Eric Adams (D)

Women’s Leadership
How will you ensure that women’s participation and leadership are fully integrated across New York City government and that every decision made is considered through an anti-racist, gender-focused lens?

We can ensure women’s participation in a few ways, one is to create an inclusive and respectful environment that welcomes diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives and the other is to create a society that removes the systemic barriers that often keep women from participating and taking on leadership roles.

I have strived to create an inclusive and respectful environment with diverse voices and that is witnessed during my tenure as Borough President and on my Mayoral campaign. Both have many strong women leading and serving as my senior advisors.

But then we must consider the larger systemic reasons why women are discouraged from leadership and representation; one is because of the lack of childcare. Childcare is essential infrastructure and that is why I have put out a plan to make it available to every parent who needs it.

The average cost of private childcare in NYC is sky-high–more than $16,000 a year. The annual cost of center-based childcare for infants and toddlers is one-third of the average household income for families with young children. And the cost is two-thirds of household income in lower-income communities.

In addition, to ensure we are making our economy and our city fairer as we make it larger, we will hire a Chief Diversity Officer to drive change on equity for minorities and women, and additionally create a tool to track the share of M/WBE contracts and how much the City is spending on those companies versus others in real-time. We will also much more closely track who these M/WBE employers and contractors are employing. And the Officer will be tasked with tracking gender pay equity and the progress we are making toward closing the gap. First they will focus on pay equity within City agencies and then we will push to track it across private employers in the City.

Affordable and Safe Housing
Some women and families live in New York City’s homeless shelters for over a year because they cannot find safe, affordable places to live with the current rate of NYC rental subsidy. As mayor, how will you address this reality and help families build their lives outside of the shelter system?

My siblings and I grew up housing insecure to the point where I often brought a plastic bag of clothes to school with me because of fear of eviction. Housing security isn’t theoretical for me, it is real for me. To tackle this crisis, I would increase the value of the City FHEPS housing vouchers so they reflect the value of the housing that is actually available in our city. There was a time when $1,323 for a one bedroom and $1,580 for a two bedroom was sufficient, but that time is long gone. And when the cost of a person in the shelter system is $124, and the cost of a family is $196 per day, increasing the value of vouchers is common sense governing.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the holes in New York City’s safety net but it also led to an opportunity for historic change. The next mayor and City Council will inherit billions of dollars in new funds from the federal and State governments that — if used wisely and morally — can fundamentally change our city. Most importantly, smarter, fairer, more effective government can reverse inequality.

That is why as mayor I will launch my “People’s Plan”, combining my NYC AID, Housing Voucher+ and UCare universal childcare programs—all united by my MyCity platform to better deliver services and beneﬁts efﬁciently and effectively to New Yorkers who need them.

This unprecedented effort will be my top priority to revolutionize the City’s approach to caring for New Yorkers in need by providing assistance through automatic monthly cash assistance, free or subsidized child care, housing vouchers that actually pay the rent and more efﬁcient delivery of City services.

At the center of the People’s Plan will be a uniﬁed digital platform that connects all City agencies through a single portal. To receive the cash, credits, services and other assistance they need, New Yorkers will simply ﬁll out one application and the City will do the rest. With the right set of data points, the City will be able to determine what each New Yorker needs, and then use its resources to assist them, whether that means putting cash into a bank account or placing their child at a local daycare center.

My People’s Plan will bring our city into the 21st Century, leaving no New Yorker behind. At this pivotal moment, we finally have the resources and technology to deliver on the promise of New York. Here is how I will do it.

Fair Wages
While all women continue to earn less on average than men in New York City, women of color and immigrants, who are more likely to work in low-paid jobs in the public and private sectors, face significantly larger gaps and higher poverty rates. What are your plans for eliminating these disparities in New York City?

There are a myriad of reasons why the gender wage gap exists. A few of the reasons include lack of childcare and discrimination. We also need to acknowledge that discrimination takes multiple forms, sometimes it means the woman will not be hired for a job and sometimes it means the woman will not be promoted despite having all of the qualifications. Each of these reasons need to be addressed to holistically address the wage gap. We need to ensure that women have the resources, safe inclusive work environments, and access to higher paying jobs.

As I have detailed, Childcare is an essential infrastructure and that is why I have put out a plan to make it available to every parent who needs it.

