Mayor Eric Adams’ top deputy says a plan to build new housing on a Bronx hospital campus is dead on arrival — but the City Council is poised to approve it anyway.
The dispute centers on a 3-year-old proposal to build 58 specialized apartments for homeless New Yorkers leaving Rikers Island with serious medical problems. The units would be constructed in a vacant building belonging to Jacobi Medical Center in the Morris Park neighborhood.
Councilmember Kristy Marmorato, who represents the area, opposes the plans. Yet the Council is set to vote on the project Thursday in a rare break from its custom of deferring to councilmembers on projects in their districts, as Gothamist first reported.
Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro threw cold water on the move in a letter to Council Speaker Adrienne Adams late Wednesday.
“There would be no purpose” to holding a vote, he wrote, since the mayor will not approve the use of the grounds for the supportive-housing project due to “overwhelming opposition in the surrounding Morris Park community.”
“Accordingly, the Council should deem this application withdrawn and take no further action on an application that will never go forward as currently constituted,” he added.
The mayor’s new stance marks a complete reversal from his previous position in favor of the project, which his administration unveiled three years ago. Mayor Adams previously delivered an impassioned defense of the plan to angry Morris Park residents at a public town hall in July 2024, but his view has since changed as he faces a tough path to re-election in November.
Council spokesperson Julia Agos waved off Mastro’s claim that the mayor could stop the process after it already received approval from the city's Health and Hospitals agency. She said lawmakers would be voting on the proposal anyway.
"Randy Mastro has shown his ignorance of how city government actually works with this ridiculous letter that carries no weight under the law,” Agos said in a statement. “This failed, last-ditch attempt by Mayor Adams to block housing and medical care for New Yorkers is despicable.”
The project, known as Just Home, would create 58 units of supportive housing for people leaving Rikers Island jails with serious medical problems, such as late-stage cancer and congestive heart failure. The redeveloped building would also include 25 affordable apartments for low-income tenants and would be operated by the nonprofit Fortune Society, which offers housing and services for people exiting jails and prisons. Top city officials unveiled the plan in a celebratory press release in August 2022.
Fortune Society CEO Stanley Richards did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The board of the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, which owns the Jacobi campus, formally approved the use of the building for housing in January 2024, but the action requires final Council approval before construction can begin.
In response to councilmembers’ criticism, officials from Mayor Adams' office questioned why the Council failed to schedule a vote on the plan for nearly 21 months.
Marmorato previously told Gothamist she would recommend the project be built on another parcel in her Bronx district, and that she had identified a suitable location. She said she could not share the exact location because it could interfere with negotiations.
Mastro and other senior administration officials have said they hope to find a new location to build the housing, though any developer and social service agency involved would likely have to start a yearslong planning process from scratch. He said city officials have been targeting two locations near the Broadway Junction transit hub in Brooklyn, but neither he nor a City Hall spokesperson disclosed either site Wednesday.
Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who represents that area and spoke in favor of the Morris Park plan at a hearing last week, said Mastro “is running a one-man ad campaign for his ignorance of how city government works.”
