2025 NYC Mayoral Race: Where Democratic Candidates Stand on the Issues

We need more housing and direct support to help economically diverse families stay in our city. As speaker, I led where the mayor couldn’t and wouldn’t: passing “City of Yes” and other housing proposals to build 120,000 homes and defending our city’s early childhood education system from the mayor’s budget cuts. As mayor, I’ll expand on both.

I’d increase the supply of housing by 500,000 units over 10 years while preserving existing affordable housing and protecting rent-controlled tenants. And I’d make targeted tax cuts for New York City homeowners by enacting a 2 percent property tax cap and eliminating city income tax for households with incomes at 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

I will declare a housing affordability “state of emergency” to speed up housing production and protect tenants. My housing plan will build 500,000 homes over the next decade. I’ll also fulfill the promise of universal pre-K and 3-K, expand the program to 2-K and offer free, high-quality after-school programs for all elementary and middle-school students.

The cost of housing is the leading reason working-class New Yorkers are leaving our city. I would freeze the rent for the more than two million tenants in rent-stabilized apartments. I would also set us on a path to triple the city’s annual production of new permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized housing.

My Rebuild N.Y.C. plan will create the affordable housing our city desperately needs with a mandate to build 1 million homes, reimagine preservation and create 50,000 permanent housing units to address homelessness. We need to make the city affordable for working parents. My plan for free after-school for all will keep kids safe and productive and extend 3-K and pre-K until 6 p.m.

I want to deliver universal child care and work-force housing. By the end of my first term, I would set a benchmark for full, high quality child care for all New Yorkers starting at age 2. I would then work backward to cover newborns by the end of my second term. I’d also revive a housing model that was the precursor to Mitchell-Lama, leveraging public land, union pension funds and our own capital budget to develop permanently affordable rental units and modest-equity homeownership opportunities.

The affordability crisis requires serious solutions. With my Tri-Share child care program, combined with my commitment to extending public school hours, we can ensure that every family has access to affordable, high-quality child care and education.

New Yorkers deserve to be and feel safe. Tough talk without competent management doesn’t work. If it did, people would feel safe today. Calls to grow N.Y.P.D. head count sound nice but ignore the real issue: the department already has over 2,400 vacant positions and attrition is rising. I’ll focus on smarter policing: filling vacancies, improving retention, increasing trust and refocusing officers on core duties instead of handling all problems.

We will hire more officers for community policing with body cameras on for accountability and work with Albany to hold repeat offenders accountable, as we reduce the overall budget by addressing excessive overtime and the Strategic Response Group. We will have mental health professionals addressing the crisis on subways and in our streets, while increasing walking street patrol for officers.

I’d hire 5,000 N.Y.P.D. officers to bring the force up to the functional 1990s levels, with the cost offset by reducing the $1 billion spent in overtime. I’d deploy 4,000 officers to N.Y.P.D. Transit to improve subway safety. I’d use precision policing to focus on the recidivist population responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime and utilize “co-response” police and mental health teams to get individuals with serious mental illness off the streets. And I’d expand employment and training opportunities for 18- to 24-year-old at-risk youth.

Ending street homelessness for people with serious mental illness is my No. 1 campaign priority. My plan uses a “Housing First” model with a continuum of care, and mandates where necessary, to get the 2,000 people with serious mental illness into supportive housing. I’ll retain Jessica Tisch as police commissioner and implement comprehensive recruitment and retention strategies to hire 1,500 officers and bring us to the budgeted head count of 35,000.

My Department of Community Safety would implement approaches proven successful nationwide. It would provide mental health services, especially in our subway system, address hate crimes, reduce gun violence and tackle homelessness. Mental health crisis response and traffic enforcement would be moved to appropriate agencies, freeing up police resources to increase clearance rates for major crimes. A specific N.Y.P.D. budget number or head count is not the goal: public safety is.