This is also why I will have my Chief Diversity Officer track gender pay equity across city agencies first and then expand across employers in the City. We will develop simple metrics to measure gender equality and expect city agencies and employers to share their data with us. The CDO will track the progress we are making towards closing the gap.

In addition, we need to address the skills gap in our economy. We are woefully underprepared for this moment, revealed by the fact that we had hundreds-of-thousands of jobs that we could not fill before the pandemic. We need to make sure women are poised to take on the jobs of the future.

Our program will go to the next level to prepare our workforce by utilizing metrics and connecting human services nonprofits, the private sector, and the communities that most need jobs to identify skill gaps and focus our training on areas we know will have jobs available for our workers. We will implement a data-oriented system with holistic and detailed skills mapping of the labor force by City Council district. Companies looking to hire will then submit a set of jobs and skills profiles. From there, we will match workers with job training and placement providers using local organizations and working with landlords with open storefronts to create service centers and outreach programs. Lastly, we will develop a public-private partnership with large companies established in New York to develop a talent portal with a centralized system of resumes and hiring information using a tool similar to the college admissions Common App process.

Accessible Caregiving
This pandemic has exacerbated the big holes in our caregiving systems, including childcare and long-term care. How do you propose addressing these issues and creating a fair and equitable system both for families and the caregiving workforce?

Caregiving is easier when places of employment give flexibility to the work day. COVID has shown us that we do not all need to be at a desk in an office building to be productive. This is why I will encourage more flexible work options and remote work across the City so that caregivers can continue to care for their families while maintaining employment.

This is also why I have put out a comprehensive plan on universal childcare in this city. The issue is not just that childcare is unaffordable. It is often unavailable too. There are subsidies available that parents cannot access because spots are not available for their children. Only 14% of eligible infants and toddlers are served by the City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) early education programs, leaving nearly 86% of children without a spot.

We can start by removing the biggest cost to childcare providers of young children: space. We will do this by prioritizing space in City-owned buildings for childcare. Offering density bonuses to residential building developers who guarantee permanently free or low rent to providers. Tax break to office building owners and other private building owners who create free space for providers — savings which will be required to be passed on to parents.

Ending Gender-Based Violence
There has been a significant uptick in reports of sexual harassment and violence against women and gender expansive people during the pandemic. What is your plan to address gender-based violence in New York City in both the private and public sectors?

Preventing and reducing gender-based violence starts with acknowledging the pervasiveness of these actions and overcoming social and sometimes cultural barriers to discussing them and addressing them effectively and appropriately. This must include education of young people, training for police, and ensuring our criminal justice system recognizes the full scope of the crisis, including rape and sexual assault crimes committed against transgender men and women, children and non-binary individuals. Law enforcement must also commit to clearing rape kit backlogs and developing specific plans for dealing with pervasive race and gender discrimination that leads to injustice for survivors of sexual assault and rape.

In addition, I have a plan to address the pervasive issue of domestic violence in our city. The NYPD responds to approximately 230,000 domestic incidents each year and 18% of homicides in NYC are due to domestic violence. Many abusers are repeat offenders. We must acknowledge that current programming to change abusers’ behavior is insufficient and doesn’t deal with root causes, which are often traumas experienced by the abuser themselves. To address this, we will launch the “Family Violence Perpetrator Program”, based on cognitive and behavioral therapy, in order to evaluate abusers’ traumas and treat them to prevent further violence.

Education
Cities across the country, including several in New York, have begun to take steps to remove police from schools. As mayor, would you remove police from schools in New York City, and if so, would you reinvest the money toward educational programs and support resources?

We need to create educational environments that are conducive to success for every student. I support having limited Peace Officers in schools but we need to ensure they are properly trained and change their uniform to have them fit into a school environment.

Most importantly, I am committed to giving schools the resources to provide wrap-around services such as social workers, counselors, laundry services for students experiencing homelessness, and nutrition education. To truly maximize the use of our school facilities as safe, trusted spaces, we will survey all community school families on issues that impact their children’s success, including housing insecurity, and appropriately triage resources. There is a lot of work we can do to fully support our children in their educational environments.

Maternal Health
How will you use city agencies, the budget, and your role as a public figure to address the crisis of maternal mortality and specifically the disproportionate impact on Black women in NYC?

We need to invest in our mothers and families before the child is born which is why I have proposed the first prenatal to career program. This will focus on becoming the global leader in the prenatal-to-career approach, with a much more comprehensive citywide program for expecting moms and families that links them to vital resources such as healthy foods, prenatal classes and doulas. We need to make sure women are supported prior to arriving at the hospital and that there are preventative measures taken to ensure the health of the family.

