NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: Mamdani Condemns Flier Targeting His Record on Israel, Report Finds Rising Homelessness Among Non-Asylum Seekers, Bronx Father Denies Killing Toddler, and Mayoral Candidates Talk Transit

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani condemned a flier circulated by a super PAC supporting Andrew Cuomo during Thursday’s mayoral debate. The flier criticizes Mamdani’s record on Israel. Meanwhile, a new report from the Coalition for the Homeless finds nearly 73,000 non-asylum-seeking New Yorkers slept in shelters last year — a 12 percent increase from the year before. Also, the father of a missing Bronx toddler is pleading not guilty to murder, manslaughter, and menacing charges. Finally, in this week’s transit segment: Mamdani calls for free city buses, Cuomo weighs in on MTA funding, and we explore why the A train serves three parts of Queens.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, June 13th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. Assembly member Zoran Mamdani called out Andrew Cuomo in last night's debate for a flyer, a super PAC supporting the former governor created and circulated. We found out that his super PAC was sending mail that artificially darkened and lengthened my beard to stoke the very fears of that division in this city. The Super PAC fixed the city, made the flyer. Spokesperson for the PAC said it rejected the design and did not release it.

It's unclear how the flyer, though, which attacks Mamdani's record on Israel, surfaced online. A Cuomo spokesperson called the fly absurd and disrespectful. Most polls show Cuomo leading the field of candidates and Mamdani is coming in second. Early voting starts tomorrow. Primary day is June 24th, and we'll hear from our Bridget Bergen. in just a short while. The lack of affordable housing is driving more New Yorkers

to sleep at a homeless shelter every night. W&MIC's Karen Ye has more. Last year, the number of people who were in asylum seekers and needed shelter increased by nearly 12% to 73,000 people. That's according to a new report by the nonprofit, the Coalition for the Homeless. The group says while the number of asylum seekers living in shelters has plummeted, a growing number of New Yorkers

who aren't migrants have no place to live. The report found adults say they lost their homes because of overcrowding, unlivable conditions, or discord among those they were living with. The report says while the city has ramped up the number of people who are leaving shelter for permanent housing, that hasn't been enough to keep pace with how many people find themselves with nowhere to go. The Adams administration says it's helped thousands of homeless people into housing, but needs more help from the state and federal government. The father of a toddler who went missing in the Bronx last month is pleading not guilty to murder,

manslaughter and menacing WNIC's Charles Lane reports. Prosecutors say two-year-old Montreal Williams was still alive when his father, Arias Williams, threw him off a bridge and into the Bronx River. They say the father later admitted this to the boy's mother. Outside court, the child's grandparents said they filed multiple police reports at different precincts asking for help, but that the search didn't begin until more than a month later. Mayor Eric Adams says the NYPD is now reviewing how the case was handed. handled.

70 and mostly sunny out there right now. We have a slight shower chance or two through this morning. Maybe midday thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy and 78. So cooler than yesterday. And then tomorrow showers likely, mainly by 2 o'clock, cloudy and cooler, 64, still in the 60s on Sunday. Stay close.

There's more after the break. NYC. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. Signed for On the Way, our weekly segment on all. things considered breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us is WNYC's transportation reporter Stephen Nesson and editor Clayton Goosa. Early voting for New York City's mayoral primary starts on Saturday. Transportation is always a big issue in local elections. And the two of you have been looking at the two leading candidates' positions

when it comes to transit. Let's start with you, Stephen. In this week's newsletter, you focus on assembly member Zoron and Mamdani's pledge for free buses. What's up? That's his big pitch. Free buses. And that includes local buses, SBS buses, and those $7 express buses. He put out a campaign ad this week comparing it to the Staten Island ferry, which used to cost money but is free now. But since 1997, the ferry's been free.

And New Yorkers have come to know it as a dependable means of transit. And it's the best way to see the Statue of Liberty. So when people say buses can never be free, don't ask them to take a hike. Ask him to take the ferry. On June 24th, let's get some more free transit. Okay, of course, the MTA is in charge of buses.

Yeah. Mom Domney says he'll cover the 630, million dollars he believes it would cost the MTA to offer free buses for all with his tax on millionaires. He wants to put a 2% tax on city residents that make more than a million dollars a year. And he believes that will raise $10 billion, which he'll use to offer a bunch of free services, including the buses. And of course, that tax would require approval from lawmakers in Albany. If it becomes a city elected officially, no longer be a lawmaker at the state level. But of course, Zoran's a, Zerman down, he's a Democratic social.

Socialist. He's campaign's all about helping working people and making the city more affordable. Free buses kind of fits that mold just like his promise to do a rent freeze through the rent guidelines board for rent stabilized tenants fits that mold. But, you know, it's like can he get it done? Rent freeze, you have some control over the rent guidelines board having a tax to subsidize, you know, free fares for all these bus riders to the tune of $600 plus million a year. That requires a little bit more negotiations. and kind of out of your control when you're mayor. Yeah, sure does. Well, we actually have some evidence in regards to free buses. The MTA ran a free bus pilot last year. One free route in each borough, Mamdani supported that program and says it's proof the concept works. But, Stephen, you spoke with experts who say, hold on a second.