My plan to make the city safer starts with hiring 3,100 police officers to return the force to 2018 levels, pairing officers with mental health professionals to ensure subway order and safety and expanding proven crime-prevention measures. My belief that a robust, professional, accountable police force is critical to fighting crime and public safety has never wavered.

I want to achieve a balance of justice and accountability by professionalizing the police department, raising base pay and redesigning deployment so we can use the number of officers we have more effectively. To make that possible, we need to relieve the N.Y.P.D. of certain responsibilities, up-skilling E.M.T. and E.M.S. workers and expanding the number of social workers and clinicians across the city who can respond to mental health calls.

Too many New Yorkers feel uneasy walking down the street, riding the train and enjoying our parks. The city’s complex public safety challenges demand a unified, proactive approach that goes beyond crisis management. I am committed to hiring 3,000 more police officers and tackling retention and recruitment. I am also creating QualitySTAT and a new deputy mayor for quality of life for a more effective approach to addressing crime, serious mental health issues and quality-of-life issues.

I’m not afraid of Trump. If he tries to defund or destabilize us, I’ll fight back with the same grit — even take him to court — and I’ll win. My greatest concern is his attacks on the rights and resources of New Yorkers. If there’s common ground, it will be on infrastructure, but I’m not holding my breath.

I will check this bully and his unconstitutional attacks. We reject the administration’s hate and divisive actions. If Trump cuts our funding and services, we will withhold tax dollars from the federal government. We could possibly find common ground on improving our infrastructure.

New York needs meaningful partnership with the federal government, but I will not allow our city to be bullied or abused. I have known President Trump for decades and interacted with him during his first term, most frequently during Covid-19. I will work with any partner who will work with me for the good of New Yorkers, but make no mistake, I will always stand up for the rights and values that New York City represents. My greatest concern is preservation of democracy.

The Trump presidency presents grave risks: from defunding education, housing, health care and transit, to an inflation spike caused by tariffs, to the mass deportation of our immigrant neighbors. As mayor, I will fight like hell for every New Yorker so we can stand up for our values.

While Eric Adams is collaborating with the Trump administration and Andrew Cuomo is cozying up to Trump’s donors, I will stand up for every New Yorker. I fear that Trump will continue to tear our families apart while cutting the social safety net. I’ve proposed a network of city-owned supermarkets that guarantee cheaper groceries. If Trump decides to live up to his campaign promises to lower costs, we invite him to work with us on this.

The only way to protect New Yorkers and deal with a bully like Donald Trump is to stand up to them aggressively, never appease and fight back. As mayor, I’ll use every means to fight for our schools, our subways and our immigrant neighbors. Right now, it’s hard to be hopeful about finding common ground on any issue with the autocrat in the White House.

New Yorkers are expecting their leaders to do more than react to the deluge of chaos coming from the Trump administration. We should be ready, as Governor Hochul is now, to defend our successes and secure the support we need for transit, education, climate infrastructure and health care, but we should also arm ourselves with tools to defend ourselves. I introduced a bill called the “Recourse Act” in the New York State Senate, which establishes mechanisms to fight back if Trump illegally withholds federal funds from New York.

We have every reason to believe that Trump will gut funding for transit, housing and social services while attacking our communities. The best way to fight back is to run the city effectively. When Trump tried to cut funding for essential programs in our city, I fought back as comptroller and we won. I’ve proven I know how to stand up to his chaos and protect New Yorkers from harm.

Moving people accomplishes nothing if they aren’t connected to care. Involuntary commitment may be an option in extreme cases, but the focus needs to be on successfully getting people continued treatment. Our largest mental health facility is Rikers — a moral and policy failure. As mayor, I’ll expand residential treatment, mobile teams and community-based care for New Yorkers with serious mental illness, so they’re no longer left to fall into crisis without true access to care.