Because there is such an obvious benefit to women and babies from the services offered by doulas, I will create a citywide program to offer doulas at reduced cost or for free to expectant mothers through H+H. We will begin with a pilot program at all 11 H+H hospitals while simultaneously ramping up training programs to get a corps of doulas ready to join a larger effort across all H+H hospitals and related clinics. Doulas in the program will be H+H staff and we will pay them a salary with benefits.

Based on H+H birth rates and likely program participation, I estimate that a full program could cost as little as $10 million a year and include 150 doulas. If we expand the program further and make H+H a renowned center for doula care, we could even subsidize the program by attracting wealthier families who want doulas to use H+H and pay for care out-of-pocket or with insurance that covers it. And we would push the State to increase Medicaid reimbursement rates for doulas. Right now it’s essentially minimum wage.

Legal Justice
Low income New York City families, many headed by single mothers, continue to be impacted negatively by the lack of early civil legal representation in their interaction with City entities, such as the Administration for Children’s Services and Family Court. How would you reform the NYC civil justice system so that all NYC families have access to timely, competent legal assistance to protect their families, homes and livelihoods?

Being poor is a full time job and we criminalize poverty in this city. I support providing more free legal services to indigent NYCers (e.g. for housing court and family court issues). It is also critical that we make sure our courts are fully funded so that justice delayed is not justice denied.

Furthermore, we should look to build a model that anyone who is a debtor defendant, if they cannot afford representation, can be provided representation. I would also reach out to our big 50 law firms and ask them to contribute with their pro bono service.

I am also proud that as Brooklyn Borough President, I put together community events for Free Legal Services For All which had a wide variety of lawyers present for free to any member in need. We will expand programs like this across the city in the communities that need them the most.

These questions and the responses from this candidate belong to PowHer and are being shared with their permission. This content in its original format can be found at: https://amayorfornycwomen.org/eric-adams/

Replies

Emily VanVleck June 10, 2021 at 2:06pm

Women’s Leadership
How will you ensure that women’s participation and leadership are fully integrated across New York City government and that every decision made is considered through an anti-racist, gender-focused lens?

We can ensure women’s participation in a few ways, one is to create an inclusive and respectful environment that welcomes diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives and the other is to create a society that removes the systemic barriers that often keep women from participating and taking on leadership roles.

I have strived to create an inclusive and respectful environment with diverse voices and that is witnessed during my tenure as Borough President and on my Mayoral campaign. Both have many strong women leading and serving as my senior advisors.

But then we must consider the larger systemic reasons why women are discouraged from leadership and representation; one is because of the lack of childcare. Childcare is essential infrastructure and that is why I have put out a plan to make it available to every parent who needs it.

The average cost of private childcare in NYC is sky-high–more than $16,000 a year. The annual cost of center-based childcare for infants and toddlers is one-third of the average household income for families with young children. And the cost is two-thirds of household income in lower-income communities.

In addition, to ensure we are making our economy and our city fairer as we make it larger, we will hire a Chief Diversity Officer to drive change on equity for minorities and women, and additionally create a tool to track the share of M/WBE contracts and how much the City is spending on those companies versus others in real-time. We will also much more closely track who these M/WBE employers and contractors are employing. And the Officer will be tasked with tracking gender pay equity and the progress we are making toward closing the gap. First they will focus on pay equity within City agencies and then we will push to track it across private employers in the City.

Affordable and Safe Housing
Some women and families live in New York City’s homeless shelters for over a year because they cannot find safe, affordable places to live with the current rate of NYC rental subsidy. As mayor, how will you address this reality and help families build their lives outside of the shelter system?

My siblings and I grew up housing insecure to the point where I often brought a plastic bag of clothes to school with me because of fear of eviction. Housing security isn’t theoretical for me, it is real for me. To tackle this crisis, I would increase the value of the City FHEPS housing vouchers so they reflect the value of the housing that is actually available in our city. There was a time when $1,323 for a one bedroom and $1,580 for a two bedroom was sufficient, but that time is long gone. And when the cost of a person in the shelter system is $124, and the cost of a family is $196 per day, increasing the value of vouchers is common sense governing.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the holes in New York City’s safety net but it also led to an opportunity for historic change. The next mayor and City Council will inherit billions of dollars in new funds from the federal and State governments that — if used wisely and morally — can fundamentally change our city. Most importantly, smarter, fairer, more effective government can reverse inequality.

