{"id":254580,"date":"2025-09-25T21:50:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T21:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/254580\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T21:50:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T21:50:18","slug":"nyc-council-greenlights-bronx-housing-plan-for-former-inmates-in-face-of-adams-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/254580\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Council greenlights Bronx housing plan for former inmates in face of Adams’ opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The City Council approved a plan Thursday to build a housing complex in the Bronx for former inmates with serious health issues in spite of opposition from Mayor Adams<\/a>, whose team said the vote is moot and the project won\u2019t move forward.<\/p>\n

The \u201cJust Home<\/a>\u201d plan \u2014 which proposes creating more than 80 affordable and supportive apartments for ex-inmates with serious health problems on the Jacobi Hospital campus in Morris Park<\/a> \u2014 sailed through the Council in a 36-9 vote, with three abstensions. With the Council authorization in the books, the next step would typically be for the project\u2019s developer, the Fortune Society, to start preparing for construction.<\/p>\n

But the mayor\u2019s team says that won\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

Instead, Randy Mastro, Adams\u2019 first deputy mayor, said ahead of the vote that the administration is working on a new proposal that would involve still building affordable housing at the Jacobi site, but not reserve it for ex-inmates, while moving the Just Home component to a new site near Brooklyn\u2019s Broadway Junction<\/a>. Mastro declined to identify the exact Brooklyn site, say how soon the new proposal could materialize or explain how it would be possible to get the ball rolling immediately on an entirely new plan, given the city\u2019s lengthy, complicated land use processes.<\/p>\n

\"JacobiJacobi Hospital in the Bronx. (Shutterstock)<\/p>\n

In terms of the Council\u2019s authorization of Just Home being built in the Bronx, Mastro said the Adams administration will simply ignore it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a direction, it\u2019s not a mandate, it\u2019s not a local law, it\u2019s an authorization for the administration to be able to act in a certain way, but [Health + Hospitals] is not obligated to do that and [the Department of Housing Preservation and Development] is not obligated to do that,\u201d Mastro told the Daily News, referring to the city agencies that oversee the Just Home project.<\/p>\n

During an unrelated press conference earlier in the day in Brooklyn, Adams himself put it more bluntly: \u201cTheir recommendation is not going to impact what we\u2019re going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adams\u2019 position marks a sharp turnaround. Since his administration announced Just Home in 2022, the mayor has been a big supporter of the project and pushed back against claims from Morris Park residents, including Republican Councilwoman Kristy Marmorato<\/a>, that providing housing for ex-inmates would jeopardize public safety in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

But Adams had a change of heart earlier this month as Mastro started trying to find ways to block the project, as first reported<\/a> by the Daily News. Facing an uphill battle for reelection, Adams is scrambling to secure voter support ahead of November\u2019s election, and conservative-leaning areas like Morris Park could be crucial in any coalition he manages to assemble.<\/p>\n

That has led Council Democrats to accuse the mayor of flip-flopping on Just Home in a naked bid to score political points. Sources familiar with the matter have said Marmorato even offered to try to secure neighborhood support for the mayor\u2019s reelection in exchange for a commitment from his team to try to kill Just Home<\/a> \u2014 a charge Mastro and Marmorato deny.<\/p>\n

Underscoring the administration\u2019s new approach, Mastro sent a letter late Wednesday to Council Speaker Adrienne Adams claiming she was legally required to call off the vote because it couldn\u2019t move forward without mayoral approval.<\/p>\n

\"CityCity Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is pictured during a hearing at City Hall on Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (Emil Cohen\/NYC Council Media Unit)<\/p>\n

But in a press conference before the vote, the speaker said Mastro is dead wrong. Calling his letter \u201cridiculous\u201d and \u201cdisgraceful,\u201d she noted the board of Health + Hospitals is the entity that gets final say on the project, and its members already approved the plan last year and have shown no sign of planning to reverse themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s alarming that the mayor and his top official have revealed such incompetence and a lack of understanding in governing the city, and it is shameful that they\u2019re trying,\u201d she said. \u201cThankfully the two of them will not be relevant to this project in three months,\u201d she added, referring to the upcoming election.<\/p>\n

The original intention behind Just Home was to provide housing for low-income inmates leaving Rikers Island who are too sick to be able to live in a homeless shelter. Health issues that would qualify an applicant for the housing include stage 4 cancer, congestive heart failure and end-stage renal disease, according to Health + Hospitals.<\/p>\n

Stanley Richards, the CEO of the Fortune Society, the nonprofit tapped to administer Just Home<\/a>, said after the Council\u2019s vote that he remains hopeful the project will become a reality and vowed to \u201ccounter fear with facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact is that providing formerly incarcerated people with supportive housing does not make our neighborhoods less safe\u2014on the contrary, it makes us all safer,\u201d said Richards. \u201cJust Home will prevent physically vulnerable individuals from entering our overburdened shelters, winding up on the streets, or languishing on Rikers Island. As we say at Fortune, everyone deserves a home, and today, the City Council has upheld and affirmed that belief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally Published: September 25, 2025 at 4:58 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City Council approved a plan Thursday to build a housing complex in the Bronx for former inmates…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":254581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[134318,5229,8471,13239,7065,134320,134321,405,403,134319,5226,5225,5228,5227,75294,74350,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-254580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-adams-administration","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-bronx","11":"tag-city-hall","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-just-home","14":"tag-kristy-marmorato","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-new-york-city-concil","18":"tag-newyork","19":"tag-newyorkcity","20":"tag-ny","21":"tag-nyc","22":"tag-randy-mastro","23":"tag-rikers-island","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-united-states-of-america","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","28":"tag-us","29":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115267150140291235","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}