|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By: Jerome Brookshire
As Mayor Eric Adams prepares to vacate Gracie Mansion, he is working vigorously to cement his legacy as a transformational housing reformer—an insistence he repeated in an interview with The New York Post on Wednesday, where he touted the 130,000 housing units his administration “paved the way for.” To Adams, these figures represent incontrovertible proof of a historic achievement. “The record does not lie,” he told The New York Post with unmistakable confidence.
Yet the record, as painstakingly chronicled by The New York Post throughout his tenure, is a far more complicated tapestry: bold policy initiatives overshadowed by felony indictments of close allies, unsteady political judgment, staggering drops in public approval, and ultimately a campaign collapse that forced Adams to abandon his re-election bid in late September. He calls the federal corruption allegations “entirely false,” but the damage to public trust proved irreversible.
Still, Adams maintains that his administration was “the most pro-housing in the history of New York City,” a claim that underscores the policy stakes he now hands to his successor, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. At the core of Adams’ argument lies his marquee initiative—City of Yes—a sweeping zoning overhaul passed in 2024 that, as The New York Post has reported, constitutes the most significant revision to New York zoning law in more than six decades.
City of Yes was conceived with a deceptively simple tagline—“a little more housing in every neighborhood”—but its implications are far more profound. The plan permits accessory dwelling units, relaxes onerous parking mandates, expands zoning districts receptive to residential development, and accelerates office-to-housing conversions—measures City Hall projects will generate 82,000 housing units across the next 15 years.
Combined with 48,000 additional units expected through rezonings in The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, Adams’ team repeatedly emphasizes what The New York Post calls his “favorite number”: 130,000 potential new apartments unlocked by his administration’s actions.
That political arithmetic reappeared consistently in Adams’ public remarks. He has framed himself as the architect of New York’s path out of its perpetual housing crisis—a crisis characterized by record-high rents, scarcity of developable land, and a citywide network of neighborhood veto points.
What makes Adams’ achievement notable, observers told The New York Post, is that he secured praise even from ideological rivals. Mayor-elect Mamdani—one of Adams’ most persistent critics on issues ranging from policing to foreign policy—commended City of Yes, an acknowledgment Adams has pointed to as evidence that his zoning reforms transcend factional politics.
But the handoff is uneasy.
Adams says he is “cautiously optimistic” about entrusting the city’s fragile housing pipeline to Mamdani, whom he warned in remarks to The New York Post will face intense intra-party resistance.
“[Mamdani] has to understand that there’s a large number of his colleagues that, on Monday, say housing is a right, and on Tuesday, put up obstacles to block housing,” Adams cautioned. “I am leaving him with a foundation.”
That foundation, however, shows signs of stress fractures.
In the final months of his term, Adams weathered sharp criticism for reversing his longstanding support for demolishing the Elizabeth Street Garden to make way for affordable housing—an abrupt pivot that, as The New York Post report noted, angered developers and housing advocates alike. His attempt to raise rents on low-income voucher holders, framed by his administration as a necessary correction to ballooning program costs, was overridden by the City Council in a resounding rebuke.
Each reversal has renewed questions about whether Adams’ aggressive housing rhetoric always aligned with his political choices. His allies insist that legislative constraints—not philosophical wavering—explain those inconsistencies. Critics counter that Adams’ missteps reflect a broader governance pattern: an administration capable of ambitious ideas but often faltering in execution.
Adams’ parting warnings to Mamdani hinge largely on the next administration’s approach to rent-stabilized housing—a sector constituting roughly 42% of New York’s entire rental stock. Mamdani’s campaign-defining proposal of a citywide rent freeze is already sending tremors through real estate markets. Landlords told The New York Post the plan would amount to a devastating financial chokehold, worsening deferred maintenance, accelerating building distress, and narrowing already razor-thin operating margins.
“You can’t be so idealistic that you’re not realistic,” Adams told The New York Post, arguing that rent-stabilized owners—many of them small, mom-and-pop landlords—are facing sharp rises in insurance, labor, and repair costs. He warned that a freeze would not only disincentivize new investment but could further deteriorate the city’s aging housing stock.
“You’re going to discourage small property owners from purchasing,” Adams said. “And you’re going to hurt those communities because of the lack of repair of housing.”
This is where Adams’ legacy collides most forcefully with Mamdani’s ideological program: Adams sought to unleash supply by re-engineering the rulebook; Mamdani seeks to redirect power toward tenants and restrain what he views as predatory market forces. The future of New York’s housing system will depend on how these competing visions interact—or collide—in practice.