My family overcame homelessness in Jamaica, so it’s personal how we address this challenge. Street homelessness and severe mental illness require compassionate, clinical solutions, not criminalization. We’ll expand mobile care teams, increase overdose prevention centers, secure more funding from opioid settlements and establish permanent supportive housing.

I believe in utilizing proven strategies for addressing street homeless with serious mental illness, like Safe Haven shelters and “Housing First” strategies, but they alone are not a silver bullet. We must increase coordination among street homeless outreach teams in addition to increasing access to community-based care and inpatient psychiatric care when needed.

I support increased flexibility for involuntary hospitalization when individuals are a danger to themselves or others. But we must connect people to housing with services, or they will simply wind up right back on the streets. That’s why the heart of my plan is a “Housing First” approach, which will connect the approximately 2,000 people currently cycling between the city’s streets, subways, hospitals and jails with supportive housing.

Housing is the key: strengthening rental assistance, increasing transitional and supportive housing, expanding respite residences, tripling city-produced affordable housing and fully funding eviction-prevention services. We will make unprecedented investments in mental health: prioritizing voluntary, community- and peer-led programs that are proven to create long-term stability, engaging people into treatment and decreasing hospitalization.

As mayor, I’ll work to address street homelessness with a “Housing First” approach that invests in permanent, supportive housing — not shelters. I’ll create stabilization centers in each borough to help make medical and psychiatric diagnoses and get people who are homeless and in mental distress on the right path. For some homeless people with severe mental illness — for their own well-being and for public safety — involuntary commitment may be the right first step to treatment.

On Day 1, I will declare a mental health state of emergency. My mental health plan, Harmony N.Y.C., lays out a vision to integrate mental health services into every aspect of public life. It has three planks: developing a skilled mental health work force, building and refurbishing appropriate treatment facilities and developing the mental health emergency response infrastructure we need.

New York has failed people with severe mental illness. I’ll create and expand initiatives to ensure mental health professionals respond to crises involving people suffering from serious mental illness. I will expand our supportive housing network to place homeless New Yorkers in housing that is married with the care management necessary to bring them back on their feet. In extreme cases, I support court-ordered care for those who pose a danger to themselves or others, but only with strong safeguards, oversight and real, comprehensive treatment.

As mayor, I’ll fight federal attempts to destructively interfere in our transit system. The best way to support public transit and ensure congestion pricing succeeds is to ensure its revenues are utilized to improve our transit system. Trump’s transportation secretary criticizes New York City’s subways while trying to undermine the very program that is providing the most funding to improve them. As mayor, I won’t let him succeed and will stand firm.

I support the intent of congestion pricing to reduce traffic, improve our environment and lower emissions. But we must lower the cost for New Yorkers.

Congestion pricing is ultimately the right policy, which is why I fought and succeeded in passing it. The goal is to get people out of their cars and onto mass transit, which requires the government to provide straphangers a reliable, safe subway. Given the fragile state of the city’s recovery, the question is whether now is the right time to implement it. The results thus far have been positive, but the economic impact must continue to be monitored.

Yes. I’m for less traffic, cleaner air, modernized subway signals so trains run on time and new elevators so everyone can access them. When Governor Hochul paused congestion pricing last year, I spearheaded the formation of a coalition of advocates and attorneys that successfully initiated two lawsuits that helped ensure the program got started before Trump assumed office.

Yes. In just a few months, congestion pricing has unclogged our streets, lifted smog from the air and started to deliver revenue to improve public transit. I have been a supporter of the program since I was elected and helped lead the fight to keep it alive after Gov. Kathy Hochul’s last-minute pause in June 2024.

I’m a big proponent of congestion pricing, I voted for it as a state senator and I will do everything in my power as mayor to make sure Donald Trump fails to stop it. Since it took effect in January, congestion pricing has done exactly as promised: reduced traffic, improved air quality and generated tens of millions of dollars monthly to improve our subways and buses.

