Nearly 8K NYC households could lose rent aid as federal program runs out of money

When his brother’s mental health began to deteriorate, Michael Bell moved out of the apartment they shared and entered a New York City homeless shelter with his young daughter.

Bell, who is now 47, said he and his daughter received a “blessing” in 2021 in the form of a federally funded rental voucher. It helped them afford an apartment in East New York after two years of stalled housing searches and allowed them to leave the shelter system.

But now, their housing may be in jeopardy, at a time when the city faces a severe affordable housing crunch and record-high rents.

Bell and his daughter are among the roughly 7,700 New York City households facing the likely loss of rental assistance and a potential return to homelessness after the Trump administration announced a pandemic-era aid program was nearly out of cash. The next — and final — batch of funds for the federal Emergency Housing Voucher program will cover payments through the rest of the year, but the program will end four years ahead of schedule, according to officials.

New York City received about 11% of the 70,000 vouchers issued through the program nationwide — by far the most in the country. The program was initially funded to last until 2030, and city agencies prioritized vulnerable groups, including families in shelter, domestic violence survivors and frequent hospital patients. Tenants who receive the vouchers pay roughly 30% of their income toward rent, with the vouchers covering the difference.

Local tenants participating in the program said they were not sure how they would cover the full cost of housing without the aid. And landlord groups said they worried about property owners not getting paid consistently if their tenants lose the assistance.

“If this voucher was to stop, we would be homeless again,” Bell said, adding that it pays about two-thirds of his $3,000 monthly rent. “I would literally have to go back to shelter and start the process all over again.”

Bell works in business development and said he worries he won’t find a job that would allow him to make up the difference before his rental assistance runs out. “It literally took me years to find the place I have here,” he said.

Less than 1% of apartments priced below $2,400 a month were vacant and available to rent at the time of the city’s most recent housing survey. The median rent in Manhattan was about $4,500 a month in February, the highest on record, according to an analysis by real estate firm Douglas Elliman.

Landlords would also feel the impact of the disappearing vouchers through lost rents, said Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association, which represents owners of rent-stabilized buildings.

“If building owners can’t rely on the voucher to come in, it will have a massive impact,” he said.

The program was always designed to be temporary, but participants said they expected to have additional years to find higher-paying jobs or cheaper apartments they could afford without the vouchers.

But in a letter dated March 6, an administrator with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development notified housing agencies across the country that the program’s next batch of funding would be the “final allocation.” The agency noted the funding should be enough to help many tenants cover rent “well into” 2026.

The notice comes as HUD under Trump seeks to slash its spending and staff as part of a broader federal shakeup. In an interview earlier this month, agency Secretary Scott Turner told Punchbowl News that a rental assistance voucher was “never meant to be, nor should it be, a permanent solution.”

HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett told Gothamist the $5 billion program was about to run out of money “due to rapidly increasing inflation and housing costs during the Biden administration.” She said the department was giving local agencies a “long runway to plan.”

“HUD is exploring additional options for [housing agencies] and families supported by the EHV program moving forward,” Lovett added. She did not respond to questions about what guidance her department is providing to tenants, landlords and city agencies for the program’s end.

New York City officials said they were still trying to figure out how to help tenants prepare for the likely loss of vouchers years earlier than planned.

The city runs its own assistance program, called CityFHEPS, that is similar to the federal Section 8 and emergency housing voucher programs. Tenants could switch to CityFHEPS in some cases, according to officials.

NYCHA spokesperson Michael Horgan said his agency, which administers close to 5,600 emergency housing vouchers, was “monitoring the situation” and would continue “to assess options.”

Ilana Maier, a spokesperson for the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which received 2,050 vouchers, said ending the program early was “cruel.”

“It won’t just harm those people … it will create instability in the housing market and harm cities across America,” she said in a statement.

State lawmakers are currently weighing creating a rental subsidy called the Housing Access Voucher Program that could alleviate the loss of the federal emergency program. Both chambers of the Legislature included funding for HAVP in their one-house budgets, though Gov. Kathy Hochul has opposed the program, citing its large cost.

In a statement, Hochul’s spokesperson Kristen Devoe criticized the Trump administration for ending the emergency housing voucher program.

"If the federal government defunds emergency housing vouchers and walks away from their obligations they are putting families back on the street who have finally found a stable home," Devoe said.

Velvet Ross, a 47-year-old former teacher who became homeless after experiencing severe health problems and an eviction, said the proposal could help New Yorkers who currently receive emergency vouchers. She got one that helps cover her rent of $1,800 a month in Stuy-Town.

“All of our legislators, now this is the time to really act,” she said, warning: “You'll see more and more people become homeless.”

Advocates for low-income tenants likened the Trump administration’s announcement to a decision by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg to stop funding a housing voucher program for homeless New Yorkers in 2011. The end of the program, known as Advantage, removed a key source of assistance for thousands of families and contributed to a sharp rise in homelessness as many people returned to city shelters, according to the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless.

New York City is contending with historic levels of homelessness. More than 140,000 people lacked stable housing in January 2024, more than double the number in 2022, according to the city’s most recent available data from an annual “point-in-time” one-day count.

If people who use the emergency vouchers end up losing their apartments, “it will be an individual crisis for all of those families and single adults who exited homelessness and thought they had stable housing because that was the commitment the government made to them,” said Joe Westmacott, assistant director at the organization Safe Horizon's Streetwork Project. “It’s also going to be a city crisis.”

Karen Yi contributed reporting.