Comptroller Brad Lander is urging the city’s Department of Social Services to ramp up a program for moving street homeless New Yorkers into permanent apartments and to focus special attention on “long-time stayers” stuck for years in the city’s swollen shelter system.

Lander included his recommendations in a review of exits out of a city homeless shelter system stretched to the brink, with its population more than doubling since the start of 2022. The rising population, due in large part to tens of thousands of newly-arriving migrants, has prompted the depleted agency to open dozens of new facilities and fueled Mayor Eric Adams’ attempts to dismantle a court-mandated right to shelter.

Lander said that makes it all the more imperative to move people out as fast as possible.

“The shelter system will keep growing and growing if you can’t get people out,” Lander said. “Their challenge has grown significantly but their resources have also grown significantly.”

DHS’ projected budget is $4.1 billion for the current fiscal year, up from $3.5 billion last year.

He highlighted a successful “Street to Home” program that has streamlined moves into apartments for about 60 people who were previously staying in subways or public spaces, as Gothamist has reported.

“That program is working, but it is way too small,” he said. “Let's scale it up.”

Housing subsidies, like the municipal CityFHEPS program, prove to be the most effective tool for moving people out of shelters, the report finds.

Nearly 27,000 families and individuals moved from shelters to permanent apartments in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, with three of every four moves aided by a rent subsidy. DHS says around 15,000 households moved from shelter to permanent apartments in the recent fiscal year that ended June 30 — a period not captured by Lander’s audit

But the comptroller report also notes that average shelter stays continue to increase, and thousands leave the facilities without a clear housing option — including nearly 5,500 migrants who exited the shelters without notifying staff about their next destination during last fiscal year.

Lander said he commissioned the review to determine what is working and what isn’t when it comes to moving New Yorkers into permanent homes and freeing up shelter space for the rapidly-growing number of New Yorkers — long-time residents and new arrivals alike — in need of a bed.

The review highlights several obstacles to housing for the lowest-income New Yorkers, including a dire shortage of affordable apartments and discrimination by landlords and agents against people with housing subsidies. Meanwhile, just a fraction of the newly-arrived migrants staying in city shelters are eligible for a government subsidy that could help pay the rising rents.

But Lander said the city officials and nonprofit shelter providers can do far more to move people into housing and to intervene if they are at risk of becoming homeless once more. Moves from shelters into New York City public housing have plummeted, the report finds, and Lander said the decision to force most people to enter shelter before accessing a city rental assistance subsidy only strains the system further.

DHS disputed many of the report’s conclusions, with agency spokesperson Neha Sharma saying the comptroller’s office “fundamentally misunderstands DHS’ mission, the breadth of its work and its overall function.”

In a blistering rebuke, she added that DHS “continues to meet its mandate to provide shelter” under the terms of a series of court decisions meant to guarantee a right to shelter for anyone in need of a bed.

But that “right” has recently come under threat, with Adams seeking court approval to restrict shelter access when it determines it can no longer afford or handle the need. He has proposed capping shelter stays at 60 days for “asylum-seekers” in DHS shelters, a rule already in effect in other facilities built specifically for migrants.

Sharma also criticized the scope of the review as overly broad and said it ignored the agency’s efforts to maintain a rate of street homelessness far lower than most other American cities.

She added the city has moved a record-number of people into permanent housing while dealing with an unprecedented surge in homelessness.