Housing advocates continue to be angered by the back and forth over expanding the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (CityFHEPS) program, with many feeling that Mayor Zohran Mamdani has abandoned his campaign promise to reform it. “We cannot balance the city’s budget on the backs of unhoused folks and rent-burdened tenants. This is a matter of life and death. We are not expendable,” said Calvin Michael, member-leader of the Safety Net Activists at the Urban Justice Center, in a recent op-ed for amNew York. “Fully implementing the CityFHEPS expansion laws would save lives.”
CityFHEPS is a rental subsidy program designed to be similar to the federal Section 8 program where tenants pay 30% of income in rent and the city pays the rest.
The program has been a point of contention for several years. On the campaign trail, Mamdani vowed to drop the lawsuit about the program, a holdover from the previous administration, and implement the CityFHEPS expansion. However, his office filed for an appeal to the lawsuit last week, much to the dismay of housing advocates.
After the COVID pandemic, several Black and Brown communities were facing a slew of evictions and soaring homelessness. According to Right to Counsel NYS, landlords filed to evict nearly 600,000 households between 2020 and 2025, with 80% for nonpayment. In some cases, this was due to a backlog at the city’s Department of Social Services (DSS) making rent payouts through the CityFHEPS.
In 2023, the City Council attempted to combat that distressing trend by passing the CityFHEPS expansion bills, which included removing shelter stay as a precondition to eligibility for the program, giving people the ability to demonstrate risk of eviction by presenting a rent demand letter, and changing the eligibility for vouchers from 200% of the federal poverty level to 50% of the area median income (AMI). Former Mayor Eric Adams opted to veto the bills and the City Council chose to then override his veto.
At the time, the argument over the bills stemmed from the influx of asylum seekers into the city that put a substantial strain on the city’s resources.
This devolved into litigation as individuals from affected areas in Harlem, the Bronx, and Brooklyn banded together to sue the Adams administration to push the legislation forward in 2024, a move the City Council and the Legal Aid Society subsequently backed when they filed to intervene and compel Adams to implement the laws. The case made it all the way to the New York State Supreme Court, where a judge sided with advocates and lawmakers. Adams appealed the case in 2025, and Mamdani did the same this year, further leaving the program’s expansion in limbo.
“Mayor Mamdani still has time to keep his promise to homeless and rent-burdened New Yorkers by dropping the CityFHEPS expansion lawsuit,” said Adolfo Abreu, housing campaigns director at VOCAL-NY, in a statement. “Every day this legal fight continues is another day New Yorkers are denied the eviction prevention and rental assistance they were promised. To achieve his vision of a more affordable New York, the Mayor cannot afford to leave out the New Yorkers who need it most. We urge the Mayor to drop this lawsuit, implement the 2023 expansion laws, and work with us to keep people in their homes and get more people housed.”
Sosseh Prom, housing justice director at African Communities Together (ACT), said that it’s been years of the same conversation over and over again. “At a time when immigrant communities and other disenfranchised groups are being threatened, persecuted, and destabilized, this move from Mayor Mamdani feels like a gut punch,” said Prom. “Our communities do not have the time or luxury to keep having these circular conversations in lieu of access to housing stability.”
Women in Need (WIN) CEO & President Christine Quinn called on both the mayor and Governor Kathy Hochul to expand city and state housing voucher programs. This comes as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is expected to make cuts to federal Emergency Housing Vouchers (EHVs), which is likely to affect more than 5,200 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) households, she said.
“The federal government is playing with people’s lives and this last-minute reversal is devastating for the 5,200 NYCHA households at risk of losing housing,” said Quinn in a statement. “Housing vouchers are the most critical lifeline to move homeless people out of shelter and keep those at risk of eviction in their homes. This is exactly why WIN has been tirelessly calling for the Mamdani administration to fulfil their promise and expand city housing voucher support through implementation of the CityFHEPS expansion laws.”
As of this week, Mamdani and Speaker Julie Menin have jointly passed a city budget extender, pushing back the budget deadline to May. They said this was due to the super-late state budget.
According to a city spokesperson, the CityFHEPS program is growing at 4% every month and evolved from $26 million in 2019 to $1.8 billion in 2025. If the appeal was dropped, then the program expansion would cost “over $4 billion annually by 2030,” essentially adding to the current city budget gap of about $5.4 billion.
“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,” said a city hall spokesperson. “As the legal process continues to play out, we are moving full-steam ahead on building the housing necessary to tackle the housing crisis, addressing the root causes of homelessness, and creating a more affordable city where New Yorkers live in a home of their choice, rather than in shelters or on the streets.”
Is this what it means to live in America? The picture gets darker each day.