The City Council pushed through a controversial supportive housing project for ex-inmates in the Bronx, with Council leaders skewering Mayor Eric Adams last-minute opposition as irrelevant.
The Council on Thursday approved a 99-year sublease of a six-story building to locate a supportive housing program for ex-Rikers inmates, called Just Home, at the Jacobi Hospital campus in Morris Park.
The night before Adams, who previously supported the project and even initially proposed the location, had his First Deputy Randy Mastro send the Council a letter to The Council saying the mayor planned to change the location of the Just Home project. But The Council ignored his request.
Speaker Adrienne Adams, whose decision it was to bring the project up for a vote, called Mayor Adams and his First Deputy Randy Mastro “incompetent” and “not relevant” since Mayor Adams, who is up for reelection in November, is polling behind his opponents.
“It is shameful that they are trying to block housing for New Yorkers,” Speaker Adams said. “Thankfully, the two of them will not be relevant to this project in three months,” she added.
When asked to elaborate Speaker Adams said she expected Mayor Adams to lose the mayoral race in November.
“There’s going to be a new mayoral administration. You guys stay with the polls, just like the rest of us,” the Speaker said.
“It’s just not constructive to use that kind of language,” Mastro, complained to reporters after the Speaker made her dig at Mayor Adams Thursday.
Mastro’s letter to Speaker Adams said the Administration now supported moving the Just Home project to Brooklyn to one of two possible sites near Broadway Junction.
Mastro cited opposition from the local community at the Bronx site, including Republican Councilwoman Kristy Marmarato, as the reason for changing the location of the project.
“If we claim to care about deference then we must practice it across the board,” Marmorato said prior to the council’s vote Thursday afternoon. “To vote yes on this today is to ignore the work and to ignore the very principle this body claims to defend.”
Speaker Adams, at a press conference before the vote, said “member deference is not a policy” of The Council and pushed forward with the vote.
Councilmember Crystal Hudson said before voting to support the initial Bronx location accused the mayor of coming in “at the eleventh hour” to score political points.
“(Mayor Adams) sees an opportunity to score political points ahead of his reelection,” Hudson said. “That is not real leadership.”
The Council on Thursday voted 36 to 9 to pass the measure with three members abstaining.
Mastro vowed the mayor’s administration would push forward with its effort to change the Just Home location, claiming the Adams administration could triple affordable housing efforts in the time Adams has left in his first term.
“In the coming weeks and months, while we’re all still here in this hall, you’re going to see three times the supportive and affordable housing produced by this administration, two times the Just Home housing produced,” Mastro said.
Mastro also pointed out Speaker Adams term is also up at the end of the year too.
The Speaker told reporters the mayor’s office had not submitted any paperwork to change the Just Home location to one of the Brooklyn sites.
Mastro assured reporters the city would submit a revised plan.
“We’re going to hopefully have more constructive working relationships with both sides of the hall in the interim and beyond,” Mastro said.
Adams, when he was in Williamsburg Thursday, accused The Council of “grandstanding.”
“We were able to come up with a better deal for us, and we are able to make sure that project went forward,” Adams said. “Now what the City Council is doing is just grandstanding,” he added.
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