New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s administration is quietly using a flagship free internet program for public housing residents for another purpose: expanding NYPD surveillance.

The New York City Police Department is working to use network connections established under the three-year-old Big Apple Connect program to link cameras at New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments directly to the NYPD’s central digital surveillance system, a police department spokesperson confirmed to New York Focus. 

Cameras at one development were linked last Wednesday, the spokesperson said, and 19 more are set to follow.

Enabled by new modems and routers installed in NYCHA common spaces, the network connections allow the NYPD to feed CCTV footage directly into its citywide surveillance software systems, stream it remotely in real time, and review footage beginning 30 days prior to an incident — all without having to ask NYCHA for permission. 

Previously, the police department could only access footage from cameras operated by NYCHA by physically visiting the housing authority’s CCTV control rooms, upon request, for the purpose of investigating incidents.

By the end of this year, the NYPD plans to connect video cameras at 20 NYCHA developments — it won’t say which — to the Domain Awareness System, the department’s controversial counterterrorism and anti-crime platform that, without warrants, collects CCTV footage from thousands of cameras across the city. 

The system fuses expansive data on New Yorkers’ physical movements, digital footprints, biographical information, and law enforcement interactions into a centralized repository, which the NYPD can harness to support facial recognition analysis and predictive policing algorithms that use pattern recognition to decide where and how to allocate police resources.

YES.

New York City recorded the lowest number of shooting incidents, shooting victims, and homicides in its modern tracking history during the first half of 2025.

NYPD data shows 351 shooting incidents, 413 shooting victims, and 149 murders between January 1 and July 6. These totals are lower than any comparable six-month period since the department began collecting data in the 1990s.

This continues a long decline from the city’s peak of 2,262 murders in 1990. Officials attributed the drop to real-time data analysis, hotspot deployments, and precision policing tools. While cases of rape rose slightly year-over-date, major felony offenses overall declined compared to the same period in 2024.

Broader trends have also been shaped by demographic change, economic development, community engagement, and prevention programs. These efforts are part of a multi-decade shift that has made violent crime less frequent across most areas of the city.

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Next week, New York could move a step closer to approving its biggest gas pipeline in at least a decade. August 16 marks the end of the public comment period for a 37-mile pipeline that would carry gas from New Jersey, underwater, to an existing pipe just south of the Rockaways, adding a new link in a network that spans from Texas to Long Island.

The Northeast Supply Enhancement project, or NESE, could mark a turning point for New York’s approach to energy. For years after passing its flagship climate law in 2019, the state rejected one large fossil fuel project after another, arguing that they would violate the state’s legal mandate to cut greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental protections.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation has previously rejected NESE three times — in 2018, 2019, and 2020 — on the grounds that it would harm water quality in the New York Bay. The pipeline was left for dead.

Then Donald Trump returned to the presidency in January, promising a new age of fossil fuel dominance. NESE’s sudden revival comes after talks between Trump and New York Governor Kathy Hochul in May, when the White House lifted a stop-work order on a major offshore wind project off Long Island while Hochul committed to, in her words, “work with the Administration and private entities on new energy projects.” Just 10 days later, the energy company Williams revealed it was reapplying for approval from New York regulators for NESE and the even larger Constitution Pipeline project.

More than a third of New York counties, home to over half of the state’s population, have stopped enrolling eligible parents in the state’s child care voucher program, new data shows.

At least 21 counties were not accepting applicants for the vouchers as of early July due to lack of funding. Thirteen are keeping waitlists; 1,500 families are on New York City’s waitlist alone. (Counties are required to provide the vouchers to parents who are homeless, receiving cash assistance, or involved in the child welfare system, but can turn down other income-eligible parents when funds run low.)

The state Office of Children and Family Services, or OCFS, published data on the program online after New York Focus requested it under the Freedom of Information Law.

The data sheds light on the status of the Child Care Assistance Program, which covers almost the entire cost of private child care for nearly 100,000 low- and middle-income families, after a drawn-out battle over its funding during state budget negotiations earlier this year.

New York’s affordability crisis has hit seniors hard. Nearly one of every five New Yorkers is now 65 or older, and the number of them in poverty has surged by nearly 50 percent over the past decade. More than half of the seniors in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse reported having no retirement income in 2022. Those numbers were even worse across New York City’s boroughs — home to over 1.3 million seniors.

To combat this trend, the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit think tank, recommended state leaders boost the same programs now at risk of being scaled back or eliminated at the federal level. Those include home-delivered meals, utility assistance, workforce development and supportive housing.

Ann Marie Cook, president of Lifespan of Greater Rochester, which helps Dony and others apply for benefits, pointed to the recent closures of several supportive housing buildings for Rochester seniors due to financial challenges. The settings provided meals, housekeeping, transportation, and personal care, allowing residents to live fairly independently. Nonprofit providers across the state have struggled to stay in business, and the federal cuts are likely to lead to more closures.

Cook said displaced residents could wind up hospitalized or in nursing homes at a much higher cost to the state. “I fear it may be the tip of the iceberg.”

“It’s so much cheaper to provide these services to help people remain in their communities than [to pay for] the crisis situations that could happen if this funding goes away or is reduced,” she said.