A proposal to build specialized housing for formerly incarcerated people on a Bronx hospital campus is now on the verge of a City Council vote \u2014 three years after top city officials first unveiled the plan.<\/p>\n
But the 83-unit housing development has lost a key ally: Mayor Eric Adams.<\/p>\n
As he faces a tough re-election fight, Adams is backing down from the plan to build supportive housing for formerly incarcerated people with serious medical problems on the grounds of Jacobi Hospital. The proposed development has faced intense criticism from residents of the surrounding Morris Park neighborhood, including the sitting councilmember, since the Adams administration first announced it in August 2022.<\/a><\/p>\n The modest housing proposal is now the latest flashpoint in a fight between the mayor and the Council, leaving a few dozen apartments for New Yorkers in the balance.<\/p>\n The political dynamic is expected to play out in the open at a Council hearing scheduled for Thursday morning: Several councilmembers told Gothamist they would vote to approve the plan, despite opposition from local City Councilmember Kristy Marmorato. The final fate of the project is still unclear, but a vote in favor would break a long-standing Council tradition known as \u201cmember deference,\u201d which allows individual councilmembers to wield ultimate power over land-use decisions in their districts. An Adams-appointed commission is attempting to neuter the custom through proposed changes to the city\u2019s governing charter<\/a>.<\/p>\n City Hall counters that the Council delayed the hearing for so long precisely because of Marmorato\u2019s opposition.<\/p>\n The city\u2019s Health and Hospitals Corporation owns the site and greenlit the plan<\/a> in January 2024. Under the proposal, the nonprofit Fortune Society would operate 58 units of supportive housing and provide on-site services for people leaving Rikers Island with severe medical problems, like late-stage cancer and congestive heart failure, inside a now-vacant building. The plan also includes another 24 units of affordable housing for people earning no more than $68,000 a year, and an apartment for a superintendent.<\/p>\n At a community meeting in July 2024, Adams defended the plan against a barrage of criticism from Morris Park residents who said they feared living near single men with criminal histories and told him the apartments should be built somewhere else.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what we hear everywhere,\u201d Adams said of the opposition. \u201cThe hardest placement we have in the city is for single adult males. No one raised their hands and said, \u2018Hey, Eric, bring them here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He told the crowd that the men would be best served \u201cin a setting where they can get the wraparound services they need so they don’t become reoffenders.\u201d<\/p>\n