As Adams calibrates his final public messaging, the backdrop remains impossible to ignore: a startling cascade of corruption scandals among his closest advisers. As The New York Post documented in relentless detail, several of Adams’ confidants were charged with bribery, campaign finance violations, and obstruction of justice. A federal investigation into Adams himself—ultimately dismissed—cast a shadow over his final year in office and accelerated his political downfall.
Adams maintains the charges against him were “entirely false.” Yet even he concedes the episodes contributed to his plummeting approval ratings—numbers so bleak they made his exit from the 2025 mayoral race unavoidable.
Still, in interviews with The New York Post, Adams returns repeatedly to the same argument: his urban agenda, not his controversies, will define his impact.
As his departure nears, Adams is already turning his attention to personal geography. He confirmed to The New York Post that he plans to relocate to his four-story Bedford-Stuyvesant townhouse on Lafayette Avenue, the same property he famously opened to reporters during his 2021 campaign amid accusations that he spent more time in New Jersey than Brooklyn.
“I’m looking forward to returning to my block on Lafayette Avenue, sitting in my backyard and enjoying all that comes with being a homeowner in that great borough,” he said.
He added that he intends to explore “other parts of the city” as potential residences.
“I’m pretty sure I will have residences in more than one borough during the next couple of years,” he said—a remark likely to prompt further speculation about the next act of a politician whose ambitions have never entirely fit within the walls of a single office.
In the end, Adams’ legacy will be neither wholly defined by scandal nor solely by zoning code. Instead, as The New York Post’s chronicling makes clear, it is a hybrid narrative: a mayor who imagined a denser, more attainable New York, who broke political sound barriers to advance housing reform, yet whose tenure was marred by misjudgments that ultimately undermined his public standing.
Whether his claim of 130,000 future apartments becomes a durable achievement—or a contested statistic—will depend not on Adams, but on the hands into which he now entrusts the city.
For Mamdani, that inheritance is both an opportunity and a test. For Adams, it is the structure on which he stakes his final argument: that long after the scandals fade, the buildings will remain.
Mayor Adams Leaves Office by Cementing His Legacy as a NYC Transformational Housing Reformer
By: Jerome Brookshire
As Mayor Eric Adams prepares to vacate Gracie Mansion, he is working vigorously to cement his legacy as a transformational housing reformer—an insistence he repeated in an interview with The New York Post on Wednesday, where he touted the 130,000 housing units his administration “paved the way for.” To Adams, these figures represent incontrovertible proof of a historic achievement. “The record does not lie,” he told The New York Post with unmistakable confidence.
Yet the record, as painstakingly chronicled by The New York Post throughout his tenure, is a far more complicated tapestry: bold policy initiatives overshadowed by felony indictments of close allies, unsteady political judgment, staggering drops in public approval, and ultimately a campaign collapse that forced Adams to abandon his re-election bid in late September. He calls the federal corruption allegations “entirely false,” but the damage to public trust proved irreversible.
Still, Adams maintains that his administration was “the most pro-housing in the history of New York City,” a claim that underscores the policy stakes he now hands to his successor, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. At the core of Adams’ argument lies his marquee initiative—City of Yes—a sweeping zoning overhaul passed in 2024 that, as The New York Post has reported, constitutes the most significant revision to New York zoning law in more than six decades.
City of Yes was conceived with a deceptively simple tagline—“a little more housing in every neighborhood”—but its implications are far more profound. The plan permits accessory dwelling units, relaxes onerous parking mandates, expands zoning districts receptive to residential development, and accelerates office-to-housing conversions—measures City Hall projects will generate 82,000 housing units across the next 15 years.
Combined with 48,000 additional units expected through rezonings in The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, Adams’ team repeatedly emphasizes what The New York Post calls his “favorite number”: 130,000 potential new apartments unlocked by his administration’s actions.
That political arithmetic reappeared consistently in Adams’ public remarks. He has framed himself as the architect of New York’s path out of its perpetual housing crisis—a crisis characterized by record-high rents, scarcity of developable land, and a citywide network of neighborhood veto points.
What makes Adams’ achievement notable, observers told The New York Post, is that he secured praise even from ideological rivals. Mayor-elect Mamdani—one of Adams’ most persistent critics on issues ranging from policing to foreign policy—commended City of Yes, an acknowledgment Adams has pointed to as evidence that his zoning reforms transcend factional politics.
