The city of New York The year 2022 kicks off with a new mayor, the moderate democrat Eric Adams, so many of the city’s challenges will also be those of its councilor and his team.
Vaccination, cornerstone of recovery
New York, which in the spring of 2020 became a global focus of COVID-19 And in the city with the most deaths in the United States, it has since been involved in a race to vaccinate the entire population as soon as possible.
The resurgence of infections with the delta and omicron variants put the city to the test once again, where 95% of the adult inhabitants have already received at least one dose of the vaccine but this has not prevented a peak of infections in the last days of the year, with percentages of positivity hovering around 15% of the tests.
Quell the rampant insecurity
The resurgence of armed violence in the United States also hit its most inhabited city hard, becoming one of the greatest concerns of its inhabitants.
The new mayor, Eric Adams, who took office on January 1, prevailed in the elections showing off his 22 years of service in the New York Police Department.
In 2021, with 1,441 armed incidents and 434 murders, the violence figures have stabilized compared to the previous year when they shot up 97% and 44.8%, respectively.
From the mayor’s office, Adams will face the challenge of making the subway and the streets of the city safer, among other things, with policies such as the increase of agents or the return of bodies dissolved by the previous councilor for his criticized violent methods, many of which collide with the ideas of the more progressive members of the Democratic Party.
The housing puzzle
Homelessness and its increasing cost is one of the most serious problems that New York City has ever had and one that, like many other inequalities, has been exacerbated by the crisis of the pandemic.
The new councilor has adopted several initiatives of the current outgoing team such as building affordable housing in the Soho neighborhood, converting office buildings into apartments or selling the rights of the airspace to construction companies who want to build skyscrapers so that they use part of their income in the construction of subsidized projects.
Another of the great consequences of the crisis has been the increase in homeless people, whose number is around 50,000 and for which the new mayor has proposed integrating assistance to housing with stays in hospitals and increasing the number of facilities to house homeless people with mental illness.
Broadway Lights Recovery
Cultural life is one of the great poles of attraction of the city that never sleeps and also one of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic, which with the new wave of infections has once again forced the temporary closure of many Broadway shows.
The city must weather the current storm and continue supporting large and small spaces of culture and leisure, which not only attract national and international tourism, but also employ a large number of residents in the city.
The return to the offices
One of the effects of COVID-19 was the flight of many New Yorkers from the densely populated Manhattan neighborhood and its offices, many of which remain empty or semi-empty due to the continuing threat of SARS-CoV-19 and its successive variants.
The main companies that set up their large offices in the center of the city hope that their workers will gradually return to their physical jobs in 2022, although omicron has disrupted these plans.
While at the end of October only 28% of office workers were in their physical location in Manhattan, this percentage was estimated to rise to 49% with the beginning of the new year, according to the Partnership for New York City firm.
Promotion of public services
The social and racial inequalities that the pandemic brought to light also showed the deficient public health, transportation, education and even garbage collection systems.
The inclusion of thousands of workers excluded from an expensive and mainly private healthcare system; the maintenance of open schools, both for the education of the students and not to interrupt the working life of their parents; or the renewal of the aging transport system, punished even more by the lack of users during the pandemic, are other great challenges facing the city and the new mayor for 2021.
Adams, a passionate bicycle user, has vowed to get involved in reforming transportation by building more bus lines and up to 482 new kilometers of bike lanes in his first term.
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Ricardo is a renowned author and journalist, known for his exceptional writing on top-news stories. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he is known for his ability to deliver breaking news and insightful analysis on the most pressing issues of the day.
