Mamdani looks to narrow housing voucher program, reneging on campaign promise
Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to the press during Wednesday’s state budget hearing. Credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office on Flickr
Facing a projected $7 billion budget deficit, Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday suggested he no longer intends to support the expansion of CityFHEPS, despite the plan having been passed by the City Council and upheld in court after challenges. His administration is now negotiating with housing advocates to resolve a lawsuit aimed at ensuring the program’s growth. According to the New York Times, city lawyers have asked a judge to adjourn the case while officials work with the Council and the Legal Aid Society, which filed the suit, to find a solution.
Standing as one of the largest rental assistance programs in the country, CityFHEPS allows tenants to contribute 30 percent of their income toward rent, with the rest covered by the city. The program supports low-income New Yorkers who are homeless or at risk of eviction, as 6sqft previously reported.
Roughly 65,000 households, or about 140,000 people, currently use the vouchers, according to the Times.
In May 2023, the City Council passed a legislation package that expanded the number of people eligible for the vouchers, prompting a veto from Mayor Eric Adams, which the Council overrode. The administration then filed a lawsuit over policy concerns and the program’s estimated $17 billion price tag.
Under the expansion, an additional 47,000 households would become eligible. The legislation removes the rule requiring unhoused individuals to spend at least 90 days in a shelter before qualifying for a voucher, allows applicants to demonstrate eviction risk with a rent demand letter, and raises income eligibility from 200 percent of the federal poverty level to 50 percent of the area median income.
However, the program is projected to add $17 billion in costs over five years, according to a January 2024 estimate from the city’s Independent Budget Office. Even before the Council passed the legislation in 2023, the cost of CityFHEPS had ballooned from about $25 million in 2019 to more than $1.2 billion in 2025, as reported by the Times.
City officials project that even without the expansion, the program will cost nearly $2.4 billion more than Adams had budgeted for the remainder of the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and for the following year.
Now, with the city facing a projected $7 billion budget deficit, down from the $12.6 billion gap Mamdani warned of two weeks ago and attributed to Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the mayor has made an about-face.
The decision is at odds with a key pledge of Mamdani’s campaign platform, and reflects a divergence from his previous criticisms of Adams when the former mayor took action against the legislation.
Last July, after becoming the Democratic nominee for mayor, Mamdani called Adams’ pushback on CityFHEPS a “ridiculous waste of time during a housing crisis” in a post on X. His campaign website also promised: “Zohran will drop lawsuits against CityFHEPS and ensure expansion proceeds as scheduled and per city law.”
Now, the case has been postponed for another month while both parties negotiate a deal that would scale back the program. By moving to settle the lawsuit, Mamdani is signaling that he will not fully implement the bills the Council passed into law.
Christine Quinn, president and CEO of WIN, the city’s largest shelter provider, told the Times that scaling back the expansion “shouldn’t even be on the table.”
She added: “If they do not drop the case, if they really, really narrow the breadth and depth of the laws, it will cause homelessness to continue to be at a growing, highest-crisis level.”
On Thursday, WIN released a report arguing that housing people in shelters will cost the city more than investing in housing vouchers, since people without permanent housing tend to cycle back into shelters.
The organization estimates that moving families into permanent housing with vouchers could save the city up to $635 million in shelter costs over the next five years.
“Homelessness is rarely a one-time, episodic event, but rather a traumatic cycle that traps families for years,” Quinn said. “The City is effectively paying the same amount to keep families in a traumatic loop of instability as it would to provide them with permanent homes, where children can remain in school and parents can put down roots.”
She added, “CityFHEPS reflects a paradigm shift from simply managing the crisis, to actually solving it. The answer is obvious: CityFHEPS is not just a moral imperative; it is the only fiscally responsible path forward.”
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