The Mamdani administration will offer new gender-affirming care services at a clinic in the Corona section of Queens, but the city is limiting that care to adults out of fear of blowback from the Trump administration, the city health commissioner said during a City Council hearing on June 5.
Health Commissioner Alister Martin, speaking during a budget hearing with the Committees on Finance, Health, Mental Health, and Substance Use and Hospitals, said the city has “a clinic that will be opening up in Corona which will offer gender-affirming hormone therapy for adults,” prompting a question from out Queens Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, who is part of the City Council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus and previously co-chaired it.
Cabán emphasized the dwindling options for youth in the city at a time when private hospitals like NYU Langone and Mount Sinai have restricted gender-affirming care for minors, and she asked if the city plans to expand the care to youth.
Martin, in response, made it clear that the city fears repercussions from the Trump administration, but he indicated “there’s much more to come on this.”
“As you can appreciate, the balance that we have to strike is — we are committed to this issue and want to make sure that we provide the services and resources for youth, as well as making sure that we don’t expose ourselves to clawbacks from the federal government, which disrupt the rest of the care that we can give,” Martin said. “And so there’s much more to come on this, trying to sort of figure out that right balance. We’re eager to work with you on this, but rest assured we are working on this and we’re trying to figure out how to do this.”
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene did not respond to questions from Gay City News by deadline on June 10, but the department told Erin in the Morning that the Corona health center will limit the care to individuals 19 years of age or older.
While the administration said a clinic will be “opening up,” the city already has a Corona Sexual Health Clinic on the first floor at 34-33 Junction Boulevard, where services are offered from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and on Fridays. The city health department did not respond to a question seeking details about the new clinic.
As a state lawmaker and as a candidate for mayor, Mamdani criticized restrictions on gender-affirming care — including for youth — and he protested at NYU Langone after that hospital moved in early 2025 to pull back on gender-affirming care following an executive order from President Donald Trump.
“I will make New York City a true sanctuary for queer and trans New Yorkers, protecting them from persecution and ensuring access to life-saving gender-affirming care,” Mamdani told Gay City News in an interview just one week before the general election for mayor last year.
In the same interview, Mamdani told Gay City News that his platform for LGBTQ New Yorkers included allocating “$65 million in funding for gender-affirming care that would replace the amount of funding that the federal government is threatening to strip of this city in an attempt to attack trans and queer New Yorkers.”
During a June 2 interview on WNYC’s the Brian Lehrer Show, Mamdani was pressed about gender-affirming care for youth by a parent of a trans child who lost their care from NYU Langone.
During his lengthy response, Mamdani said his administration “put forward $15 million to gender-affirming care over the next two years to ensure that we can start to bridge the gap of the funding that has been stripped of this care,” and when Lehrer asked how that will reopen access to gender-affirming care for youth, Mamdani said, “The $15 million that we have committed is funding that would unlock exactly that.”
Even as the Mamdani administration voices fear of “clawbacks from the federal government” from the Trump administration in City Council hearings, the mayor is striking a more defiant tone in interviews with the press. He used an exclusive interview with the Advocate at his Pride celebration on June 9 to insist that his administration is committed to “protecting trans and queer New Yorkers from these relentless attacks that we’re facing with the federal administration.”
New York City Health + Hospitals, a public hospital system in New York City, did not respond to a question from Gay City News about the status of gender-affirming care for youth at H+H facilities.
