For four days, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council leaders had been locked in a heated disagreement over an expensive rental assistance program.<\/p>\n
Julie Menin, the Council speaker and a relative moderate, wanted to expand the program to help not just the homeless, but also certain renters facing eviction. Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, argued for fiscal restraint.<\/p>\n
By Monday night, just a day before the roughly $125 billion budget is due, the dispute appeared to be nearing a resolution \u2014 seemingly ending what had been a prolonged battle that involved tense phone calls between Mr. Mamdani and Ms. Menin as well as their staffs, with the mayor\u2019s team going around the speaker to meet directly with individual Council members.<\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s opposition may seem to contradict his core ambition to expand the social safety net for working-class Americans. But Mr. Mamdani has also shown himself to be a pragmatist keenly aware that his management of the nation\u2019s largest city is under close scrutiny from bipartisan skeptics who doubt that a 34-year-old democratic socialist can effectively govern the financial capital of the United States.<\/p>\n
And so this weekend\u2019s dispute has taken on something of a role reversal, with Mr. Mamdani pushing against the expansion of a social safety net program that Ms. Menin has championed.<\/p>\n
At issue is an increasingly expensive housing voucher for homeless New Yorkers known as the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, or CityFHEPS, which pays a portion of eligible New Yorkers\u2019 rent. Between 2019 and 2026, the program\u2019s cost grew<\/a> to $1.7 billion from $25 million, according to the Citizens Budget Commission. The City Council has been seeking an additional $300 million a year in city spending. The mayor\u2019s office has proposed just $175 million, with $50 million coming from the City Council\u2019s discretionary funds. By Monday night, the two sides were nearing a deal for Mr. Mamdani\u2019s administration to spend an additional $125 million a year.<\/p>\n They were also nearing a compromise on a new program that would change the eligibility criteria for who would qualify. The existing program had been open to people who earned less than 200 percent of the federal poverty line. The new one would be available to those who earn 50 percent of the area median income, a more generous metric. For a family of three, that would expand benefits to families earning as much as $76,000, up from the current level of about $54,000, according to a person briefed on the negotiations.<\/p>\n The existing 10-hour-a-week work requirement would be eliminated, and the voucher would be offered to rent-regulated tenants facing eviction, rather than all tenants facing eviction, the person said. It would not be an entitlement program, and its budget would be capped.<\/p>\n The deal remains in negotiation and could change.<\/p>\n The bitter tenor of the back-and-forth stands in contrast to a recent string of success for the mayor, who secured a rent freeze<\/a> for nearly one million rent-regulated apartments last week and enjoyed an election night sweep for his preferred state and congressional candidates. Some of his candidates vanquished opponents who have allies in the Council.<\/p>\n Ms. Menin has been able to harness that anger toward the mayor and her members\u2019 belief in the voucher program to unite disparate factions of the Council behind her.<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s team tried to counter Ms. Menin\u2019s strategy by using its briefings with individual Council members to offer funding commitments to various projects, according to several people familiar with the private discussions. A spokesman for the mayor countered that it was the Council members who had sought out information from the mayor\u2019s office. Separately, the administration has asked allies to intercede on its behalf, two people said.<\/p>\n As a result, Mr. Mamdani\u2019s first go at budget negotiations \u2014 typically a routine dance that plays out over months \u2014 were nearly undone by an unusual level of acrimony.<\/p>\n In recent years, \u201cthe sides have not ever been quite so dug in,\u201d said Louis Cholden-Brown, the former deputy counsel to the Council speaker.<\/p>\n The voucher program was created in 2018, and the Council voted to expand it in 2023 to encompass not merely New Yorkers living in homeless shelters, but to also include renters facing eviction. Former Mayor Eric Adams vetoed<\/a> the expansion, arguing that it would unduly strain the budget. After the council overrode the mayor\u2019s veto in 2024, Mr. Adams refused to enforce the laws, prompting the City Council to sue.<\/p>\n During his successful mayoral campaign, Mr. Mamdani promised<\/a> to drop the litigation if elected and expand the program.<\/p>\n But campaigning is not governing, and after taking office and taking stock of the city\u2019s fiscal constraints, Mr. Mamdani reversed course<\/a>. He cited the need for fiscal responsibility at an uncertain economic time.<\/p>\n About 67,000 households now use CityFHEPS. Some officials worried that existing tenants facing eviction would outcompete shelter residents for scarce apartments, and that any significant expansion of CityFHEPS would only compound what are already predicted to be significant budget gaps next year and beyond. That concern was echoed by the new city comptroller, Mark Levine, who in January said that the existing program was expanding at an unsustainable rate.<\/p>\n \u201cAt a growth rate of 4 percent a month, this means a doubling every year and a half,\u201d he said at the time.<\/p>\n