NEW YORK — Mayoral frontrunner Andrew Cuomo thinks the state should take on a larger role funding rental subsidies for homeless New Yorkers — a pledge that’s at odds with his actions as governor.
During his tenure in Albany, Cuomo did the opposite: he cut off state funding in 2011 for a rental voucher program known as Advantage, prompting City Hall to eliminate the program altogether. Housing experts have long blamed the subsequent sharp rise in the city’s homeless shelter population on those critical decisions, even as they disparaged the voucher program at the time.
It was part of a pattern during Cuomo’s tenure of shifting the cost of social services from the state onto the city, according to those policy experts and homeless advocates…