Fewest shelter residents moving into NYCHA buildings in 10 years while vacancies soar

The number of homeless New Yorkers moving into city public housing under the Adams administration has dropped to the lowest number in a decade, even as the volume of empty New York City Housing Authority apartments continues to rise, a Gothamist analysis shows.

City data shows the number of residents exiting shelters to live in NYCHA apartments is on pace to plunge by 80% this fiscal year compared to 2015, according to data compiled by the city’s comptroller’s office . The fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.

At the same time, the number of vacant NYCHA units reached nearly 5,000 in March, a tenfold increase since 2021.

While the Adams administration says it has helped a record number of homeless New Yorkers move into permanent housing largely through rental assistance vouchers, few are going to NYCHA buildings, according to city statistics. The findings come as New York City’s shelter population balloons to a high of 120,000 and low- and moderate-income housing options dwindle across the five boroughs . Housing advocates say the city should be maximizing every tool to drive down the shelter population but chronic disinvestment and mismanagement at NYCHA is delaying how long it takes to turn over vacant units to new tenants.

The city’s Department of Homeless Services didn’t immediately respond to questions about why fewer homeless households were moving into city public housing or what it was doing to fix it.

A NYCHA spokesperson said the agency is using vacant units to move people awaiting “high-priority” transfers ahead of all other new applicants, including people moving out of homeless shelters. Those moves create new vacant apartments, with their own renovation needs, according to the agency. "The Authority does everything in its power to meet as much demand for vacancies with the resources we have while prioritizing the thorough repair and extensive environmental work that is performed once a unit becomes vacant," said spokesperson Michael Horgan said.

But in a February report , the federal monitor tasked with overseeing NYCHA operations found that the authority’s attempts to centralize the process for repairing, renovating and re-renting empty units ended up driving the delays and “caused a significant backlog of work.”

Bart Schwartz, who was the monitor at the time, wrote that administrative problems specifically affected units reserved for people moving out of homeless shelters — just when those units were needed most.

“As the need for housing and the rise in homelessness in New York City has increased, so has NYCHA’s need to turn over vacant apartments as quickly and efficiently as possible,” he said.

NYCHA set aside 1,000 apartments in 2022 for people transferring from DHS shelters, according to the report.

A new specialized unit within the public housing agency was supposed to handle renovations and turnover, but the arrangement led to confusion about who was supposed to handle the work and long delays before it actually got done. At times, NYCHA accepted security deposits for apartments more than a year before they were ready to rent, Schwartz said in the report.

Statistics from the city’s Open Data portal show an average of 1,800 homeless households left shelters and moved into NYCHA housing between fiscal years 2015 and 2021. During some of those years, more than 2,000 families moved into city public housing. But those numbers dropped sharply in 2022 when just 736 families exited shelters for a NYCHA unit – and as the general shelter population grew. Now, the city is on pace to move fewer than 500 families from shelter into NYCHA buildings this fiscal year, which ends in June.

The city’s data includes the number of homeless individuals and households, which can include multiple people in a family and is generally a better way to measure housing needs.

“To see those numbers decline so precipitously is really concerning,” said Alison Wilkey, director of government affairs for the Coalition for the Homeless . “Why are we continuing to pay for expensive shelter when there are empty units sitting here?”

The dashboard data by the comptroller’s office shows the number of people exiting homeless shelters has increased 11%, with the majority leaving with city rental assistance vouchers through the CityFHEPS program. That rate of shelter exits is on pace with the rate of non-migrants entering DHS facilities, but falls short of the overall rise in the shelter population, the data shows.

Councilmember Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn has been urging the city to speed up move-ins for homeless New Yorkers since NYCHA is the only housing source the city directly manages.

“What we have seen during Mayor Adams' tenure is horrible and shocking mismanagement of the vacant units in public housing,” Restler said. “The lowest-hanging fruit is the housing that's in our control that is managed by the city of New York.”

Shelter residents who are on the waitlist for a NYCHA apartment say landing a unit in public housing can feel like a pipe dream.

Tiffany Culbertson lives in a Queens shelter and said she applied for a NYCHA apartment three years ago. She wants to move into a public housing unit with her two adult children, but said she thinks it’s unlikely.

“I don’t even know if I have a shot,” Culbertson said. “I feel like it’s a miracle because the waiting list is so long.”

There were 223,000 people on the NYCHA waitlist as of March, according to agency data .

The city’s Department of Homeless Services said the number of NYCHA units set aside for shelter residents is down and officials were referring fewer homeless residents because there were fewer available units.

“NYCHA's responsibility to existing tenants and efforts to repair vacant units have limited the number of units available specifically for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness. This has resulted in a decrease in placements from shelter,” DHS spokesperson Nicholas Jacobelli said in a statement.

“Connecting New Yorkers in shelter to stable, affordable housing is a top priority, and we continue to use every tool at our disposal, including linking clients to NYCHA units, to do so.”Catherine Trapani, the assistant vice president of public policy at shelter and housing operator Volunteers of America-Greater New York, said few people in shelters think of NYCHA as a viable housing option due to the massive waiting list for available apartments.

“There is no concerted pipeline to NYCHA public housing for people in shelter,” Trapani said. “It’s like throwing pancakes on the wall and hoping one of them sticks.”

Trapani said her organization has one client who was approved for a NYCHA unit and is waiting to move in, who apply think of it as a little more than a long-shot housing option.

Advocates for homeless New Yorkers have called on the city to streamline moves into available public housing units for years. Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city ended a policy of prioritizing shelter residents for NYCHA units — a decision partially blamed for a spike in homelessness. Mayor Bill de Blasio reversed the decision and resumed the priority moves.

The Coalition for the Homeless has regularly called on the city to speed up NYCHA moves in its annual reports dating back over a decade and has pushed for at least 2,500 units to be available for homeless residents.

“There is so little affordable housing in the city and people are languishing in shelters for longer and longer times and data shows that when people are able to move from shelter into NYCHA or other federally supported housing like Section 8, they remain stably housed for the long term,” Wilkey said.

Marika Dias, managing director for the Safety Net Project , a homeless advocacy group, said decades of disinvestment in public housing and NYCHA’s systemic failure to secure basic repairs for existing tenants and fix empty apartments are at the root of the problem.

“NYCHA vacancies persist for far longer than they should because the housing authority is so challenged in making repairs,” she said. “Which means there’s less available housing stock in general, which then impacts homeless folks trying to get into housing.”

Other New Yorkers who aren’t in shelter say they’re also dealing with unsuitable living conditions and waiting for their chance to move into public housing.

Matthew Mbanaja, 64, said he has been sharing a crowded basement in the Bronx's Allerton neighborhood for the past six years. He applied for a NYCHA apartment and received notice in March 2023 that he was placed on the waiting list for an East Harlem complex for older adults.

He said he visited the building and submitted pay stubs and more identifying documents in November and is eager for an apartment to open up.

“They gave me hope,” Mbanaja said. “But it’s been too long.”

This story was updated to include a statement from the Department of Homeless Services.