New York City’s affordable housing landlords have long been at the mercy of a bureaucratic odyssey to fill units. But that soon could change.
Dina Levy, the city’s newest commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said at a New York City Council hearing Tuesday that the agency plans to “revamp” its affordable housing lottery and homelessness placement systems — a move that affordable housing developers say is long overdue.
Once an apartment building with affordable units is ready for people to sign leases and move in, its affordable units are placed on the city’s lottery website, Housing Connect.
New Yorkers submit a staggering number of applications via the portal: In 2024, roughly 6 million households applied for just over 10,000 units, PIX11 previously reported.
The city’s lottery system connected more than 10,000 households with affordable homes and increased the number of households it moved from shelters to apartments in fiscal year 2025 by 15% over the prior year, Levy said. But much more should be done, she added.
“Incremental fixes here will not go far enough,” she said. “We are taking a hard look at every part of the process, and if necessary, we will migrate to a more efficient and nimble system.”
But even with the high volume of applications, it is still a long time before developers see those units filled. NYC HPD took an average of six months to approve tenants for affordable housing units between June 2023 and 2024, Brick Underground previously reported.
“The worst part, at least for me, of building an affordable housing building is finishing, it looking great, and there being this massive delay of getting people in,” Joy Construction principal Eli Weiss said. “Emotionally, it feels very, very defeating.”
“I don’t think this is anything shocking to the industry to say we need to revisit Housing Connect,” he added. “We all know that for the last five years, something is not clicking.”
Changes to the city’s systems are fundamental, Slate Property Group co-founder and principal David Schwartz said Wednesday. His firm had a nine-month delay getting a formerly homeless tenant into an affordable unit because of a mistake in the paperwork.
“It costs a lot of money to not rent those units,” he said. “Ultimately, why do we build affordable housing? We build affordable housing for people to live there.”
While Levy didn’t share further details of HPD’s plans, Real Estate Board of New York Vice President of Public Policy Basha Gerhards said the landlord group welcomes the changes.
“The current system is failing to efficiently house New Yorkers in affordable housing,” she said in a statement. “REBNY supports reforms that accelerate the lottery process and reduce administrative burden, and looks forward to working with HPD and the Council on practical improvements.”