Meet Your Mayor
Answer the questions below to see which candidates for NYC mayor agree with you most
Welcome to Meet Your Mayor, which shows you how the candidates’ stands fit with your take on the issues that matter most to New Yorkers.
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Answer the following four questions on homelessness to see which candidates for mayor most closely match the future you want to see for New York City.
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New York City government years ago signed on to court settlements granting a right to shelter for all single adults and many families who seek it.
Question 1 of 4
“In situations like a pandemic, economic crisis and climate crisis, the effort should be to keep people in their homes. ... We know that for instance, housing a family in a temporary shelter costs $240 a night. That translates into about $53,000 a year....This is incredibly costly to the city, it is far more costly than just paying their rent.”
from THE CITY interview, May 19, 2021
"If I were mayor, we would end street homelessness in New York City. And we would do it by reimagining the right to shelter as a right to housing."
from Mayoral Candidates Meet Homeless New Yokers, Feb. 12, 2021
“We have to fundamentally change our approach. Shelters are a Band-Aid for this solution to a long-term problem. We have to put housing first.... That is why my plan includes increasing the voucher amount to something you might actually be able to rent in the city of New York.”
from First Democratic mayoral debate, May 13, 2021
“Anything that is available that is at our disposal, we should be converting to permanent affordable housing. We should not be perpetuating the shelter industrial complex.”
from First Democratic mayoral debate, May 13, 2021
“There's a lot of housing that is already in certain neighborhoods that's old, that is deteriorating, that needs to be revamped and remodeled. I think we start there, but my goal is kind of to revolutionize the whole city and the architecture of the city.”
from THE CITY interview, May 10, 2021
“If you show up in New York City — you could be from Philadelphia, Newark, and claim that you are indigent, you have nowhere to stay — the city by federal court order has the responsibility to provide you with housing, food, medical care. We have to challenge that. People are taking advantage of this by coming in from surrounding cities that don't have a very good shelter system.… It's an overburden on our system.”
"Everyone talks about how to solve the homeless crisis. But no one talks about giving homeless people a home with supportive services. What I would do as mayor is have a housing plan that actually builds low income housing for the people who need it."
from First Democratic mayoral debate, May 13, 2021
“Everybody deserves the right to housing. Housing is a basic right. And it actually ends up costing us more when we don't provide people with the housing that they need and we focus on just temporary shelter.”
from THE CITY interview, May 20, 2021
“We need a housing-first strategy.”
from First Democratic mayoral debate, March 2, 2021
“We need more permanent affordable housing, the sheltering system is not meant to be permanent.”
from First Democratic mayoral debate, May 13, 2021
No candidates selected this answer
“One big problem we have is that there are a number of homeless people who are reluctant to go to shelters because they're afraid and have safety concerns with respect to those shelters. So the city needs to do a better job at keeping homeless shelters safe.… What we really need to do is help these homeless individuals get back on their feet and get them back into the workforce, so that they will no longer need shelter from the city.”
from THE CITY interview, May 19, 2021
"If I were mayor, we would end street homelessness in New York City and we would do it by reimagining the right to shelter as a right to housing."
from First Democratic mayoral debate, May 13, 2021
Eric Adams, Isaac Wright Jr.
The city Department of Homeless Services came to use hotel rooms to house many homeless families as their numbers in shelter grew. During the pandemic, the agency also moved many adults from shelters into hotel rooms to thwart the spread of COVID.
Question 2 of 4
Donovan cites the Times Square Hotel, converted into a 652-unit permanent supportive housing development for formerly homeless adults. Donovan promote “single-occupancy units for permanent supportive housing.”
"We need to recognize housing is a human right and prioritize the provision of housing for everyone. That means really scouring our city for all the existing vacant spaces, particularly post-pandemic or mid-pandemic, including vacant hotel rooms, commercial spaces, office spaces, and really prioritizing making those spaces, converting those spaces into housing that can be provided for both the homeless people in the city and those that might be housing insecure."
from The Brian Lehrer Show, April 28, 2021
“Instead of spending $3 billion a year on homeless shelters, we should be investing in folks having housing first, having supportive housing. We should be taking the 100 hotels that have been shuttered and turn them into affordable and permanently affordable housing for our folks who need it.”
from Mayoral Candidates Meet Homeless New Yokers, Feb. 12, 2021
“It's been used to solve an immediate problem but to continue to rely on this is, to me, a capitulation to this idea that we are going to have this continuing wave of homelessness.”
from THE CITY interview, May 19, 2021
“We're going to make sure that there's housing for all the city. The best way to deal with the housing crisis is to give housing.”
from THE CITY interview, May 10, 2021
“My goal is to look at a lot of the zombie homes that we have in New York and work to increase the number of firms that we utilize for construction to rehab those zombie homes to provide affordable housing for the homeless. I also want to look at commercial space because you have a lot more people that are working from home in this moment.”
from THE CITY interview, May 20, 2021
“The issue with the hotels right now is that they're being treated as a stopgap and we need to figure out what structures can actually be converted into housing ongoing and then have that be a more longstanding solution.”
from Future of Family Homelessness and Poverty Forum, May 20, 2021
“The homeless hotels must close and we shouldn't be placing particularly single homeless men in residential areas.”
from THE CITY interview, May 19, 2021
"Shift from a shelter strategy to a housing strategy also means instead of paying to rent hotel rooms we purchase suitable empty commercial spaces and convert them into 10,000 permanent supportive housing units."
from Gotham Gazette, March 2, 2021
“Right now, if you go into Times Square, many of the hotels are COVID-19 homeless hotels. We'll never get tourists to come in, we don't have hotel rooms. So we have to return the homeless to the shelters.”
