Quality of Life
Policy Paper: Good Quality of Life, Good Business
Prepared by the Quality-of-Life Working Group
Tom Harris and Lauren Collins, Co-Chairs
NYC BID Association | December 2025Executive Summary
New York City’s Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are among the City’s most effective and enduring partners in the management of public space. Beyond representing area businesses, BIDs are the primary stewards of our neighborhoods, with a hyper local focus on all our stakeholders as we work to ensure that everyone has a great experience in our districts and in our city.
BIDs maintain plazas and parks, activate commercial corridors, and invest millions annually in maintaining clean, safe, and vibrant streets. These plazas and public corridors are where much of life happens in our city, and the quality of life of these spaces is vital to the overall ecology of our communities and the economic health of our city.
An energized and well-maintained public realm is key to building a strong economy and making New York an equitable and enjoyable city on par with other global urban centers.
With an intense focus on prioritizing the seven index crimes, the New York City Police Department deserves immense credit for achieving some of the lowest levels of crime in our city. However, the city has failed to effectively address quality of life issues such as homelessness, mental illness, open drug use, and failed curb and sidewalk management which has led to a sense of disorder and the continued perception that we are not as safe as the statistics show. From our perspective, the key to changing that perception is elevating quality of life as a priority, developing equitable strategies that lead to solutions not summonses, and holding agencies accountable for results.
Your administration has an opportunity to reset the strategy, increase accountability, and focus on new solutions to improve the quality of life for all.
The New York City Police Department has been the primary agency tasked with, and held accountable for, addressing the quality of life in New York City. This has created a system that counts summonses as the only solution to these challenges. Attempts to shift “enforcement” to different agencies have failed due to lack of resources, lack of accountability for results, and a focus on summonses over real solutions. We believe the 2026 solution to improve the quality of life for all in New York City is making sure that agencies collaborate with communities and are held accountable for achieving solutions. This mindset shift needs to be championed at the highest levels of your administration.
The NYC BID Association has identified several challenges, including homelessness, mental illness, open drug use, and rogue commercial activity on our streets, plazas, and parks, that have deteriorated the quality of life in our city. We are committed to working with you to find solutions. We pride ourselves not on spotting problems but on working collaboratively to achieve better outcomes.
1. Issue One: Accurately Identifying and Tracking the Problems That Plague Our City
The Problem:
Prior to the Bloomberg Administration creating the 311 system, there was no easily accessible, centralized way to alert the city to problems. Initially, the system worked incredibly well, and agencies prioritized 311 complaints for resolution and were held accountable for their responses. 311 still exists, but mostly just to log complaints and generate tickets, not to achieve results. It has become ineffective, inefficient, and inflexible. A recent survey of BID leaders showed that while 88% of BIDs use the system to report conditions, only 13% are satisfied with the results.
The Solution:
We need an effective framework for reporting and addressing issues. When BIDs report urgent conditions that need attention in real time, they receive a message saying a response can take up to 38 days. Further, there is no opportunity to communicate directly with the agencies in the interim. Revamping the system to allow more flexibility, direct communication between complainants and agencies, and a return to agencies having responsibility for responding efficiently will go a long way towards showing the public that the administration cares about their concerns. That concern will quickly translate to an improved perception of safety and quality of life.
2. Issue Two: The Unhoused and Mentally Ill
The Problem:
Our city has failed our most vulnerable. Funding has increased - but so has street homelessness. The current system is resource rich and accountability poor. Neither the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) nor contracted providers are accountable for meaningful outcomes for individuals. The providers do not coordinate care or share information, and the system lacks a focus on individuals and solving the unique challenges that led them to sleep on the streets.
A system that waits for people to deteriorate nearly to death on the streets is inhumane. The city needs to move past the mindset that people have a constitutional right to deteriorate and die on the street; that is inhumane and something that a progressive city should never accept.
The Solution:
Peer navigators, social workers, and outreach workers need to focus on individuals. A case worker should be assigned to each unhoused individual regardless of how long they are on the streets. Adopt a strategy that meets people where they are and helps them to a better place with the only goal being placement in a permanent, supportive setting. Anything less is failing our most vulnerable. The only measure of success should be a real reduction in homelessness, with fewer people sleeping on our streets, subways, and buses, and more people accepting meaningful services. Some advocates and so-called “experts” will say this is not realistic. But it is, and it is being done right now in cities like San Francisco.
An effective system would create better data sharing tools and mandate their use by all contracted and city outreach teams so care can be coordinated. (While DHS will tell you this exists, the current system is outdated, incomplete, restricts provider access, and is unable to be used in the field.)
An effective system would have high level city personnel target and coordinate daily outreach and mandate that providers collaborate and be held accountable for results in daily meetings with the Department of Homeless Services.
An effective system would have housing readily available when an individual is ready to accept a place to sleep.
