Amid New York City’s ongoing homelessness crisis, the length of time it takes NYCHA to rent out available apartments has more than doubled over the last five years. At the same time, the number of people moving from Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelters into public housing has plummeted.
A housing complex in Melrose has emerged as a new home for dozens of tenants displaced by January’s deadly Bronx fire. At least 29 households have so far signed leases at the building, and another 44 are expected to soon. Among the new residents: Mark Smith, who says he lost all his possessions in the Twin Parks blaze.
Ten months after the Biden Administration supplied New York City with a trove of new Section 8 vouchers to house homeless residents, just over 5 percent have actually been used to lease an apartment, federal data shows.
New York City agencies tasked with cracking down on source of income (SOI) discrimination against renters are being forced to do more with less after hiring freezes, resignations and budget cuts whittled down their already overburdened enforcement units.
“Using police to remove the homeless off the subways, we have to be very careful about that,” Councilmember Diana Ayala said in an interview on WBAI’s City Watch. “Most of these people are not hurting anyone.They’re just looking for a warm place to sleep at night.”
The shootings occurred amid a crackdown on New Yorkers sleeping on the subways, and reflected a recent spike in the number of homeless New Yorkers slain by assailants.
For many low-income tenants in unregulated apartments, rents remained relatively flat or even increased during the pandemic because available housing was still hard to find.
The State Senate and Assembly included a quarter-billion dollars to fund the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP), which would create a new rent voucher for New Yorkers experiencing or at-risk of homelessness—including immigrants without legal status—with values pegged to fair market rent levels.
An analysis released Wednesday by the New York City Independent Budget Office estimates the city will need an additional $200 million than what’s proposed in the preliminary budget for shelter costs, homeless outreach and housing voucher costs.
Last year, 640 unhoused people died in shelters, hospitals or the streets, 4 percent higher than in 2020, when COVID-19 first struck New York City. The rise in fatalities was fueled by an uptick in drug overdoses, and occurred even as the city’s shelter population reached its lowest level in a decade.
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