“I want to take the vacant properties that the city owns, I want to give them not to revenue developers, but back to community based organizations with a subsidy that would be directed to reward low income housing and finally align the housing and homeless crisis because right now we are spending billions managing people in dangerous shelter conditions.”
from Mayoral Candidates Meet Homeless New Yokers, Feb. 12, 2021
Eric Adams, Isaac Wright Jr.
Starting last summer, the NYPD removed itself from homeless outreach response in city streets and on the subways, leaving responsibility to the city Department of Homeless Services.
Question 3 of 4
Adams's campaign proposes refunding the Transit Homeless Outreach Unit, a partnership between the NYPD and the city social service agency. The proposal also includes “more active oversight of units that could have a more significant presence, such as the midnight train unit that is meant to focus on sleeping and intoxicated passengers.”
from The Subway Safety Plan, May 18, 2021
“I've been consistent in saying that we need a police service, not a police force, so we do need to improve the training that officers are given so that they're prepared to adequately deal with people who have mental illnesses. EMTs and mental health experts can accompany police officers when they're working with homeless individuals to make sure that people get the help that they need.”
from THE CITY interview, May 19, 2021
“The NYPD had a Homeless Outreach Unit that was closed when De Blasio took a billion dollars out of their budget but the city has not replaced what the police used to do.... They have to restore the homeless outreach unit from the police because nobody is doing it now.”
“There may be occasions when a police officer would be present but they should not be the primary actor. They should be standing a ways away as a tertiary or or support staff while someone else who's better trained to actually intervene with a person who's having an issue is leading and making sure that the issue is being addressed the right way as opposed to having someone who's not trained for that kind of that kind of activity.”
from Caring & Compassionate New Deal for NYC forum, March 17, 2021
"We do need to respond when the MTA says we need more cops in the subway, that does not mean we're not sending mental health professionals into the subway as well, so that we can get people the services they need and into supportive housing to deal with their mental health issues, as well as with their substance abuse issues. We can do both"
from First Democratic mayoral debate, March 2, 2021
“We've been cycling mental health issues in and out of the underground subways for decades. And the truth is, every time there's a call for more police, we end up not solving the problem. This is got to be the new way of looking at it. And that means investing in mental health professionals to make sure that people get supportive housing.”
from First Democratic mayoral debate, March 2, 2021
“We need to have trained mental health workers out there helping to convince these mentally ill homeless folks to get into supportive housing and off the street. And a police officer is also likely to aggravate situations and not help.”
from THE CITY interview, May 19, 2021
“I know that we need a totally different way to respond in this city and so my plan calls for an alternative to 911 but it goes well beyond that as well. It is really investing in the teams that we need to respond but also creating real infrastructure for mental health care around this city.”
from Caring & Compassionate New Deal for NYC forum, March 17, 2021
“I've called for the creation of a community first responders department that would be staffed by people who are trained and skilled at intervention and the escalation in these situations: mental health, homelessness, and substance abuse”
from First Democratic mayoral debate, March 2, 2021
“There's a lot of police officers that are very good at dealing with folks that are in distress and that are dealing with mental health issues, but the fact is that they're just not trained to do that. And a lot of times, it ends with the wrong person going to jail, it ends with someone ending up hurt.”
from THE CITY interview, May 10, 2021
“The role of policing is supposed to keep people safe. Being homeless is not a crime, it's a condition that we created. So the response to a condition that we created should not be to bring in the police.”
from THE CITY interview, May 20, 2021
“The reality is a big part of our safety problem in the subways is a mental health and homelessness problem, where we have the tools and resources to ensure that we have the proper outreach workers helping get folks who are mentally ill, or and or substance addicted out of the subways and into housing.”
from First Democratic mayoral debate, March 2, 2021
Isaac Wright Jr.
Men entering the shelter system for the first time must first stay at a massive facility in Manhattan’s Kips Bay, where chaos and safety code violations abound.
Question 4 of 4
“The lack of safety there is one of the contributors to persistent chronic homelessness by people who do not want to enter the shelter system.... We have to think differently about this. So I think that we need to think about putting homeless intake centers or homeless crisis centers around the city.”
from THE CITY interview, May 19, 2021
"We have to expand the individual housing opportunities for the folks that are being warehoused in these shelters and also do a concerted effort to expand the number of affordable units that are available for families."
from Curbed, April 22, 2021
“People don't even feel safe going into these systems. So I want to eradicate homelessness and no longer allow homelessness to be big business.”
from THE CITY interview, May 20, 2021
“We need this facility on East 30th Street. We need as much space as we can for our homeless population. This is the main intake center for single adult males and we need the facility.”
from THE CITY interview, May 19, 2021
Ray McGuire, Eric Adams, Kathryn Garcia, Isaac Wright Jr., Paperboy Prince
Reporting by Ann Choi and Mónica Cordero, development by Will Welch, editing by Alyssa Katz. Candidate images from Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY, Alejandro Durán/THE CITY, Shutterstock and campaign websites.