An effective system would evaluate providers on measurable results rewarding those who are successful and reevaluating those that are not.
3. Issue Three: Open Drug Use on Our Streets
The Problem:
Current state laws have changed such that open drug use is now unenforceable. While we do not want to criminalize addiction, open drug use enables addiction and, to date, we have not provided effective proactive drug treatment options for those suffering from addictions. At the same time, drug activity in public spaces creates disorder on our streets and fuels the perception that we are not safe.
The Solution:
Identify areas where people with substance abuse disorder congregate and focus proactive outreach with voluntary drug treatment options immediately available when people are ready.
Reconfigure where drug-related issues appear in the 311 system, so they take the same priority as homelessness and mental illness. This would reduce the instances of complaints being misclassified and result in a more appropriate agency response and better outcomes.
Compel treatment centers to be responsible for public areas surrounding their facility and ensure their clients are not openly using drugs on the streets in those neighborhoods.
Recognize that drug addiction and mental illness often occur together, so we need to work towards compelled options for those substance abusers who are in crisis on our streets and are a danger to themselves and others. Too often, the drug use leads to a violent episode and individuals are treated as having a mental illness. After being taken to the hospital, they are released when they come down from their high without any further services. This almost always leads to criminal justice involvement – hopefully with diversion options, but not always. The involvement of police and the justice system could be avoided if we had a humane system for civil commitment of serious drug abusers, one that relies on careful guardrails and is managed by trained medical professionals.
A comprehensive package of laws will be needed to accomplish these solutions and will likely meet resistance, but the alternative is to let people die on our streets from overdoses and accept this human suffering as our new normal – something no city, especially New York – should accept.
4. Issue Four: Comprehensive Curb & Sidewalk Management
The Problem:
We need to demand walkable sidewalks. The primary purpose of sidewalks is for the safe passage of pedestrians - but for too long expanding commercial activity has been the priority.
Legal commercial activity on our streets and sidewalks is part of the fabric of city life and should be embraced and encouraged. However, as with brick-and-mortar stores, street businesses have rules to ensure consumer protection and maintain a sense of order. For too long, the debate has been about licensing commercial activity on our streets. Problems on the street result from non-compliance with the reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions put in place for pedestrian safety on sidewalks, and in plazas, and parks. Some activities are illegal, like trademark counterfeiting, and legal activities are rife with bad actors openly ignoring laws and rules associated with that activity.
The existing enforcement structure is not effective in solving these problems. Ongoing enforcement is not prioritized, and when interventions do happen, they are inconsistent and seemingly arbitrary, and penalties are seen only as a cost of doing business and not a deterrent.
Additionally, sidewalk sheds are meant to ensure the safety of pedestrians. Too often these sidewalk sheds are a breeding ground for quality-of-life issues that make pedestrians anything but safe. Existing reforms have done little to nothing to expedite repairs or improve safety.
The Solution:
The number of available licenses should be fair, but the focus should not be on licensed or not licensed, everyone must comply with time, place, and manner restrictions. Illegal activities on our streets require consistent enforcement with a focus on finding real solutions, not just issuing summonses. Further, all legal commercial actors deserve education, and the city can engineer better solutions that help avoid non-compliance, but the public has a right to expect enforcement. Ultimately, actors who repeatedly fail to comply must be summonsed and risk having their licenses suspended or revoked. Suggested engineering solutions could include street signs indicating where vendors are allowed and not allowed, and the use of curb lanes to free up congested sidewalks.
Illegal activities must be effectively addressed on the local level to avoid a repeat of what happened on Canal Street, where federal agencies used aggressive tactics to solve what we should have managed at the city level. To be clear, these were not unlicensed vendors, they were people engaged in trademark counterfeiting, a Class E Felony, and the city has not effectively dealt with this issue in a meaningful way.
The NYC Department of Buildings needs to be challenged with the reform of sidewalk sheds that improve the design by raising the height of the sheds, mandating increased lighting, and mandating expeditious repairs of the buildings.
Conclusion
The Mamdani administration has a historic opportunity to modernize the way we strategically and equitably deal with the quality-of-life challenges and not rely simply on punitive enforcement actions. Instead, it is time to look at holistic solutions that address the root causes of these challenges.
We understand that some of these solutions will require legislative changes, new policies, and most importantly, a mindset that all agencies must be accountable. In partnership with communities and business improvement districts, the city can identify the root causes of these challenges and develop new strategies for correcting the conditions and improving the quality of life for all New Yorkers. Will it be easy? If it were, it would have been done. We would urge the new administration – one that is already breaking barriers and conventions - to say that when it comes to delivering a better quality of life for all New Yorkers, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
A true partnership model, built on trust, coordination, and shared accountability, will improve the quality of life for those who live, work, and visit our great city and we look forward to working in partnership with your administration to solve these issues.