New York City’s program to provide housing vouchers for the homeless has been “plagued with problems,” according to a state audit released Thursday.
One of the city’s largest rental aid initiatives, the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement provides tenants with vouchers that subsidize 70 percent of their rent. The program is run by the Department of Social Services.
The audit, conducted by the New York State Comptroller’s office, found that households waited an average of 10 months before becoming eligible for the program, the New York Times reported. Other issues include late payments to landlords, delays in documentation, and inaccurate classification of housing status.
As of Monday, 117,000 were relying on the city’s shelter system, including nearly 60,000 asylum seekers.
In a statement, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli called on the Department of Social Services to “improve its management.”
The department pushed back on the findings.
“This audit completely misses the mark in terms of capturing the monumental scope of the city’s efforts,” Neha Sharma, a spokesperson for the agency, told the newspaper. According to Sharma, the audit “fails to acknowledge fundamental challenges with the larger housing ecosystem and points to anomalies that are absolutely not representative of the majority of placement outcomes.”
Sharma argued that the Department of Social Services has worked to improve the program, reducing the amount of necessary documentation from tenants and developing an electronic system to rapidly process payments. Sharma also pointed to a new initiative that uses vouchers to finance construction on affordable housing.
As of October, approximately 47,000 households were supported by the program’s vouchers.
The voucher program’s cost has sparked a battle between Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council. According to the City Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog, the program’s price tag grew to $819.4 million in 2024, up from less than $200 million in the fiscal year ending in June 2020.
Read more
Last year, the City Council voted to expand the program in an effort to combat the city’s housing crisis. The Adams administration refused to put the expansion into effect, citing potentially exorbitant costs. The Council sued to overrule the administration’s decision, but a judge dismissed the case. It is now before an appellate court.
Obtaining rental assistance is only the first hurdle for the homeless. Fewer than 1 percent of apartments with rents lower than the city’s median, $1,650 per month, were available in 2023.
— Caroline Handel