Dear New Yorkers,
This is the first newsletter of the new year—and the first of my administration. I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself to those who may not yet know me, and to reconnect with the many New Yorkers I have had the privilege to work with over the years.
For the past 25 years, I have worked to make New York City more affordable, equitable, and healthy. I began my career as a bilingual math and science teacher in the South Bronx, where I saw firsthand how disinvestment—and the lack of access to basic financial tools like credit and banking—can hold communities back. That experience led me to found a community credit union in Upper Manhattan, which has since provided more than $100 million in small loans with a 98 percent repayment rate. For many families and small businesses, this meant access to capital for the first time—helping neighbors start a first business, buy a first home, or purchase a first computer.
In 2013, I was elected by my Washington Heights community to the New York City Council, where I served as Chair of the Committee on Parks and later as Chair of the Committee on Health. In that role, I brought a data-driven, science-based approach to protecting New Yorkers during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was elected Manhattan Borough President in 2021 and made the creation of badly needed housing a central focus of my administration. Across Manhattan, we identified 171 sites with the potential to deliver more than 71,000 new homes, and over the past two years, progress has been made on roughly 20 percent of those sites.
It is with this experience that I write to you today as New York City Comptroller—and it is with the same data-driven, equity-focused approach that I will chart the city’s fiscal and economic future. This is a new era in New York City, one with enormous opportunities ahead. Since the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, our city has roared back in countless ways and reasserted itself as a global cultural and economic powerhouse.
However, amid the prosperity and promise, far too many New Yorkers continue to struggle. The city faces an unprecedented affordability crisis that is keeping housing beyond the reach of far too many. Young people are struggling to break into the job market. Our homelessness crisis, as the data in this newsletter indicates, has reached painful heights, fueled in part by a broken mental health system.
The Office of the New York City Comptroller is critical to the fiscal and economic health of the city, and at challenging moments like this, it plays a truly significant role in finding sensible solutions to the city’s financial obstacles while also providing accountability to every agency of City government.
This is no small task. But from investing pension funds to finance the creation of affordable housing to utilizing our oversight tools to ensure City government works more efficiently, I firmly believe this Office is vital to the goal of building a fairer, safer, and more affordable New York City for all.
I look forward to working every day, as your comptroller, to make that a reality.
Sincerely,
