New Yorkers are waiting longer than ever for ambulances to arrive during emergencies, but most kinds of crime have dropped in the city and timely processing of social assistance benefits, like food stamps, is improving modestly, according to Mayor Adams’ latest management report released Wednesday.
The 532-page document, which is mandated by law and serves as a City Hall report card, also shows the Department of Sanitation is cleaning far fewer lots around the five boroughs, in part due to budget cuts enacted by Adams, while the city’s parks are becoming dirtier. The city’s homeless shelter population remains at a nearly all-time high, the report also reveals.
The mixed bag laid out in the Mayor’s Management Report for the 2025 fiscal year, which ended this past July 1, comes as Adams faces an exceedingly difficult path to a second term in City Hall. In a statement, Adams, who’s running as an independent in November’s election and polling at the very back of the pack, argued the latest report constitutes “another testament to our commitment to a cleaner, safer and more affordable New York City.”
“Our city agencies are being held to the highest standards of efficiency and accountability, and the work is showing,” his statement said.
One of the most persistent municipal operation problems under Adams’ first term has been the processing of SNAP and cash assistance benefits.
At the outset of his term — in a problem blamed by the administration on staffing shortages and record demand — Adams’ Department of Social Services processed less than 40% of applications for cash assistance and SNAP benefits within the legally required 30 days. That resulted in some of the city’s most vulnerable residents going without the critical benefits they rely on to afford food, rent and other essentials.
The mayor’s latest report shows the timely processing rate for cash assistance has ticked up to 63.2%, an improvement that is still well behind the agency’s goal of getting that number up to 95%. The timely processing rate for SNAP applications, meantime, has increased to 87.6% in the latest window, inching closer to the stated goal, according to the report, which covers data between July 1, 2024 and this past June 30.
DSS officials wrote in the report that the improvements can largely be attributed to “process improvements and investing in technology.”
Also on a social safety net front, the number of people staying in the city’s homeless shelters every night averaged 86,403 people, nearly an all-time high, the report says. The elevated figure came even as the number of newly arrived migrants living in the system decreased and as the number of new shelter residents mostly held steady.
Before the influx of mostly Latin American migrants started in 2022, the shelter system’s population was on average less than 46,000.
The Department of Homeless Services did report that more homeless New Yorkers were placed into permanent housing from the shelter system than in any of the previous four fiscal years. That included more than 37,500 shelter residents being moved into housing using rental subsidies, reflecting a 37% jump from fiscal year 2024. DSS attributed the increase in part to the expansion of CityFHEPS rental subsidies.
Another chronic problem under Adams has been ambulance response times, with FDNY EMS workers taking longer than ever to get to emergencies. FDNY EMS unions argue that’s because their ranks are thinning out as Adams has refused to make good on a 2021 campaign promise to significantly increase their wages.
The latest mayoral management report shows the problem is getting worse, with the end-to-end average ambulance response time for life-threatening emergencies clocking in at 11 minutes and 21 seconds — up nearly 30 seconds compared to the 10:52 average in fiscal year 2024. In fiscal year 2021, the last year before Adams took office, that time was 9:34.
FDNY officials didn’t identify a specific reason for the jump in response times, but said the department has rolled out multiple programs aimed at trying to drive them back down.
Public safety — Adams’ signature issue since he became mayor — has largely gone in the right direction.
The new report shows all major crime categories, except rape, went down compared to fiscal year 2024. However, when compared to 2021, the last year before Adams became mayor, all crime categories remain elevated except burglary and murder.
Police response times have barely improved from fiscal year 2024: End-to-end average response time to all crimes in progress fell by 3% during fiscal year 2025, now taking 14 minutes and 53 seconds, and the average response time to crimes deemed “critical” decreased by just 1%.
Public cleanliness has been another major priority for Adams, but things aren’t trending in the right direction, according to some of the data points.
The Department of Sanitation only cleaned 101 vacant lots in fiscal year 2025, a dramatic drop from the 534 scrubbed in fiscal year 2024 and 1,440 in fiscal year 2023, the report says. Similarly, the department only cleaned about 12,000 miles of space in especially dirty areas, known as Targeted Neighborhood Taskforce locations, down from more than 16,500 in the prior fiscal year.
Sanitation officials wrote the decrease in cleaning is a direct result of funding cuts Adams recently pushed through due to concerns about the impact of the migrant crisis on the city’s finances.
Public parks are also becoming dirtier, with the number of them rated as being in acceptable condition dropping to 87% in the latest period, down from 89% in fiscal year 2024, the report says.
“Spending cuts have deep, lasting consequences — and they’re exacerbated by the mayor’s severe mismanagement of our city government,” Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler, a prominent Adams critic, wrote in a post on X, reiterating an argument by City Council Democrats that much of the mayor’s budget belt-tightening was unnecessary.
There’s one cleanliness metric, though, Adams’ administration is pushing the envelope on: rats.
According to the latest management report, the Department of Health registered rat signs at 19.7% of properties on initial inspections, a five-year low that the mayor’s team attributed to efforts like waste containerization.