I do not have a driver’s license, and my children and I rely on public transportation. I voted for congestion pricing, defended congestion pricing, and am thrilled to see that it is already delivering much-needed revenue, faster buses and quality-of-life improvements. Congestion pricing will win people over if people can tangibly feel that public transit is a convenient, reliable, accessible alternative to sitting in traffic or looking for parking.

My support for congestion pricing is longstanding and unwavering. It’s delivered exactly what proponents have been promising: reducing traffic, increasing bus speeds, reducing the cost of delivery services, reducing air and sound pollution and providing funding for public transit. We must hold the state accountable to make sure every single dollar is tracked for initiatives like subway signal upgrades, express buses and better outer-borough transit.

Donald Trump is using every lever of power to punish New Yorkers — terrorizing families and communities, even green-card holders and legal residents. Our sanctuary laws are sound policy that benefit the health and safety of all New Yorkers. I defended them as speaker because they make our city safer and stronger economically, and I will continue to support them. The laws already allow collaboration with ICE for those convicted of serious crimes, consistent with the U.S. Constitution.

As a son of Jamaican immigrants from a union family, the city will keep and strengthen its sanctuary status while embracing diversity and holding people accountable. I will not allow ICE in schools, churches, or clinics. I support codifying these protections into city law.

As governor, I worked to ensure that New York’s policies were consistent with ICE’s legal mission while also shielding all residents from any ICE enforcement actions that are either illegal or discriminatory. That said, due process and rule of law are paramount, and we do not harbor criminals: If an individual is convicted of a serious crime, they should be subject to deportation.

We must maintain our status as a sanctuary city. Our laws were carefully drafted: where immigrants who are not citizens have been convicted of serious or violent crimes, we cooperate with ICE on their deportation. But city workers must not be commandeered into doing the work of immigration enforcement. We must protect due process rights and ensure that immigrant families feel safe sending their kids to school or going to the hospital.

We should strengthen our sanctuary laws through greater enforcement and compliance. They’ve had bipartisan support over decades and have reduced crime. Despite Eric Adams’s fear mongering, our sanctuary city laws allow the city to share information regarding immigrants who have been convicted of 170 serious crimes. Trump’s ICE has adopted a policy of guilty until proven innocent with immigrant New Yorkers, disappearing New Yorkers from their homes without charge. Our city should fight for their release while defending the First Amendment and due process rights.

Our sanctuary policies were put in place to relieve the very real fear immigrants had around reporting crimes, showing up to court, or even seeking medical care. For decades, they were largely uncontroversial and recognized for making New York safer. Deporting undocumented immigrants who’ve been convicted of crimes is one thing. Ignoring due process and turning immigrants over to Trump’s ICE just on the basis of a charge or accusation is something I will oppose with every fiber in my body as mayor.

Our sanctuary city laws already have built-in accountability for those convicted of crimes. I will not think twice about enforcing the law as it exists, but I am not going to sacrifice due process or succumb to baseless fear mongering to appease anti-immigrant hysteria. As far as I am concerned, when you choose to build a life in New York City, you are a New Yorker, and I will defend your rights to due process and to live in dignity.

I will work with any administration to keep New Yorkers safe, but make no mistake: New York City sets its own policies, not Washington. My administration will work with law enforcement to arrest criminals who threaten public safety, but I will not allow our police force to be co-opted into a political immigration crackdown. We can be smart on crime while being fair and just on immigration — those are not competing values.

As speaker, I stood up to the mayor’s attempts to roll back 3-K, securing critical funding and reforms for it in last year’s budget because every child deserves a strong start. Early childhood education will be a top priority for me again this year and as mayor. I support universal 3-K and will expand child care support for more families with younger children.

As a public school K-12 graduate, I support expanding 3-K into full, universal child care, from birth through age five. Child care is essential, not a privilege.

