How can NYC’s next mayor bring down homelessness? Housing groups weigh in.

Homelessness experts say New York City's next mayor will face a crisis of historic proportions.

About 125,000 people sleep in a shelter on any given night and 41,000 of them are children, according to data compiled by Coalition for the Homeless. The group also estimates another 200,000 New Yorkers are doubled- or tripled-up in crowded apartments because they can’t afford the rent on their own. An estimated 4,100 live on the city's streets or subways. And the city's vacancy rate, or its percentage of available apartments, is at a crisis level of 1.4%.

In response, the Coalition for the Homeless, VOCAL-NY, Community Service Society and other nonprofit groups have released a blueprint on how the next mayor can solve homelessness. They cite the pressing affordability crisis, the dismally low apartment vacancy rates and surging levels of food insecurity, as well as a 12% increase in the number of non-asylum-seekers in shelters last year.

"We're calling on every mayoral candidate to commit to the concrete actions outlined in our plan and make ending homelessness a cornerstone of their campaign," said David Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless.

Mayor Eric Adams has prioritized tackling street homeless by creating an interagency taskforce to clear homeless encampments from public spaces and offer services. As part of his Subway Safety Plan, he’s deployed teams of outreach workers, nurses and police on subways to reach homeless people overnight. More than 8,400 New Yorkers have been connected to shelter and 860 have been placed in permanent housing since the plan's launch in 2022, the Adams administration said last week.

But some homeless nonprofit groups say the administration has focused on deploying police rather than investing in long-term housing solutions.

The advocates’ plan doesn’t include a cost assessment, which budget experts say would be helpful in not only measuring homelessness's scope and magnitude but also in assessing what it would take to implement the recommendations.

Here are the groups’ four proposed solutions to homelessness.

60,000 affordable homes for homeless people

Advocates say the city must build at least 12,000 new units of subsidized housing set aside for homeless or extremely low-income New Yorkers every year for the next five years. The current vacancy rate for apartments that cost less than $1,100 per month is 0.4%.

Adams committed to speeding up his predecessor's goal of building 15,000 supportive housing units — affordable units that include on-site services for residents such as mental health supports — by 2028. But advocates say the city is falling behind at meeting those goals and are calling on the next mayor to accelerate contract bids and construction.

Change federal voucher allocations

The next mayor should also increase how many federally subsidized housing units are specifically set aside for homeless people, advocates say. While Congress ultimately controls how much Section 8 funding the city can receive, the mayor can decide how it’s allocated.

The coalition recommends more than doubling the number of Section 8 rental assistance vouchers reserved for those residing in shelter from 1,200 to 3,000.

The coveted Section 8 program, a federal rental assistance program managed by the New York City Housing Authority, opened its waitlist for new applications for the first time in 15 years last year.

Advocates are also calling for NYCHA to allocate 3,000 units every year for shelter residents. Gothamist previously reported that the number of homeless residents moving into city public housing under Adams dropped to the lowest number in a decade, even as NYCHA vacancy rates soared to more than 5,000 empty units.

NYCHA faced a repair backlog that caused delays in opening units for homeless people, according to a federal monitor.

“Many of these are things that are being done in the city and could be scaled up further,” George Sweeting, senior fellow of economics and fiscal policy at the New School's Center for New York City Affairs, said of the proposals.

But Sweeting said looming federal budget cuts could upend the city’s coffers and affect the viability of these proposals.

“Some of the [federal cuts] that could be on the table are ones that some of the recommendations in the report are depending on, particularly the Section 8 vouchers,” he said.

Expand city’s rental voucher program

Advocates say the mayor needs to expand a city-funded housing voucher program known as CityFHEPS. More than 52,000 households rely on the vouchers, making CityFHEPS the  largest municipally funded rental subsidy program in the country, city officials say. The City Council passed legislation to expand the program to make more families eligible but that law was stopped by a judge after the Adams administration refused to implement it.

The plan additionally recommends increasing funding for right to counsel, which ensures low-income tenants can get a free lawyer to fight their eviction cases in court.

But the mayor’s office shortchanged the billion-dollar program by $500 million in its January budget proposal. While that funding has materialized in previous years, budget and housing experts say the underfunding is a sign of the program’s vulnerability to shifting budget winds.

“It is intellectually dishonest and fiscally irresponsible,” Christine Quinn, a former Council speaker and the head of Win family shelters told Gothamist in January.

More access to shelter beds

Advocates say the next mayor should open 4,000 additional low-barrier shelter beds that are easier to get into than a traditional shelter and can be a lifeline to people living on the street.

The Adams administration has already opened 1,500 more of these beds known as “Safe Havens” and another 900 are in the pipeline, city officials said.

But advocates say Adams’ approach is overly reliant on law enforcement and are calling for the city’s next leader to remove police from homeless outreach efforts.

“I think everyone who lives in New York has seen an increase in the number of people sleeping in the street,” said Alison Wilkey, director of government affairs and strategic campaigns for Coalition for the Homeless. “Current strategies are not placing people in housing and getting them off the streets.”

Gothamist reported the city’s homeless encampment sweeps last year cost $3.5 million and resulted in 114 people moving into shelter and off the streets. None were placed in permanent housing; city officials said that’s not a realistic goal as it can take several attempts to get someone housed.

“Homelessness is a result of policy choices and lack of political will to invest in long term solutions,” said Amy Blumsack, director of organizing and policy at Neighbors Together, an antipoverty group. “The test of true leadership for any mayoral candidate or administration will be their willingness to invest in solving the issue of homelessness.”