“Homeless and at-risk New Yorkers need a lifeline in the immediate term, and the governor must join the Assembly and the Senate in expanding the HAVP pilot to $250 million.”
The high cost of housing is a major driver of low-income New Yorkers’ economic precarity. In each year since 2022, there have been at least 190,000 eviction filings in New York State courts. About 70 percent of all eviction cases—and about 80 percent of all eviction cases filed in New York City—were predicated upon the alleged nonpayment of rent. As of January 2026, according to this publication, approximately 111,000 New York City residents lived in shelter, and another estimated 82,000 children alone were living doubled up with members of another household.
It was welcome news, then, when Gov. Kathy Hochul and the State Legislature enacted a pilot for the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP), a state-funded tenant-based voucher designed to help homeless and at-risk New Yorkers by paying the difference between their monthly rent and 30 percent of their household income, as part of the Fiscal Year 2026 state budget.
However, lawmakers seeded the HAVP pilot with only $50 million in funding statewide, leaving New York City with an anticipated 900 to 1,100 vouchers, according to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. With the Fiscal Year 2027 state budget due by the end of this month, homeless and at-risk New Yorkers need Gov. Hochul to join the Assembly and the Senate in increasing the size of the HAVP pilot to $250 million…