Mayor Adams is considering vetoing new housing assistance bills, setting up political showdown

As Mayor Eric Adams considers vetoing a package of housing assistance measures, members of the City Council are going to bat for their bills, setting up a potential legislative showdown among Democrats ahead of budget negotiations later this month.

Adams is weighing a decision to kill a package of four bills approved by the Council that would expand access to CityFHEPS housing vouchers for more low-income New Yorkers and eliminate a 90-day waiting period shelter residents must complete before they can gain access to rental subsidies. The Council passed the bills to issue more vouchers, which pay the bulk of the rent for formerly homeless New Yorkers, with a vetoproof majority in the Council last month.

“He can try to veto,” said Councilmember Diana Ayala, who chairs the general welfare committee. “Anything is possible, but I think we have a solid margin here.”

Adams says he will suspend the so-called “90-day rule”— long a target of people experiencing homelessness, organizers and providers — through executive action, but he has criticized the potential cost of the other measures, including a bill that would allow individuals facing eviction to qualify for the assistance without first becoming homeless.

In the weeks since the Council vote, members of the Adams administration have been calling councilmembers to see if they will stand down in an effort to dismantle the two-thirds majority needed to override a possible veto, according to three people directly familiar with the calls but not authorized to speak publicly about them.

City Hall spokesperson Fabien Levy said it was too early to say whether Adams will veto the housing measures, but added that the Council’s package would make “it harder for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness to exit shelter to permanent housing.”

City Hall argues that introducing more vouchers to the market would produce more competition for few units, trapping people in shelters for longer periods. And Adams’ office says the cost of expanding access to rental assistance could reach $17 billion over the next five years.

But several councilmembers, including the bill sponsors, are sharply criticizing the reasoning and the City Hall financial analysis. They say they’re preparing to override the veto, ramping up a political showdown over policies intended to stem New York City’s worsening homelessness crisis.

“It is far cheaper to pay for a voucher than it is to pay for a family in shelter,” Ayala said.

Councilmember Justin Brannan, who chairs the finance committee, said the cost of sheltering more than 80,000 people — mostly families and recently arrived migrants — is already “astronomical.”

“The fact is, keeping people in shelter and warehousing people with no end in sight is infinitely more expensive than moving people into permanent housing,” he said.

The city pays about $200 a day to house families in shelter, or around $6,000 a month, according to a 2021 analysis by the Independent Budget Office. A CityFHEPS voucher for a family or three or four costs a maximum of about $2,700 a month.

Councilmember Tiffany Cabán sponsored a bill that would stop the Department of Social Services from deducting a “utility allowance” from the cost of an apartment, an arrangement that can reduce the amount of the voucher and prevent people from leasing apartments they would otherwise qualify for.

Cabán said ending the 90-day rule is not a silver bullet, since finding an apartment is already hard for people with housing vouchers. But she added that the measures, taken as a whole, would prevent more people from becoming homeless while allowing others to search for permanent housing faster.

“I think we are going to fight like hell to make sure these bills are passed and that they take effect,” she said. “They are absolutely an important step to guaranteeing people are housed.”

The bills' supporters say a veto would continue to lock out people in need, or force them to spend months in Department of Homeless Services shelters unnecessarily.

Jamie Powlovich, the executive director of the Coalition for Homeless Youth, said a veto would restrict access for homeless young people and send a “cruel message that perpetuates deservingness politics” of access to benefits and supports.

And Homes Can’t Wait, a coalition of homeless rights groups, called the package “essential to helping homeless New Yorkers move out of shelter and helping low-income tenants avoid eviction and stay in their apartments.”

But Shams DaBaron, a homeless rights activist who is aligned the mayor and goes by the nickname Da Homeless Hero, said the bills will create “gridlock,” with landlords choosing to rent to people who recently received vouchers over people who have spent long stints in shelters.

Mayors have the power to veto any legislation they oppose, but the decisions were far more common when a Republican executive encountered an overwhelmingly Democratic Council.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued 70 vetoes. But his successor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, did not veto a single bill.

So far, Adams has only vetoed a single piece of legislation during his tenure — a bill that would have penalized wealthy residents of SoHo lofts legally reserved for working artists, which passed the Council before he took office.

The 51-member Council is able to override vetoes with a two-thirds majority, but a veto — or the threat of one — forces members to defend the measures, often with more public scrutiny.

Still, the power play also threatens to erode relations between the mayor and the Council at a time when New York City faces enormous housing and homelessness challenges, said Democratic political strategist Alyssa Cass.

“I think it’s shortsighted. I think everyone is in alignment that we have multiple intersecting crises in New York and the mayor himself is regularly going on national news and explaining what a crisis it is,” Cass said. “And in a crisis, you need as many allies and partners at every level of government as possible.”