The New York City Council is pushing to reduce wait times for the city’s rental assistance program with just a few short weeks left in the legislative session.
Councilmembers took up a package of bills Wednesday designed to speed up responses by the city for tenants searching for affordable housing through the program, known as City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, or CityFHEPS. It operates similarly to the federal Section 8 program, but uses city dollars to subsidize rents for low-income tenants.
Councilmember Diana Ayala, who chairs the general welfare committee that held Wednesday's hearing, said CityFHEPS “can be plagued with administrative issues, delays and complications, such as source-of-income discrimination, that make the voucher difficult to access and use.”
City data shows more than 60,000 households rely on CityFHEPS to help pay their rent each month, making it one of the largest rental subsidy programs in the country as the program has significantly grown in recent years. But city leaders say 10,000 families are still languishing in shelters despite being accepted into the program, due to long wait times and bureaucratic hurdles.
Councilmember Gale Brewer introduced legislation requiring the city’s social services agency respond to CityFHEPS applicants within 15 days of receiving an application. Another of her bills under consideration would require the agency to submit data on the average time it takes participants to find housing after receiving a voucher. Brewer said this could expose any problematic patterns and “hold the city more accountable.”
A third Brewer bill would streamline inspections for potential apartments, allowing swift repairs for minor issues. It's meant to avoid habitable apartments sitting vacant because of red tape.
“No one should spend years in shelter or lose an apartment because of unnecessary inspections or stalled paperwork," Brewer said in a statement. "These delays are unconscionable and entirely fixable. ... These reforms don’t replace the need for more affordable housing — but they ensure the vouchers we already have actually work."
Officials in Mayor Eric Adams' administration acknowledged the lags in the program, but questioned the feasibility of some of the Council’s proposals.
Reesa Henderson, a top housing officer for the Department of Social Services, testified the agency "agrees with the spirit" of the inspections bill, but as with the data bill "would like to have further discussions" with the Council about it.
She said many factors go into reviewing CityFHEPS applications, and noted the agency's average response time is currently 23 days from completed application to decision, compared to the proposed 15.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who will take office next month, has repeatedly cited affordable housing as a major tenet of his platform. His campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the legislation.