But the handoff is uneasy.
Adams says he is “cautiously optimistic” about entrusting the city’s fragile housing pipeline to Mamdani, whom he warned in remarks to The New York Post will face intense intra-party resistance.
“[Mamdani] has to understand that there’s a large number of his colleagues that, on Monday, say housing is a right, and on Tuesday, put up obstacles to block housing,” Adams cautioned. “I am leaving him with a foundation.”
That foundation, however, shows signs of stress fractures.
In the final months of his term, Adams weathered sharp criticism for reversing his longstanding support for demolishing the Elizabeth Street Garden to make way for affordable housing—an abrupt pivot that, as The New York Post report noted, angered developers and housing advocates alike. His attempt to raise rents on low-income voucher holders, framed by his administration as a necessary correction to ballooning program costs, was overridden by the City Council in a resounding rebuke.
Each reversal has renewed questions about whether Adams’ aggressive housing rhetoric always aligned with his political choices. His allies insist that legislative constraints—not philosophical wavering—explain those inconsistencies. Critics counter that Adams’ missteps reflect a broader governance pattern: an administration capable of ambitious ideas but often faltering in execution.
Adams’ parting warnings to Mamdani hinge largely on the next administration’s approach to rent-stabilized housing—a sector constituting roughly 42% of New York’s entire rental stock. Mamdani’s campaign-defining proposal of a citywide rent freeze is already sending tremors through real estate markets. Landlords told The New York Post the plan would amount to a devastating financial chokehold, worsening deferred maintenance, accelerating building distress, and narrowing already razor-thin operating margins.
“You can’t be so idealistic that you’re not realistic,” Adams told The New York Post, arguing that rent-stabilized owners—many of them small, mom-and-pop landlords—are facing sharp rises in insurance, labor, and repair costs. He warned that a freeze would not only disincentivize new investment but could further deteriorate the city’s aging housing stock.
“You’re going to discourage small property owners from purchasing,” Adams said. “And you’re going to hurt those communities because of the lack of repair of housing.”
This is where Adams’ legacy collides most forcefully with Mamdani’s ideological program: Adams sought to unleash supply by re-engineering the rulebook; Mamdani seeks to redirect power toward tenants and restrain what he views as predatory market forces. The future of New York’s housing system will depend on how these competing visions interact—or collide—in practice.
As Adams calibrates his final public messaging, the backdrop remains impossible to ignore: a startling cascade of corruption scandals among his closest advisers. As The New York Post documented in relentless detail, several of Adams’ confidants were charged with bribery, campaign finance violations, and obstruction of justice. A federal investigation into Adams himself—ultimately dismissed—cast a shadow over his final year in office and accelerated his political downfall.
Adams maintains the charges against him were “entirely false.” Yet even he concedes the episodes contributed to his plummeting approval ratings—numbers so bleak they made his exit from the 2025 mayoral race unavoidable.
Still, in interviews with The New York Post, Adams returns repeatedly to the same argument: his urban agenda, not his controversies, will define his impact.
As his departure nears, Adams is already turning his attention to personal geography. He confirmed to The New York Post that he plans to relocate to his four-story Bedford-Stuyvesant townhouse on Lafayette Avenue, the same property he famously opened to reporters during his 2021 campaign amid accusations that he spent more time in New Jersey than Brooklyn.
“I’m looking forward to returning to my block on Lafayette Avenue, sitting in my backyard and enjoying all that comes with being a homeowner in that great borough,” he said.
He added that he intends to explore “other parts of the city” as potential residences.
“I’m pretty sure I will have residences in more than one borough during the next couple of years,” he said—a remark likely to prompt further speculation about the next act of a politician whose ambitions have never entirely fit within the walls of a single office.
In the end, Adams’ legacy will be neither wholly defined by scandal nor solely by zoning code. Instead, as The New York Post’s chronicling makes clear, it is a hybrid narrative: a mayor who imagined a denser, more attainable New York, who broke political sound barriers to advance housing reform, yet whose tenure was marred by misjudgments that ultimately undermined his public standing.
Whether his claim of 130,000 future apartments becomes a durable achievement—or a contested statistic—will depend not on Adams, but on the hands into which he now entrusts the city.
For Mamdani, that inheritance is both an opportunity and a test. For Adams, it is the structure on which he stakes his final argument: that long after the scandals fade, the buildings will remain.