I funded universal pre-K. As mayor, I will work to make free 3-K a reality: I’d restore Adams’s budget cuts for 3-K, and the city must analyze application data to pinpoint “3-K deserts” and allocate resources accordingly. Districts with wait lists could see new 3-K classrooms open in underutilized spaces.

As the son of a public school guidance counselor, a public school graduate myself, and the father of two New York City public school graduates, I know our public schools are central to our future. I will restore Mayor Adams’s cuts to early childhood education, deliver on his unmet commitment to 3-K and pre-K for all, and ambitiously expand child care to 2K for all.

We should provide universal child care for children from six weeks to five years. Parents are driven out of the city by child care costs. We can establish a universal system with living wages for providers, eased administrative burdens and simplified applications.

Yes and I plan to extend 3-K until 6 p.m. to give working parents relief. 3-K is critical; we know how important the early years are to childhood development and opportunity, and it helps make our city more affordable for working parents.

As part of the team that implemented universal pre-K and started rolling out 3-K, it has been devastating to see the Adams administration let it fall apart. I have a plan to rebuild 3-K and work backward until every parent with children aged newborn to pre-K has access to high-quality child care in their own neighborhood.

I have been rewriting the rules with transformative solutions that make child care affordable, accessible and fair citywide. As mayor, I’ll bring back the competence and experience required to get families off of wait lists, make programs available in every neighborhood and fully fund 3-K expansion.

Guaranteed Income. New York City’s first municipally funded guaranteed-income program was created under my leadership as speaker. It supports pregnant women experiencing housing instability. As mayor, I’ll expand these programs to more vulnerable New Yorkers and families. Real help, no red tape. These investments won’t just help people, they’ll save the city money by reducing shelter costs and easing pressure on our overwhelmed social safety net.

If the federal government cuts services to New York, we will withhold the equivalent in New York City tax dollars, dollar for dollar. We won’t have taxation without representation. We also need to stop using credit scores for rent and homeownership applications as it is a major reason why so many communities of color are unable to realize a dream of an affordable home.

Experienced leadership and competent government. The best idea is a government that actually functions effectively and efficiently, and delivers real change for the people of the city. I know that addressing the challenges facing New York City is not a function of a single “big idea,” but rather rests on the day-in-day-out managerial skill, experience and knowledge needed to ensure effective execution of the priorities of New Yorkers.

As mayor, I will end street homelessness for people with serious mental illness. Eric Adams’s housing sweeps have failed to connect anyone to stable housing and just cycle people from subway to street to hospital to jail, and back again. Through mayoral leadership, better coordination, more flexibility to require hospitalization when necessary, and especially a “Housing First” approach, my plan will get people off our streets and subways and into stable housing with wraparound services, delivering a city that is safer for all.

Free buses. I helped secure a year-long trailblazing fare-free bus pilot program that began in September 2023. The program was designed to bring economic relief to New Yorkers and create a high-quality public transit system that is safe, reliable and universally accessible. It did just that: increasing ridership, moving riders out of cars and decreasing assaults on bus drivers.

The city’s biggest challenge is building the housing we need to bring costs down so that working New Yorkers can afford to stay here. I have an ambitious plan for 1 million homes that meets the scale of the crisis. It includes opening up midtown and public land to mixed-income housing, revitalizing NYCHA, reimagining preservation and investing in permanent housing — not shelters — to tackle homelessness.

Beyond my proposals for universal child care and mental health, I am proposing a Youth Jobs Guarantee. By 2030, the city will achieve 100 percent employment or education participation for youth aged 16 to 24. I will guarantee year-round, paid opportunities for youth to build skills, gain experience, and secure a pathway into good-paying careers.

Mitchell-Lama 2.0. It’s a bold yet practical strategy that builds on the historic success of the original program to tackle New York City’s housing crisis. By unlocking public land, holding bad landlords accountable and empowering communities to lead, my plan is a serious path to creating affordable housing at scale. Together, we can build a city where every family has a safe, stable home and where neighborhoods thrive.