New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised greater inclusion and acknowledgment of disabled New Yorkers during his administration in a sit-down interview with Able News before taking office.
This past weekend, he hit his 100-day mark, and it is up to you to decide if he has upheld his vow using the grading rubric for “Nothing About Us, Without Us” as we give you a recap on the actions Mayor Mamdani has taken as they pertain to the disabled community.
Sunday evening at the Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens, Mamdani, the youngest NYC mayor, delivered his 100-day address to a crowd full of supporters and city workers, saying it is an “immense honor to be your mayor. To not simply lead you, but to learn from you.”
There were sign language interpreters in four various cultures at the inauguration on the City Hall steps. At Sunday’s event, which was cut down by half in-person with one on the live stream and only limited to English.
For the second barrier that night, the layout of the place limited visibility options for people who use wheelchairs.
Day 7:
Fresh off his swearing-in, Mamdani wasted no time in building the staff around him who will help make this city more affordable and accessible. On day 7, Mayor Mamdani tapped Christine Clarke, a longtime litigator with experience representing New Yorkers in need, as chair of the Commission on Human Rights.
The Chief of Litigation and Advocacy and member of the executive team of the largest civil legal services organization in the country, Legal Services NYC, is not disabled, but she named the community multiple times, pledging to more inclusion and equity right after the announcement.
Day 10:
If you are someone who is often needing to take a break outside, Day 10 consisted of addressing that issue when Mamdani alongside New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) Commissioner Mike Flynn, announced the city’s new program to expand access to public bathrooms across the city, committing $4 million to a Request for Proposals (RFP) for high-quality modular public restrooms. Outside the ADA entrance where the 100-day address was spoken, Able News asked Commissioner Flynn if the bathrooms were going to be made accessible with changing tables. To that, he said, “So the contract they put out a request for proposals to get the contractors to make a bid, and I think they’re negotiating soon. We have to identify locations, so if you have any suggestions, that’s the next step.”
The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) released the RFPs on Feb. 6th requiring to install self-cleaning public toilets that will be free to use, fully accessible, and contain a water bottle filler at 12th Avenue and St. Clair Place in upper Manhattan as the first location to be completed by the end of this summer. Details on the meaning of “fully accessible” have not yet been laid out.
Day 12:
Once a week for a month, starting on Day 12, the mayor joined nurses in their fight for fair contracts.
“When NYSNA (New York State Nurses Association) nurses went on strike, I was proud to join them on the picket line,” he said in his speech. “And those nurses didn’t back down until they won the better wages and safe working conditions they deserved.”
Day 16:
NYC Mayor Mamdani along with Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) Commissioner Dina Levy and Jackson Heights Council Member Shekar Krishnan, achieved a historic $2.1 million settlement involving A&E Realty forcing the company to not only pay up for their mistakes but also mandate fair treatment towards their tenants and correct more than 4,000 building code violations across 14 buildings, on day 16 with broken elevators as the top reason.
Day 19:
A commitment to restart the Just Home Supportive Housing Initiative to serve formerly incarcerated New Yorkers with complex medical needs on the campus of NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi was taken up on Day 19. The 100% affordable housing project will create 83 new apartments in an underutilized building on the Bronx hospital grounds. In an emailed statement to Able News, Director, Communications & Intergovernmental Affairs for NYC Health + Hospitals/Correctional Health Services, Nicole Levy, said that medically complex patients may have health conditions that include cancer, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cirrhosis, and end-stage renal disease.
CHS clinicians will consider the patient’s entire health profile, including the severity of their illness and their level of functional need, when referring patients for Just Home, which hopes to finalize the ground lease for Building 2, secure project financing and start construction by the end of this year, for a tenant occupancy date of late 2027 or early 2028.
Day 21-58:
January 21st, and for a total of 35 days, the Mamdani administration faced its biggest challenge when it failed to secure safe daily living conditions for people with disabilities during back-to-back winter snowstorms. His announcement, requiring property owners to plow a four-foot-wide sidewalk path wide enough for wheelchairs, was not enough for disabled New Yorkers to get back out freely and safely.
“We will significantly increase the number of bus stops that are fully accessible,” he said, repeating his promise of a movable city. This was his closest mention of his accessibility agenda at the highly anticipated night. The mayor did not say the disability community’s name at the ceremony when he took office, nor when he won the Democratic nomination for mayor.
Day 41:
“Across the five boroughs, New Yorkers waited to see if a City Hall powered by the people could truly govern for the people.”
In the November exclusive interview, the mayor told Able News that he would strive to give more administrative employment roles to disabled New Yorkers, but now that responsibility has fallen on to the shoulders of another administration leader on day 41, Nisha Agarwal, the only appointee who is part of the disabled community, was named Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD). Agarwal told Able News that she is empowered to address intersectional discrimination head-on and expand disability-led employment opportunities, in a sit-down interview at her office in mid-March.
Day 78:
He shouted into the audience that Day 78 marked the creation of New York City’s first-ever Office of Community Safety. “It will devise new approaches to the gun violence and mental health crises that stretch across our city.” When asked about how she would ensure disabled individuals are taken into custody with dignity, Commissioner Agarwal told Able News that “ without a doubt, there’s a whole work on mental health and the manifestation that a lot of people are killed based on their crisis, which was not police activity, but crisis management for peers and others. So that’s a conversation that I will have with the deputy mayor of community safety.”
Day 85:
One of our most recent reports highlighted the possible implementation of a new accessible taxi coming to NYC. During Mamdani’s 85th day, he released a press release confirming Midori Valdivia’s nomination to become the newly appointed Chair and Commissioner of the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC). She achieved 50% accessibility in yellow taxi and wheelchair-accessible fleets prior to being considered for the new role.
Day 100:
Still on the day of the big celebration, day 100, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani used this opportunity to announce three more initiatives to come including the opening of La Marqueta, the City’s first municipal grocery store in East Harlem, a neighborhood where nearly 40% of households receive public assistance or SNAP in the past year, “to make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table,” he said.
Furiously racing out of the venue in her wheelchair because her “accessible seating” spot was dangerously nowhere near an accessible exit and it was too crowded for her to get out, Able News asked Charlene Davis about her thoughts regarding the address. She said: “it was nice, but I think he needs to think more about Medicaid and disabled people like us because nobody talks about us at all.”
“Just because I’m disabled and I’m on oxygen and stuff don’t mean that I have no right to be here and this is something that his office needs to take up. Because there’s a lot of disabled people,” the Coney Island resident added.
She hopes the mayor’s new grocery store idea is more affordable and accessible, because Davis, who is barely making ends meet, is tired of shopping at odd hours at night to avoid crowded aisles. The administration should also increase distribution of food stamps, she said.
“At our stores, eggs will be cheaper, bread will be cheaper. Grocery shopping will no longer be an unsolvable equation,” the mayor vowed in his 100-day address.
On the issues of housing and transportation, Davis, 68, is calling on the mayor to build more accessible apartments with wheelchair-accessible units, wider bathroom entrances, and height-adjustable sinks, while also demanding free Access-A-Ride and accessibility improvements in the subway.
Davis noted that in previous years, she was an active citizen of society as a nurse, teacher and poll site worker, and her work should be recognized.
“I go out and I get signatures. I do all this stuff, but then when it comes time for something, they don’t think about us. You think about everybody else, but you don’t think about us,” she said. “I feel bad. I feel like we’re the unforgotten people.”