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Ask the Brooklyn Borough President: June 2025

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All right, this is Ask your advocate right here on news 12 New York City public advocate, Jimani Williams here with us for the half hour, answer all of your questions. We've got a couple of people on the line for you. So you ready to head to the phones? Let's do it, let's do it. All right, we're gonna start in Williamsburg. We've got Deborah with us tonight. Deborah. Thanks for calling in. It's your turn to ask your advocate. What's your question? My question is, how is uh um, Deborah, are you there? Yes, I'm here. Can we hear you now? Hi, Mr Williams. How are you doing? Hello, how are you? My question is, how is Eric Adams gonna cut the police force? Yes, I'm here. How is Eric Adams gonna cut the police for knowing that chaos is all over the streets right now? I mean, I live in Williamsburg and it's chaotic out here from the morning, from the time you get up in the morning until the evening, Deborah. Thank you for the question there and this is something we were just talking about before that some of the cuts were gonna be causing a major problem in the NYPD in public. It's, it's an important, it's an important question. I think public safety is, uh, on top of mind, everyone I am happy to say and, and again, what Deborah's feeling is real. Um, I do want to point out that Brooklyn is on a 10 year safety record. This is, uh, this year has been the safest, it's been in the past 10 years, uh, this past year. That's amazing. Um But if you talk to folks that really lived experiences, uh said something different and so does social media and uh our uh news cycle as well. And so I just wanna be clear about that but, and that doesn't, but that doesn't mean of course, like I said, people's feelings aren't real and people aren't victims of crime, that's all. So I just wanna put the context of it and to add what they were saying that the, the question, how can you cut NYPD questions? How can he be trying to cut every agency NYPD sanitation deal where everybody is facing cuts? Um I wanna make sure the NYPD can do the job when people call 911 is someone that can answer. So we wanna make sure that's the ability to do that. We have always wondered whether the overtime uh was impactful to the budget in a, in a way and most of the time it is. And so we have to take a look at that. Um So I don't want agencies on duty to be cut in general. That's why I'm like, let's look at a scalpel but to Deborah's question as well, what is the impact on public safety? Not just about NYPD, but to other things that I mentioned, the particularly the social safety net uh that are keeping people occupied, keeping people at home, keeping people doing positive things, particularly around our youth. What happens when we cut all of those? What generally happens is we try to send the police department to solve the problems we've caused by cutting all these safety networks and all of these programs that we know, help keep people safe. And I'm hoping that the mayor will reconsider uh what he's trying to do. We reconsider some more uh uh uh opportunities to not do that. And I'm hoping the city council will step in as well to make or whatever we're doing. Uh is a little bit more sobering than what we're hearing now. But specifically, are you concerned the pausing of classes of officers and going to have less officers coming in and cutting the size of the force in general? Does that concern you at all? Because it sounds like it's concerned some people out there. What, what concern and, and I don't understand that. What concerns me though is the blunt force we're using as 5% or 50% across the board, all agencies. I don't think that's the way to do it. I think we should look at the NYPD and see if there are areas that we can cut, maybe something like overtime. We should look at um, other agencies and look at their budgets individually. Say, where is it that we can make these cuts? Just saying, uh cutting across the board and the way we're having the discussion, I don't think it's helpful uh because it's really not, you know, it's not. I, I, it sends a message to New Yorkers that elevates everybody's concerns and we may not have to do that. I will say though that there are some tough decisions we're going to have to make that is real and there's no way around that. Uh I think it would have been less. I had uh the administration, listen to some of the things that many of us were saying before all. Uh Well, I wanna head back to the phones. We got another question for you right now. This one is coming to us from Karsi, I believe and we can pop that name up there on the screen. I didn't quite get catch it when I heard it before but we have, oh, Teresa from Karsi joining us, Teresa. Thank you for calling in. What's your question tonight? My question tonight is why do we have to make all these cuts and people already living? It's hard for some people. They can't even afford to pay the rent or even buy food and we have a new cutting and we are letting all I know we have to extend an olive branch, but we have extended it too far because there's too much of these migrants coming into this country, too much. It's time you make a stop and say no time to cut and they're still just letting it go. We looking at the news and you see all these people coming in, what's going on, Teresa? Thank you for the question there. And this is kind of what we were talking about before. As far as people's concerns over the budget cuts, what's been going on? What, what do you say to someone like Teresa? Uh Well, well, Teresa, I definitely understand Teresa's anger and others, others angers and I feel it too. There are folks in this city who have been begging and pleading for what they deserve and they've been pleading for affordable housing and not getting it. They've been pleading for assistance and not getting it. And if you've been dealing with those issues for decades and if you look at these kind of pictures that you see and then you hear this money being spent, seems like, hey, wait a minute. What, what about me? One? I wanna make sure that people understand they're not getting the type