacity to end the revolving door and enable longer stays, particularly for those without housing security.
  • Consistently enforce involuntary commitment laws. Codify in statute the existing standard that permits involuntarily committing individuals who are a danger to themselves because they cannot meet their basic needs. Ensure that judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers consistently seek Article 730 mental health competency exams for defendants whose offenses are related to their serious mental illness.
  • Reduce chronic street homelessness. Focus on outreach to the roughly 2,000 chronically homeless people who need intensive mental health and addiction services to bring them in from the streets and subways.
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Education and Childcare

After public safety, the Mayor of New York City has no higher calling than ensuring that the more than 900,000 students enrolled in the New York City public school system receive a high-quality education. The sheer size of the school system makes mayoral control an imperative to ensure accountability for performance. A commitment to excellence and high standards must go hand-in-hand with adequate resources.

Andrew Cuomo’s education plan will:

  • Reduce class size. Secure state funding to implement the Reduced Class Size law so it is not an unfunded mandate. Ensure the Reduced Class Size law does not reduce the capacity of selective schools.
  • Guarantee a suitable 3-K slot to all families and expand after school programs. Ensure sufficient 3-K programs are available to offer slots aligned with where families live and work.
  • Strengthen Community Schools as a hub for social services in high poverty districts. Increase the number of School-Based Health Centers with a goal of having a SBHC in every Community School.
  • Address chronic absenteeism and teacher attrition. The current 35% chronic absenteeism rate (more than 50% in certain areas) is unacceptable and must be fixed, beginning with stronger engagement with parents. To reduce teacher attrition, we need better working conditions, improved safety, and enhanced mentoring.
  • Strengthen career and technical education (CTE). CTE programs are a key pathway to economic mobility. Partner with businesses and develop apprenticeship programs to develop good paying jobs for students who don’t have college degrees.
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Health and Wellness

New York City is home to some of the best health care services in the world, but access to these services is not evenly distributed among its residents. The large disparities in health outcomes by race and neighborhood are striking. Improving the health of all New Yorkers is a priority that includes not only traditional physical healthcare, but also mental healthcare. In addition, substance use disorder assistance, public health measures such as vaccinations, and addressing the social determinants of health, such as housing and healthy food, are necessary for a healthy population.

Andrew Cuomo’s health and wellness plan will:

  • Ensure that all New Yorkers have access to primary care and specialty care when needed. Build on the strengths of Health + Hospitals, including its NYC Cares program, and partner with federally qualified community health centers and large independent physician associations that are providing community-based care in their neighborhoods.
  • Make healthcare more convenient in hard-to-serve communities by bringing services to more schools and public housing.
  • Reduce health disparities. Establish targeted programs with concrete performance goals to reduce health disparities in maternal health and chronic diseases such as diabetes and asthma.
  • Strengthen safety net hospitals. Create stronger collaboration among Health + Hospitals, private safety net hospitals, and large academic medical centers.
  • Protect public health. New York City must be more focused than ever on core public health functions – pandemic preparedness, childhood vaccinations, environmental health – in the face of a federal government that is failing to address these challenges.
  • Integrate physical health and behavioral health. Encourage co-location of services and seamless exchange of healthcare information to address the growing problems of mental health and substance use disorders.
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Combating Antisemitism

Our New York values demand respect for all and intimidation of none. The rise of antisemitism across the world, in our nation, and even here in New York City, is repulsive and will be met with all the legal and moral force needed to ensure that no New Yorker feels victimized or threatened.

Andrew Cuomo's plan to combat antisemitism will:

  • Ensure that those who threaten, harass, or destroy property in the name of antisemitism are held accountable.
  • Provide a strong response to antisemitic incidents in schools, including curriculum reforms.
  • Adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism to ensure that city officials and law enforcement are battling antisemitism in all forms.
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A Clean and Livable New York City

New Yorkers deserve a city that is safe, affordable and well-maintained. In order for families to thrive, businesses to grow, and residents to enjoy their neighborhoods, New York City must take steps to improve the cleanliness and order of public spaces.

Andrew Cuomo’s plan will:

  • End open air drug markets and use. Enforce state laws which allow people who appear to be incapacitated by alcohol and/or drugs, and may be a danger to themselves or others, to be taken to treatment facilities for emergency services.
  • Curb the overuse of sidewalk sheds (scaffolding) with legislation that limits the time that scaffolding can remain in place. Amend regulations to allow safe alternatives to scaffolding. Streamline building inspection timelines, speed up Local Law 11 permitting, and incentivize building owners to take down scaffolding quickly.
  • Improve curbside composting. Boost participation in curbside composting programs through public awareness campaigns, incentives and resources for landlords, and clear guidelines and training. Work with large buildings to make implementation easier and more effective for residents and building staff.
  • Reform the outdoor dining permit process. Clear the backlog of thousands of applicants waiting for outdoor dining licenses by adding resources that will: provide transparency to help establishments navigate the outdoor dining process efficiently; set clear timelines for permitting decisions, allowing small businesses to plan outdoor dining setups and staffing; improve coordination among city agencies with jurisdiction over outdoor dining permits; and set and enforce standards of cleanliness and security for outdoor dining. 
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Economic Development

The key to economic development and job creation is to ensure that New York City adopts policies that are conducive to the business community and inclusive of all New Yorkers. Job creation produces tax revenue which can be invested in services that improve quality of life which in turn leads to more job creation.

Andrew Cuomo’s economic development and job creation plan will:

  • Strengthen education and workforce development for economic mobility. Expand workforce training and apprenticeships, particularly in nontraditional fields like healthcare, to create more pathways to economic mobility. Fix the K-12 education system to increase both college attainment and better preparation for jobs that don’t require a college degree.
  • Promote inclusive economic growth and job creation. Expand wage supplements and other programs targeted to at-risk men (ages 18-24) to help them enter the workforce. Protect Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) programs.
  • Drive economic growth through infrastructure investment. Expand the City’s role in major infrastructure projects and prioritize infrastructure projects in the outer boroughs, such as the Metro-North expansion that will create four new transit hubs in the East Bronx.
  • Revitalize the City’s central business districts. Support office-to-residential conversions, especially for underused commercial properties and transform business districts into 24/7 destinations.
  • Build up sectors where New York City has a competitive advantage. With its world-leading hospitals and strong presence in technology, New York City can become a leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will be the dominant economic force in the decades to come.