New York City officials say they’re adding 200,000 households to a waitlist for a key federal rental assistance program after accepting applications for the first time in 15 years.
The city’s housing authority, which runs the nation’s largest federal Section 8 voucher program, used a random lottery system to select about a third of the more than 600,000 households that applied for the waitlist during a weeklong window in June, officials said on Thursday.
The new waiting list means tens of thousands of families and individuals will get a chance to receive the housing assistance, as both median rents and the number of people living in homeless shelters remain at record highs citywide. Tenants with Section 8 vouchers typically pay 30% of their earnings toward rent, while the federal program covers the remainder. The program is considered the gold standard for housing vouchers.
But it could take a while for most people on the newly replenished list to actually receive the subsidy. The federal government issues NYCHA just 115,000 vouchers to distribute among low-income renters, and about 96,000 of them are already being used.
Mayor Eric Adams said the housing authority plans to begin issuing 1,000 vouchers a month to households on the waitlist.
“The message is clear: New Yorkers need affordable housing and they it need now,” he said in a statement.
NYCHA officials said they began notifying selected households by email and are mailing letters to the addresses that applicants included in their submissions. Those households will then have to submit documentation showing they qualify based on their income and residency status, according to the agency.
Receiving the rental aid is just one step in the process for voucher holders to get new homes. New Yorkers with Section 8 vouchers face a daunting housing market, where just 1.4% of apartments are empty and available to rent, according to the city’s most recent housing survey, and where many landlords and real estate brokers refuse to accept housing subsidies — an illegal practice known as source-of-income discrimination.
People who cannot find an apartment within four months of receiving a Section 8 voucher risk losing the subsidy, although they can request a two-month extension.
New York City has created its own rental assistance program, known as CityFHEPS, to address the need left by the lack of state aid and the chronic shortage of federal housing vouchers. The program is modeled off Section 8 and helps low-income New Yorkers pay for apartments in the five boroughs — and, as of last year, elsewhere in the state.
More than 9,000 families moved out of shelters using CityFHEPS vouchers in the fiscal year that ended on June 30, according to statistics from the city’s Department of Social Services.
Still, Adams is blocking laws approved by the City Council last year that would allow more low-income families facing eviction to qualify for CityFHEPS without first becoming homeless. That’s led to an ongoing class-action lawsuit against the city.