of housing and services that people have been asking for as you can see. Um some of those places uh while I understand why we have to open them. There's no spaces gonna open right now. That's gonna be the place that you'd wanna be in. And two. T is correct. I just wanna make sure that that anger is directed at the government, not at the asylum seekers. Um Our country has been based on, on immigration. Um This influx, by the way is one of the reasons doe has an increase in enrollment, which gives us some more funding. So in the long run, the influx of immigration has always benefited us. Part of the problem here and I wanna make sure we're clear is that New York City is being asked to solve this problem by itself. And if we had a national strategy and we had a statewide strategy, we wouldn't have this compression of, of weight on New York City to solve this by itself and it wouldn't seem so bad. And what happens when things get tough as we start getting folks fighting each other, folks who have less fighting people who have none. So I wanna make sure that we try to pull that back a little bit, but to the answer about cuts, the question is, do we have to make the type of cuts that the mayor is talking about? And I'm not sure that we do. And that's the question that we have to have. And I do know that most of those cuts are not due to uh the migrant crisis, although that has made things a little bit worse. We have a lot of concern New Yorkers out tonight. We just heard from two of them right there. Thanks for the questions. We've got much more as a coming up in just a minute. So stay with us here on news 12. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to after your advocate here on news 12. I wanna get to our last caller of the night for New York City public advocate Jaani Williams. And let's get right to Midwood. Angelo is joining us tonight. Angelo. Thanks for calling in. What's your questions for the public advocate? My question is, what can my son do? He's been working in public school system for 15 years and what could he possibly do to afford the rent? He doesn't make a, a big salary and you know, he says he's starving all the time. He's got no way to cook and he goes from, from one friend to another just to have a place to sleep and he works every single day, the kids, they actually love him, Angela. Thank you, Angelo. We were, we're running short on time. But then again, what do you do because he's dumb? Sure, that sounds so tough on Angelo. Speaking for a lot of people in New York City right now and housing is, is one of the number one issues. But um and I have to tell you as much as they talk about crime and, and there's real fear around it. People are leaving New York City. Number one reason not because of crime because of affordability. And that's what we've been pushing. And unfortunately, uh sometimes admin too often administration is not siding with us to try to get these things to be more affordable. As a matter of fact, this administration put people on the rent guidelines board, um that raised the rent higher than we've raised it in about two decades. That's not something that we can do if we wanna deal with our affordable housing crisis. The first thing we have to do is preserve the affordability that we have in programs like section eight Michel Lama rent regulation. The next thing is we, we actually have to build, but when we build, we can't build and call affordable some for a family that makes 100 $1,680,000 in communities where they only make $30,000 that's not necessarily affordable. It's income targeted, but it's a high income. We have to make sure that we're building for people like Angelo's son who's working but simply can't afford to stay there. We are losing New Yorkers and I gotta tell you being in New York, if you have a family of four and you're making 100 $69,000 100 $70,000. Um that actually you may actually need some help too. I'm not gonna lie because of the way costs are. But if that family needs help. What happens to the family that's making 30,000, making 40,000, they actually have the least vacancies that need the most help. And our city and state as a matter of fact, is even worse, have not directed the assistance needed to build the units for those or preserve the ones that we need. And that's where our office and others are really trying to push and had we addressed this issue before? It wouldn't be as bad. And I, I always say remember that before the first asylum bus came here, there were 50,000 people, New Yorkers in the shelter system. Most of them had been here for more than a year or two years. This problem has been here and I'm hoping now we can treat it as a crisis that it always was. We didn't have to wait for the Mayan crisis to really figure out how bad this thing is. Some of the ideas that we're bringing, I'm hoping that the administration will really get on board and support it in a way that they haven't in the past, housing continues to be an issue and it will continue to be so until something gets done, that's for sure. Uh Before we go real quick, it is transgender day of remembrance. And you and your officer are gonna have an event on Tuesday 21st. Can you just tell us a little bit about that? Absolutely. We wanna make sure that we're remembering our uh transgender uh uh uh sisters and brothers and siblings. Uh We wanna make sure that people we've lost. We remember their lives, remember the fight to make sure everyone is protected. So we have a trans day, a transgender day of remembrance tomorrow, right on the screen, we ask people to come out. Uh We're gonna be celebrating eight people and a whole community, a great event right there and a great day of remembrance. Thank you so much public advocate. Thanks for being here with us once again here tonight on News 12 Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and to you. Absolutely. And to everybody out there. Thanks. Great questions. Great stuff. We'll see you next month. Bill mix.

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News 12 sits down with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams to answer your questions for the November 2023 edition of Ask Your Advocate.

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