That is why as mayor I will launch my “People’s Plan”, combining my NYC AID, Housing Voucher+ and UCare universal childcare programs—all united by my MyCity platform to better deliver services and beneﬁts efﬁciently and effectively to New Yorkers who need them.

This unprecedented effort will be my top priority to revolutionize the City’s approach to caring for New Yorkers in need by providing assistance through automatic monthly cash assistance, free or subsidized child care, housing vouchers that actually pay the rent and more efﬁcient delivery of City services.

At the center of the People’s Plan will be a uniﬁed digital platform that connects all City agencies through a single portal. To receive the cash, credits, services and other assistance they need, New Yorkers will simply ﬁll out one application and the City will do the rest. With the right set of data points, the City will be able to determine what each New Yorker needs, and then use its resources to assist them, whether that means putting cash into a bank account or placing their child at a local daycare center.

My People’s Plan will bring our city into the 21st Century, leaving no New Yorker behind. At this pivotal moment, we finally have the resources and technology to deliver on the promise of New York. Here is how I will do it.

Fair Wages
While all women continue to earn less on average than men in New York City, women of color and immigrants, who are more likely to work in low-paid jobs in the public and private sectors, face significantly larger gaps and higher poverty rates. What are your plans for eliminating these disparities in New York City?

There are a myriad of reasons why the gender wage gap exists. A few of the reasons include lack of childcare and discrimination. We also need to acknowledge that discrimination takes multiple forms, sometimes it means the woman will not be hired for a job and sometimes it means the woman will not be promoted despite having all of the qualifications. Each of these reasons need to be addressed to holistically address the wage gap. We need to ensure that women have the resources, safe inclusive work environments, and access to higher paying jobs.

As I have detailed, Childcare is an essential infrastructure and that is why I have put out a plan to make it available to every parent who needs it.

This is also why I will have my Chief Diversity Officer track gender pay equity across city agencies first and then expand across employers in the City. We will develop simple metrics to measure gender equality and expect city agencies and employers to share their data with us. The CDO will track the progress we are making towards closing the gap.

In addition, we need to address the skills gap in our economy. We are woefully underprepared for this moment, revealed by the fact that we had hundreds-of-thousands of jobs that we could not fill before the pandemic. We need to make sure women are poised to take on the jobs of the future.

Our program will go to the next level to prepare our workforce by utilizing metrics and connecting human services nonprofits, the private sector, and the communities that most need jobs to identify skill gaps and focus our training on areas we know will have jobs available for our workers. We will implement a data-oriented system with holistic and detailed skills mapping of the labor force by City Council district. Companies looking to hire will then submit a set of jobs and skills profiles. From there, we will match workers with job training and placement providers using local organizations and working with landlords with open storefronts to create service centers and outreach programs. Lastly, we will develop a public-private partnership with large companies established in New York to develop a talent portal with a centralized system of resumes and hiring information using a tool similar to the college admissions Common App process.

Accessible Caregiving
This pandemic has exacerbated the big holes in our caregiving systems, including childcare and long-term care. How do you propose addressing these issues and creating a fair and equitable system both for families and the caregiving workforce?

Caregiving is easier when places of employment give flexibility to the work day. COVID has shown us that we do not all need to be at a desk in an office building to be productive. This is why I will encourage more flexible work options and remote work across the City so that caregivers can continue to care for their families while maintaining employment.

This is also why I have put out a comprehensive plan on universal childcare in this city. The issue is not just that childcare is unaffordable. It is often unavailable too. There are subsidies available that parents cannot access because spots are not available for their children. Only 14% of eligible infants and toddlers are served by the City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) early education programs, leaving nearly 86% of children without a spot.

We can start by removing the biggest cost to childcare providers of young children: space. We will do this by prioritizing space in City-owned buildings for childcare. Offering density bonuses to residential building developers who guarantee permanently free or low rent to providers. Tax break to office building owners and other private building owners who create free space for providers — savings which will be required to be passed on to parents.

Ending Gender-Based Violence
There has been a significant uptick in reports of sexual harassment and violence against women and gender expansive people during the pandemic. What is your plan to address gender-based violence in New York City in both the private and public sectors?

