New York City officials say they are still struggling to solve a potential housing crisis that started a little less than a year ago when the Trump administration sent a troubling letter to housing agencies across the country.
A key federal rental assistance program for the lowest-income Americans was nearly out of cash, years earlier than expected, with no plans to replace it, according to the notice. The news sent local governments, including New York City’s, scrambling to find ways to keep roughly 70,000 households nationally from losing aid and facing eviction.
But just as one local agency arrived at a solution to plug the aid, another’s plan collapsed – leaving thousands of households in jeopardy of losing their assistance later this year.
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development has released what it calls a “stopgap” solution for more than 2,000 families who use the expiring Emergency Housing Voucher program to help pay their rent for the next two years. But the New York City Housing Authority, which runs the program for another roughly 5,500 households, says its months-old plan to replace the expiring subsidies with traditional Section 8 vouchers has fallen through.
“Unfortunately, NYCHA no longer has the funding required to accomplish this transition,” said agency spokesperson Andrew Sklar.
Sklar said the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, denied NYCHA’s request to issue new vouchers last month. NYCHA has no concrete plan to replace rental assistance for the thousands of people set to lose it.
How the city, state and federal governments intervene will have major consequences for thousands of households, as rents surge and affordable housing options dwindle.
Bronx tenant Juleah Jorge receives an Emergency Housing Voucher through HPD and said she received an email about the agency’s new assistance program late Wednesday. Jorge, 38, said she was hopeful that she and her daughter would be able to stay in their second-floor unit.
“I love my home and I don’t want to leave,” Jorge said. “I’m hopeful for whatever Hail Mary they come up with to make sure we’re safe from whatever this debacle is.”
But she said she feared for voucher recipients who are now at a greater risk of losing their aid.
“There are people who really rely on this,” Jorge said. “I am hoping they can figure this out long term.”
The prospect of thousands of low-income tenants abruptly losing housing aid could place additional pressure on the Mamdani administration to expand the city’s own rental assistance program, known as CityFHEPS. The new mayor has reversed a campaign pledge to make the subsidies available to more low-income renters due to budget constraints. New York state lawmakers have allocated a meager $50 million for a statewide subsidy known as the Housing Access Voucher Program.
The various financial strains highlight the need for Congress to issue more funding to ensure stably housed people don’t lose their aid, said Rachel Fee, the executive director of the policy group New York Housing Conference.
“Congress should have fully funded a solution,” Fee said. “Housing agencies are scrambling to figure out how to keep people from becoming homeless.”
Deputy HPD Commissioner Meryl Block Weissman told Gothamist the city will tap another federal funding source to prop up a new voucher program called “Tenant-Based Rental Assistance” that will cover rent payments for the next two years, at a cost of roughly $100 million.
The program, Weissman said, “will allow people to be stable and not have the risk of eviction.”
In letters to tenants and landlords sent Wednesday, agency officials said the Emergency Housing Voucher program funds will likely expire by “late summer” and that all households can apply for the new subsidy “in the coming months.”
Weissman said there is enough money available to replace the vouchers for everyone who currently receives aid through HPD, but that tenants will still have to prove they qualify based on their income. Recipients of the new subsidy will pay about 30% of their monthly earnings toward rent, with the subsidy covering the remainder, making it similar to the expiring emergency program and Section 8 vouchers.
Legal Aid Society attorney Robert Desir, who advocates for tenants with rental assistance, said the new program will come as a relief to many households worried about the looming end of the federal subsidy.
“People are relying on those vouchers to help and the removal of those vouchers came as a surprise,” Desir said.
But tenants could face the same predicament again in two years when the temporary program expires. Desir also urged Congress to step in to fund additional rental assistance vouchers “to protect people who are vulnerable.”
The city’s efforts to replace the Emergency Housing Voucher program funding comes less than five years after Congress allotted $5 billion for the program as part of a Biden-era spending plan meant to spur an economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2021 package expanded the pool of rental assistance to more than 70,000 low-income households nationwide, with the expectation that it would last for the next decade. But HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett said the program was running out of money earlier than expected “due to rapidly increasing inflation and housing costs.”
New York City received the highest number of vouchers from the program in the country by far, with about 11% of the nationwide total.
NYCHA closed its Section 8 waitlist in August last year after Trump officials announced the expiration in order to reserve the vouchers for those who were already benefiting from the emergency program.
The city’s housing agency did not have a similar option. The Trump administration clawed back money the city held in reserves, then-HPD Commissioner Ahmed Tigani told the City Council at a hearing last April.
Weissman, the deputy HPD commissioner, said federal officials at HUD have approved the new program.
A HUD spokesperson did not answer questions about the city’s rental assistance programs or the fate of the 5,500 households that were relying on NYCHA’s program.
A notice issued to local housing agencies earlier this month states that HUD may reallocate unspent money to continue providing assistance to families that receive the emergency vouchers “as long as funds permit.”