Opinion: Expand NY’s Housing Access Voucher Program – City Limits

“Homeless and at-risk New Yorkers need a lifeline in the immediate term, and the governor must join the Assembly and the Senate in expanding the HAVP pilot to $250 million.”

The high cost of housing is a major driver of low-income New Yorkers’ economic precarity. In each year since 2022, there have been at least 190,000 eviction filings in New York State courts. About 70 percent of all eviction cases—and about 80 percent of all eviction cases filed in New York City—were predicated upon the alleged nonpayment of rent. As of January 2026, according to this publication, approximately 111,000 New York City residents lived in shelter, and another estimated 82,000 children alone were living doubled up with members of another household. 

It was welcome news, then, when Gov. Kathy Hochul and the State Legislature enacted a pilot for the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP), a state-funded tenant-based voucher designed to help homeless and at-risk New Yorkers by paying the difference between their monthly rent and 30 percent of their household income, as part of the Fiscal Year 2026 state budget.

However, lawmakers seeded the HAVP pilot with only $50 million in funding statewide, leaving New York City with an anticipated 900 to 1,100 vouchers, according to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. With the Fiscal Year 2027 state budget due by the end of this month, homeless and at-risk New Yorkers need Gov. Hochul to join the Assembly and the Senate in increasing the size of the HAVP pilot to $250 million.

HAVP offers two areas of great promise, among others. First, it would be the only state- or locally-administered tenant-based rental assistance program with more general eligibility criteria: households who are currently homeless or at risk of homelessness, including because they are the subject of an eviction proceeding. Currently, for tenants in eviction proceedings, tenant-based rental assistance is available to certain groups: In New York City, that includes formerly homeless New Yorkers, tenants of rent-controlled apartments, veterans, and clients of Adult Protective Services or wards of community guardianship programs (CityFHEPS) and households that include minor children and are in receipt of public assistance (FHEPS).

As vital as these programs are for those who are eligible for them, the need is broader still: 86 percent of all New York City renters with household incomes of less than 30 percent of area median income or AMI ($43,740 for a three-person household) and 74 percent of renters with household incomes between 30 percent and 50 percent of AMI (between $43,740 and $72,900 for a three-person household) are rent burdened, meaning that they pay more than a third of their income in rent. When the New York City Housing Authority opened its Section 8 waiting list in 2024 for the first time in 15 years, it received nearly 634,000 applications for 200,000 spots.

Although an expanded state pilot cannot fill this gap entirely, with such broad need for rental assistance in the face of limited availability of Section 8 vouchers, New York tenants at risk of eviction who do not qualify for or receive assistance from another program need a greater investment in HAVP.

Second, that lawmakers set the maximum income for eligibility for the HAVP at 50 percent of AMI, in a marked departure from other state- and locally-administered rental assistance programs, helps it to reach households who are not eligible for most benefits, such as Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), but are nevertheless vulnerable to displacement. As of this writing, a three-person household with an income of 50 percent of AMI, or $72,900, can only afford 15 apartments in New York City with two or more bedrooms listed on Zillow without being rent burdened.

A household in receipt of HAVP, which pays what Section 8 would pay for a two-bedroom apartment, could afford 1,482 apartments with two or more bedrooms citywide on Zillow. By contrast, such a family would be ineligible to apply for CityFHEPS, since they earn more than the applicable income limit, or FHEPS, since they would be ineligible for receiving public assistance. Families that would be covered by HAVP but not other state and local subsidy programs are leaving New York in greater numbers than those in other income groups. Instead of surrendering working-class New Yorkers to other states, New York must invest in their stability by expanding HAVP.

Landlords, too, would see a boon from an expanded HAVP pilot. With more households receiving rental subsidies, their rent collection rates would increase, particularly for the affordable housing landlords who file over one-third of all eviction cases in New York City. An expanded HAVP pilot would also enable many of those affordable housing landlords, especially nonprofits, to benefit from enhanced subsidies under the flawed Private Housing Finance Law Section 610, which would deliver additional resources to the sector at no cost to tenants.

Indeed, the concept of HAVP’s being a “pilot” is curious; ample data demonstrates that housing vouchers sharply reduce the likelihood of experiencing homelessness, and the 2021 expansion of CityFHEPS is associated with a substantial shortening of the length of time spent in shelter. This pilot would be highly unlikely to show different findings in those regards. Yet an expanded pilot would both help more New Yorkers achieve housing stability now, especially homeless New Yorkers outside of New York City who are not eligible for CityFHEPS and may not have a locally-administered voucher tailored to them.

A future where the HAVP is permanent and more broadly available to tenants facing eviction would also yield meaningful improvements in the tenor and nature of nonpayment eviction cases in New York City Housing Court and, perhaps, even more so in the City, District, and Justice Courts outside of New York City, where tenants have fewer protections and there is a greater shortage of tenant defense attorneys. The state’s ability to set its own tax rates helps it to build on this pilot program. 

In seeking to address the state’s housing crisis, Gov. Hochul has included other sensible proposals, such as exempting most new housing from coverage under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, in her executive budget, which would help tackle our longstanding housing shortage. As those vital efforts progress, homeless and at-risk New Yorkers also need a lifeline in the immediate term, and the governor must join the Assembly and the Senate in expanding the HAVP pilot to $250 million to help New Yorkers exit or prevent homelessness.

After years of soaring rents and, with them, widespread displacement, and in the face of catastrophic potential cuts, vulnerable New Yorkers deserve nothing less. 

Pablo Zevallos (@PabloZevallos) is a tenants’ rights attorney and a Democratic District Leader on the Upper West Side. The views expressed are strictly his own.