Preventing and reducing gender-based violence starts with acknowledging the pervasiveness of these actions and overcoming social and sometimes cultural barriers to discussing them and addressing them effectively and appropriately. This must include education of young people, training for police, and ensuring our criminal justice system recognizes the full scope of the crisis, including rape and sexual assault crimes committed against transgender men and women, children and non-binary individuals. Law enforcement must also commit to clearing rape kit backlogs and developing specific plans for dealing with pervasive race and gender discrimination that leads to injustice for survivors of sexual assault and rape.

In addition, I have a plan to address the pervasive issue of domestic violence in our city. The NYPD responds to approximately 230,000 domestic incidents each year and 18% of homicides in NYC are due to domestic violence. Many abusers are repeat offenders. We must acknowledge that current programming to change abusers’ behavior is insufficient and doesn’t deal with root causes, which are often traumas experienced by the abuser themselves. To address this, we will launch the “Family Violence Perpetrator Program”, based on cognitive and behavioral therapy, in order to evaluate abusers’ traumas and treat them to prevent further violence.

Education
Cities across the country, including several in New York, have begun to take steps to remove police from schools. As mayor, would you remove police from schools in New York City, and if so, would you reinvest the money toward educational programs and support resources?

We need to create educational environments that are conducive to success for every student. I support having limited Peace Officers in schools but we need to ensure they are properly trained and change their uniform to have them fit into a school environment.

Most importantly, I am committed to giving schools the resources to provide wrap-around services such as social workers, counselors, laundry services for students experiencing homelessness, and nutrition education. To truly maximize the use of our school facilities as safe, trusted spaces, we will survey all community school families on issues that impact their children’s success, including housing insecurity, and appropriately triage resources. There is a lot of work we can do to fully support our children in their educational environments.

Maternal Health
How will you use city agencies, the budget, and your role as a public figure to address the crisis of maternal mortality and specifically the disproportionate impact on Black women in NYC?

We need to invest in our mothers and families before the child is born which is why I have proposed the first prenatal to career program. This will focus on becoming the global leader in the prenatal-to-career approach, with a much more comprehensive citywide program for expecting moms and families that links them to vital resources such as healthy foods, prenatal classes and doulas. We need to make sure women are supported prior to arriving at the hospital and that there are preventative measures taken to ensure the health of the family.

Because there is such an obvious benefit to women and babies from the services offered by doulas, I will create a citywide program to offer doulas at reduced cost or for free to expectant mothers through H+H. We will begin with a pilot program at all 11 H+H hospitals while simultaneously ramping up training programs to get a corps of doulas ready to join a larger effort across all H+H hospitals and related clinics. Doulas in the program will be H+H staff and we will pay them a salary with benefits.

Based on H+H birth rates and likely program participation, I estimate that a full program could cost as little as $10 million a year and include 150 doulas. If we expand the program further and make H+H a renowned center for doula care, we could even subsidize the program by attracting wealthier families who want doulas to use H+H and pay for care out-of-pocket or with insurance that covers it. And we would push the State to increase Medicaid reimbursement rates for doulas. Right now it’s essentially minimum wage.

Legal Justice
Low income New York City families, many headed by single mothers, continue to be impacted negatively by the lack of early civil legal representation in their interaction with City entities, such as the Administration for Children’s Services and Family Court. How would you reform the NYC civil justice system so that all NYC families have access to timely, competent legal assistance to protect their families, homes and livelihoods?

Being poor is a full time job and we criminalize poverty in this city. I support providing more free legal services to indigent NYCers (e.g. for housing court and family court issues). It is also critical that we make sure our courts are fully funded so that justice delayed is not justice denied.

Furthermore, we should look to build a model that anyone who is a debtor defendant, if they cannot afford representation, can be provided representation. I would also reach out to our big 50 law firms and ask them to contribute with their pro bono service.

I am also proud that as Brooklyn Borough President, I put together community events for Free Legal Services For All which had a wide variety of lawyers present for free to any member in need. We will expand programs like this across the city in the communities that need them the most.

These questions and the responses from this candidate belong to PowHer and are being shared with their permission. This content in its original format can be found at: https://amayorfornycwomen.org/eric-adams/
Emily VanVleck May 14, 2021 at 11:11am

Eric Adams' plan to face inequalities includes rewarding businesses that hire local workers and benefit minority and female owners and workers, especially on City-financed projects. He is asking companies to commit to hiring 75% city-based workers, prioritizing MWBE contractors. Apart from these commitments, Adams makes no further mention of issues affecting business and professional women.

This reply was deleted.