This voucher is supposed to help homeless New Yorkers leave shelters, but a majority don’t qualify

The city’s main voucher program, CityFHEPS, has been a lifeline for many homeless New Yorkers who have secured permanent homes with the rental subsidy.

But a broad swath of people in New York’s shelters are not eligible, cutting them off from a key avenue out of homelessness, according to data from two major local shelter providers.

About two-thirds of the roughly 600 families and individuals in the seven shelters operated by Volunteers of America-Greater New York are ineligible for CityFHEPS, according to the nonprofit’s analysis. The majority of those households don’t qualify because they work either too much — putting them just over the income line — or too little.

The same pattern holds true for the services nonprofit Win, which runs 15 shelters that house about 5,200 people each night. About two-thirds of its clients are currently not eligible for CityFHEPS, according to a Win analysis.

Broadly, to qualify for the voucher, people in shelter must work at least 10 hours per week but earn no more than 200% of the federal poverty level. That comes to $31,920 for an individual or $66,000 for a family of four.

“People have to find a way to somehow meet a very narrow criteria to gain access to a voucher,” said Jeffrey Ginsburg, president of VOA-GNY. “At the simplest level, we have this idea that we want people to work, but we don’t want them to make too much money. On its face, you can say that sounds fair enough, but when you look at the details, it creates a narrow window and a very perverse set of incentives.”

Homeless advocates and city officials agree that CityFHEPS helps people in shelters move into permanent housing and stay housed. City data bears it out. But Mayor Zohran Mamdani is fighting a legal battle against implementing a package of laws City Council passed in 2023 that would expand eligibility for the vouchers. As a candidate, he promised to put the laws — which his predecessor Mayor Eric Adams did not implement —  into effect, but reversed himself once in office as he faced budget pressures.

About 68,000 households rely on CityFHEPS vouchers, which allow New Yorkers to pay about a third of their income toward rent. Another 47,000 households could come to depend on the program if it’s expanded in line with the 2023 law, accounting to one estimate.

The homeless New Yorkers who qualify for theCityFHEPS voucher must thread a needle to be able to keep it — like Ali Austin, a 51-year-old grandfather who has been living in a Coney Island shelter operated by another provider for nearly four years.

Austin said he’d initially lost his home after the 2020 death of his mother. He’d been living with her in New Jersey, taking care of her while she battled cancer.

When he moved to New York in 2022, he got a job working full time as a front desk agent for a supportive housing nonprofit. Because of that gig, he made too much money to qualify for CityFHEPS and hoped to get a different kind of rental assistance voucher. That never came through.

In August of last year, he secured a different job, working three days a week with a reentry program. Now he earns less, putting him “in the money frame that they say I need,” to get a CityFHEPS voucher, he said. But he doesn’t know how he’ll pay for all his other living expenses.

“Once I move, I won’t be able to survive off just that and I’ll have to work more,” he said.

Austin this month got approved for a voucher and plans to move into a rooming house in Washington Heights, where he will have his own room but will share a kitchen and bathroom with others.

“I don’t like the idea of it because even in the shelter I have my own bathroom, but I gotta get out of there,” he said. “I’m at the point where I’m ready to accept whatever I can.”

The bills passed by the City Council in 2023 — now being challenged in court by the Mamdani administration, a continuation of the Adams-era approach — expanded the eligibility for vouchers, allowing the required income level to rise and making people facing eviction eligible, too, along with people already living in shelters. Under the law, people earning up to 50% of the federally-designated Area Median Income — about $56,700 for an individual and $81,000 for a family of four — would qualify.

If those new rules went into effect, the average eligibility rate in the seven shelters run by Volunteers of America would shoot up from about a third to about three-quarters. At Win, about a third of the clients currently not eligible for CityFHEPS would become eligible.

Austin said he would’ve qualified for the CityFHEPS voucher when he was working full time, if only the expanded program was in place.

“It’s frustrating and it’s unfair,” he said. “It would’ve been more money I could’ve brought in and saved. Just because I’m in a shelter didn’t mean I didn’t have family obligations.”

In particular, he said expenses sometimes crop up related to his grown children and grandchild.

As Mamdani faces a budget gap of over $5 billion, his administration has not only pushed back against the law expanding the program but floated scaling it back to save money.

In a statement, mayoral spokesperson Matt Rauschenbach said, “Mayor Mamdani has been clear that CityFHEPS is an invaluable tool to prevent homelessness and support homeless New Yorkers. That is why our team is working hard to ensure that it is fiscally sound and sustainable for the long-term.”

The current program’s cost has ballooned from about $26 million in 2019 to over $1.8 billion this year. The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development projected the cost to grow to over $3 billion annually by 2030 — for a total cost of $12.6 billion between now and 2030.

If the expanded program goes into effect, the annual cost would be over $4 billion by 2030, according to an Independent Budget Office analysis.

Still, homeless advocates have argued the city would save money overall if there were more New Yorkers housed, rather than in shelters. A shelter bed costs $4,600 per month for a single adult, compared to the standard monthly voucher payment of $2,646 for a studio, according to the city Department of Social Services.

Ginsburg pointed to the economic gains that are possible when households can work and afford to spend money.

“When we are more housed, we are more successful,” he said. “This is an issue we know the mayor cares about in making a more affordable city. Without the expanding of the voucher system, that will not happen.”

That’s true for Austin, who wants to get on his feet and start his own business by opening up a chain of video gaming lounges.

“I’m trying to do something to make a legacy for my granddaughter,” he said.