Sure, I mean, just look at the MTA. They said they didn't like the pilot for a couple of reasons. One is that it just created confusion for riders about when they should pay the fare, when they shouldn't pay the fare. The MTA also says it didn't lead to a flood of new riders either. Instead, existing riders on those routes just ended up riding more frequently. But Mom Downey notes there were some benefits. The MTA did report assaults on bus drivers went down since there are no conflicts overpaying the fare.

And Mom Downey thinks it will speed up buses since no one is going to be lining up to pay at the front. But I spoke with Jarrett Walker. He's a transit consultant, an expert on urban planning. And he notes that, first of all, no major city in the world has free board. buses, and he thinks that's a good thing, especially in a city like New York, that already has subways with pretty decent coverage to most parts of the city. He worries if buses are free, everyone will just abandon the subway. The subway is not only faster, but when you take the subway, you're consuming fewer resources and you're avoiding the need for even more bus

service duplicating the subway. Right. They don't want to have people running free buses on the same routes that subways run. Mom Donnie's campaign's response to that is, yeah, tell that to riders and Queens. But that said, Walker and others say that even better than free buses, if you really want to get buses moving more efficiently, the MTA needs to institute all-door boarding. It says that, you know, the MTA does have that on SBS buses, but not on local buses. And even though MTA did install Omni-Readers on local buses, it says they're still battling fair evasion.

So now's not the time to change the system. but Walker told me that's totally the wrong approach and that the best practice is to do all-door boarding. Right, and a couple points to make, I mean, key to this pitch is that if you make buses fare free, you'll save time because you won't have all these riders kind of waiting to pay the fare. But it's kind of a little intellectually dishonest, at least from my perspective, if anyone who rides a bus and is complaining about slow service, no one's like, everyone's paying the fare. You're stuck in traffic.

You don't have a bus lane. Or most importantly, you're waiting 20, 30 minutes for a bus to come. Even if it's scheduled to come every 10 minutes, you know, they cancel run. That 10 minute wait becomes 20 minutes and then your bus is very crowded. Then people are getting on and off at every stop. There's all kinds of problems with the bus system. The other thing, if you're going to add this new $600 million a year plus subsidy into the bus system, there's a really strong argument to be made to say put that towards more service.

The bus system doesn't run itself. It runs on seven more than 7,000 drivers, mechanics, supervisors, you know, dispatchers, everyone kind of running this system and you, and they don't work for free. Adding 600 million more dollars would help you run more service. On top of this push, you know, for more bus lanes that transit advocates are calling for and a lot of riders are calling for to give buses the right of way to move through traffic. Adams, during his term, has kind of ignored as city law passed in 2019 that requires him to add more than 30 new miles of bus lanes every year. Zoroamem Dani says that he'll follow that law and implement that.

So, you know, is free buses the savior for, as free fare is the savior for New York City bus service? I don't know, but it sure it sure does make for a good campaign slogan. Yeah. Well, let's move on to Andrew Cuomo, the other major contender here, our audience. knows him well from his 10 years as governor before he resigned following sexual harassment allegations. He controlled the MTA during his time in office and faced regular criticism for his management of the agency. Clayton, what's saying he taking on transportation issues during the campaign? So on this issue, it's kind of interesting.

Mamdani and Cuomo both support, or Cuomo at least, supports the return of his free fare bus pilot. But that's about the only overlap on this topic. Okay. You know, we reached out to Cuomo's campaign. And they would not say whether he supported a single mile of new bus lanes. It's not part of his pitch. His whole campaign platform kind of Cuomo's whole transportation platform centers around subway safety, specifically getting mentally ill people off the subway system. This kind of, you know, really aggressively addressing this tragedy of the commons.

And he's made that a big issue for himself since he's been governor. He, of course, deployed more MTA police into the system in 2019, and famously ended 24-hour subway service for the first time in the pandemic, an effort to take homeless people out of the system who were kind of some of the only remaining riders during that period. And, of course, he has a long history and track record of doing a lot of things to transit. Some that advocates support a lot that they don't. Of course, there's the infamous summer of hell back in 2017 when subway service just melted down. and a lot of folks, a lot of critics noted that maybe the reason that happened is because resources that should have gone into supporting the day-to-day maintenance of the subway system were siphoned away to get the 2nd Avenue subway stations opened on time. Cuomo's camp doesn't really dispute that. In fact, that's one of their achievements.

They say, like, look, he got it done, where many others failed to get the 2nd Avenue subway completed. But like Clayton was saying, the key thing here is on subway bus lanes, which is something the mayor can control. and Cuomo hasn't really committed to that, but Momdani's campaign wants to do more than 30 miles a year. Well, thank you to both WNYC editor Clayton Gouza and Transportation Reporter Stephen Nesson. You can stay in the know on all things transit or ask a question of your own by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gothamas.com slash on the way. Stephen Clayton, thanks so much. Thanks, Sean. Thank you.

Thanks for listening. from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a date, for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I see. Y, C, NYC, NYC.