Mayor Eric Adams says there are better ways to help homeless New Yorkers get places to live

Housing has always been at the heart of the American dream. But the current lack of affordable housing and failure of political will to build the housing we need is placing that dream out of reach for far too many. Low-income and vulnerable New Yorkers, including those who are currently experiencing homelessness, are at the forefront of this crisis, with too many people competing for limited housing stock.

This administration is taking action across the board to address housing, both by building more of it and by providing services to keep New Yorkers in their homes and move people out of shelter into affordable housing — all while contending with the added pressure of the ongoing asylum seeker crisis.

We’ve increased subsidized placements from shelter by 20% year-over-year. We’ve launched a housing first model to connect unhoused New Yorkers to housing. We have added millions of dollars to prevent landlords from discriminating against voucher holders, and increased funding for eviction prevention as well.

Last month, our administration made it easier for homeless New Yorkers to move into permanent housing by eliminating the 90-day length-of-stay requirement, a longstanding rule that delayed access to city funded housing vouchers.

The City Council understands the scope and severity of this crisis, but their proposed solution to massively expand eligibility for the CityFHEPS voucher program is unrealistic, unworkable, and would seriously hinder our city’s efforts to help those in the most need. For that reason, I vetoed the package of bills that would have redesigned our CityFHEPS program.

In the not-too-distant past, there were significant federal and state resources to support vouchers for homeless New Yorkers. According to research by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, only one out of four eligible families actually receive federal rental assistance. The city’s former Advantage program moved thousands of individuals and families out of shelter and into permanent housing.

But state budget cuts from the Great Recession ended Advantage. New York City stepped up to address the need, creating CityFHEPS, the nation’s largest city-funded rental assistance program.

Getting families and individuals with the greatest need into permanent housing as quickly as possible is a goal that we all share. But unfunded good intentions can easily lead to unforeseen economic consequences. Expanding eligibility for the CityFHEPS programs as the Council’s bills would do may sound like a great idea. But in fact, it would do little to solve the crisis of homelessness.

It is projected that providing CityFHEPS vouchers to everyone who would be eligible under the Council’s bills would cost $17 billion over the next five years, and the savings from reduced shelter costs would be less than $300 million.

Even if we offer only as many vouchers as the appropriations in our coming budget will allow, the bills would force families in the shelter system who are currently eligible for CityFHEPS vouchers to compete for vouchers with families who are still housed, but behind on the rent.

Only 10% of families entering shelter do so because of a formal eviction. The vast majority of those in Housing Court never enter shelter — they find housing in other ways. Moreover, nearly 20,000 families who already have vouchers have been unable to find housing.

Instead of tackling decades of exclusionary zoning policies that have prevented our city from building an adequate housing supply, this plan would fail to reduce the number of people entering shelter, impede the city’s ability to target limited resources for those most in need, even giving some New Yorkers access to a housing voucher just because they received a rent demand letter from their landlord after being just a few weeks late on their payment.

We always look to work collaboratively with the Council, and months ago our administration offered to partner with Council members and work to advance this policy goal in a responsible way, but they rejected that offer and chose to move ahead on their own. The package of bills they passed could cost billions and would not only make it harder for those actually experiencing homelessness to find a permanent home, but also clearly exceeds the Council’s legal authority.

New Yorkers are compassionate and understanding, especially when it comes to housing — but we are also realists. There is no doubt we share the same goal — getting more people into affordable housing — but this ill-advised and unfunded expansion is not the way to do it.

Going forward, it is our sincere hope that the City Council will work with us to advance efforts to help New Yorkers in danger of homelessness, and support intensive citywide efforts to build more housing in every neighborhood. That is the only real solution to the crisis we now face.

Adams is mayor of New York.