half of the state\u2019s unhoused families and individuals outside of New York City are placed in hotels<\/a> with minimal support to help them return to permanent housing. The state regularly pays more to put someone up in a hotel than it would have cost to cover rent for modest housing, the news organizations found.<\/p>\nThe Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, the agency responsible for setting shelter allowances, has responded to past calls for an allowance increase by saying the Legislature would have to allocate more funding in the state budget. The budget is already projected to run multibillion-dollar deficits in coming years.<\/p>\n
Over the past several legislative sessions, state lawmakers sponsored bills that would have pinned the allowance to fair market rent, the federal government\u2019s estimate of how much it costs to rent modest private housing. Those bills have repeatedly failed, and their sponsors say little will change without the governor\u2019s backing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe governor controls \u2014 any governor of New York state controls \u2014 the budget process. We can\u2019t just fund things that the governor would not agree to,\u201d said Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, a Democrat who chairs the housing committee and repeatedly sponsored the failed legislation in the state Assembly.<\/p>\n
The office of Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, did not respond to multiple requests for comment or to written questions. An Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance spokesperson did not respond to questions from New York Focus and ProPublica about whether the agency had ever requested additional funding for shelter allowances. He declined to comment for this story, citing the pending litigation.<\/p>\n
In past litigation, the state has argued that the constitution doesn\u2019t command the state to meet all of poor families\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n
A \u201cKafka-esque Situation\u201d<\/p>\n
For Legal Aid, this is familiar ground. This is at least the fourth lawsuit it has filed against the state accusing New York of failing to provide enough welfare assistance for rent. In the late \u201980s, the nonprofit filed a landmark case on behalf of Barbara Jiggetts, a single mother of three who was renting an apartment in Queens. Jiggetts was receiving $270 a month to help cover $381 in rent \u2014 about 70% of what she owed each month. Legal Aid argued that the state was shirking its obligation to keep her and her children safely housed.<\/p>\n
In the Jiggetts case, the court ordered the state to temporarily cover rent for New York City families with children facing eviction until the establishment of \u201ca lawful\u201d shelter allowance that would keep them housed together.<\/p>\n
But the state waited until 2003 to raise the shelter allowance, blowing past the court\u2019s original deadline by five years.<\/p>\n
The state has also created a permanent supplement to fill the gap between the allowance and rent. But the supplement offered in the city is only available to families with children. So, when Pacumio\u2019s youngest turned 18, she lost the supplement, which constituted the majority of her housing assistance. Outside New York City, that supplement is optional, and just 15 of 57 counties choose to offer it to families with children, according to the Empire Justice Center.<\/p>\n
The new lawsuit seeks either an increase in the shelter allowance or a mandatory expansion of the supplement statewide, regardless of household composition \u2014 or both.<\/p>\n
Since 2003, the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance has reviewed the allowance four times \u2014 every five years, as required. During its last review in 2023, more than 100 comments poured in, many imploring the agency to increase the benefit. Some shared personal stories from unhoused New Yorkers who said the shelter allowances weren\u2019t enough to prevent homelessness, according to the state register.<\/p>\n
Pleas also came from the counties themselves. Michael Iapoce, the social services commissioner for Ulster County, wrote at the time that there wasn\u2019t a single habitable apartment available for rent that would be covered by the shelter allowance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shelter allowance is totally irrational and arbitrary,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no reasoned justification to keep the shelter allowance and supplements so low.\u201d His comments on the regulations were attached as an exhibit to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
As it stands, people poor enough to qualify for public assistance and looking for a place to rent find themselves in a \u201ccruel Dickensian or Kafka-esque situation,\u201d said Susan Antos, the managing attorney for public benefits at Empire Justice Center. The shelter allowance is too low to allow them to afford even a modest place, but under the rules, recipients may have their benefits cut if they stop looking.<\/p>\n
State Sen. Brian Kavanagh, the Democratic chair of the Senate\u2019s housing committee, said it\u2019s hard to tease out how much it would cost to increase the shelter allowance because of how public assistance caseloads may change over time. As of June 2025, the most recent month for which figures are available, nearly three-quarters of a million people were receiving public assistance.<\/p>\n
Kimberly Maldonado is one of the recipients. She has lived in the same rent-stabilized apartment in Brooklyn since she was 22. Now 55 and living alone, she said that she was forced to stop working in June of last year because of ongoing health issues and relies on her daughter to cover her rent. Maldonado receives $215 a month to help cover $1,114 in rent, doesn\u2019t qualify for a state supplement because she doesn\u2019t have minor children, and receives no other financial assistance for housing from the state.<\/p>\n
Maldonado, a plaintiff in the new lawsuit, told New York Focus and ProPublica she was afraid that the state would never provide the help financially desperate New Yorkers need.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as people are quiet and we don\u2019t try to speak up and get help and get them to change the laws, the rules, or whatever it may be, we\u2019re never going to get help, we\u2019re never going to get nothing changed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York makes an unusual promise to its residents: Its constitution says the state must provide \u201caid, care…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-291668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}