NYC Council Releases Report Highlighting Legacy of Historic City Council in Confronting Persistent Inequities, Creating Innovative Model Solutions, and Leading for All New Yorkers

First women-majority and most diverse Council in city history, led by first Black Speaker, delivered on goals to advance equity, justice, and solutions

City Hall, NY - Today, the New York City Council released a report on the legacy and accomplishments of the first women-majority and most diverse City Council in city history, led by the first Black Speaker, Adrienne E. Adams. Speaker Adams and the Council prioritized confronting persistent inequities in access to childcare, education, health, housing, opportunity, and safety that affect New Yorkers who did not always see themselves represented in the actions of government. A major legacy of this Council is the number of innovative programs it incubated through Council funding and collaboration with experts and nongovernmental partners that provide solutions to significant inequities and issues within the city. Speaker Adams and the Council also filled a major leadership and trust gap in City Hall, caused by the distractions and impairments from unfolding events related to the mayor and several of his associates over the past four years.

"I am proud of what this Council has accomplished over the last four years," said Speaker Adrienne Adams. "As public servants, it is our responsibility to improve the conditions of our communities and confront the inequities that have endured for too long. When people who have experienced housing insecurity, poverty, the impacts of gender and racial disparities, and broader working-class struggles represent New Yorkers in government, the perspectives and priorities of all New Yorkers are better addressed. We have led city government to invest in our diverse communities, bringing attention and delivering solutions to issues that have long impacted people across our city who were historically overlooked. I thank my colleagues, partners in government, and all New Yorkers. Together, we have provided our city with steady, unwavering, and principled leadership-prioritizing the needs of New Yorkers above all else."

The full report can be found here.

The Council created several new innovative programs to combat economic, educational, health, safety, and opportunity disparities, incubating models that future administrations can expand to help more New Yorkers, narrow inequities, and strengthen the city. These model solutions, first proposed by Speaker Adams in her State of the City addresses, include:

CUNY Reconnect: Launched a new university-wide program to re-enroll working-age New Yorkers who left college without a degree and expanded its reach with increased funding in the city budget. It has brought over 62,000 students, the majority of whom are women and people of color, back to CUNY towards completing degrees that can increase their earning potential.

Trauma Recovery Centers: Established and funded New York State's first trauma recovery centers (TRCs) in the Bronx, Coney Island, East Flatbush, and Downtown Brooklyn to provide underserved survivors of violence with crime victim services and stop cycles of crime in neighborhoods experiencing high rates of violence. These address a major gap faced by marginalized communities, especially Black and Latino communities, that are disproportionately affected by violence but lack access to crime victim services. Speaker Adams also secured multi-year city funding for the creation and operation of a new TRC in Jamaica, Queens as part of the 2025-approved Jamaica Neighborhood Plan.

CUNY Social Work Fellows: Established a new CUNY Social Work Fellows Program as a model to address the severe mental health workforce shortage that impedes access to care. By reducing financial barriers to professional graduate programs for public service-focused social workers, the program can help strengthen the pipeline of diverse social workers entering and remaining in frontline public-interest mental health jobs. The Council doubled funding in the program's second year to expand its reach, and it can be further increased to meet the scale of need, similar to how NYC Teaching Fellows grew the number of public school teachers.

Minority Business Accelerator: Established the first NYC-funded Minority Business Accelerator to support minority-owned businesses obtaining increased access to private sector contracts from regional corporations, modeled after a similar effort in Cincinnati highlighted by the Center for an Urban Future.

Deed Theft Prevention Estate Planning: Created a citywide program with local law schools and pro bono attorneys to support homeowners with free estate planning resources that protect their homes and generational wealth from deed theft and other predatory financial schemes.

Guaranteed Income Programs: Established the first city-funded guaranteed income program, supporting expecting, housing-insecure mothers to improve maternal health and reduce child poverty. Then, expanded funding to support a guaranteed income program for youth experiencing homelessness.

The Council's broader efforts reflected its members embodying the full breadth of New Yorkers' experiences, demonstrated by the focus of its budget, legislative, and policy accomplishments.

Confronting the Housing Crisis: As the most pro-housing Council in generations, it approved more new housing through city-initiated land use proposals than had been approved in the previous 20 years combined, while securing more than $8 billion to increase affordable housing, homeownership opportunities, tenant protections, and neighborhood investments. It also advanced major reforms to end forced broker fees and reduce barriers to housing vouchers, supportive housing, and affordable homeownership that can help deliver stability for communities and keep families in the city.

Strengthening Opportunity: This Council helped expand opportunities for New Yorkers through CUNY, industrial development efforts, protections for construction, delivery, hotel and security guard workers, the biggest reforms to street vending laws in decades, and repeated expansions to funding and eligibility for the Fair Fares transit discount program. It also protected and strengthened the early childhood education system, preparing it for greater expansion while safeguarding key K-12 funding and programs.

Protecting Services & New Yorkers: The leadership of Speaker Adams and the Council led to the reversal of harmful cuts to cultural institutions and libraries that reduced services for New Yorkers. The Council secured greater and more stable funding, eventually increasing investments to expand 7-day library service for more neighborhood branches. The Council also persistently defended older adult services and parks from many of the mayor's proposed budget cuts. For the city's diverse immigrant communities that came under attack from the federal government, it was the Council under Speaker Adams that consistently defended and prioritized them in the face of complicity or silence by the mayor through litigation, historic investments, and legislation.

Advancing Safety: The Council's leadership, under Speaker Adams, advanced innovative solution to better prevent crime and violence, confronting inequities in who has access to crime victim services, police accountability, fire, street, and water safety. Speaker Adams, Council Criminal Justice Committee Chairs Nurse and Rivera, and other Council members also provided critical leadership to confront the humanitarian crisis in city jails and advanced solutions necessary to close Rikers.

Improving Health Equity: The Council confronted gender and racial disparities in health access and outcomes for New Yorkers by advancing unprecedented efforts that produced solutions to address maternal mortality, the elimination of federal reproductive healthcare rights, and the severe mental health crisis.

Strengthening Accountability: The Council's leadership produced critical reforms to improve accountability, good governance, and trust in government. Whether increasing transparency about 9/11 toxins, fixing problems in the city contracting process that delay payments to nonprofits delivering critical services for New Yorkers, or strengthening agency oversight, the Council sought to enhance trust in government by advancing greater accountability and more effective service delivery.

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