Testimony: CityFHEPS Reform Package Is a Smart Investment for New York City
Thank you to the New York City Council’s Committee of General Welfare for holding a hearing on the four CityFHEPS bills vetoed by the Mayor on June 23rd, 2023. My name is Oksana Mironova and I am a senior policy analyst at the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), a leading nonprofit that promotes economic opportunity for all New Yorkers. CSS uses research, advocacy, and direct services to champion a more equitable city and state.
Well-funded and well-designed rental assistance programs can prevent evictions and help people leave the shelter system for permanent homes. We celebrated the City Council’s bold step to improve the city’s rental assistance program, CityFHEPS. The reforms include eliminating the 90-day rule, revising the “utility allowance” rule, ending punitive work requirements, and expanding CityFHEPS eligibility to low-income households facing eviction.
As CSS’s research has repeatedly shown, these four bills are a smart investment for New York City and its people: fewer evictions and shorter shelter stays improve life for everyone. That is why we call on the Council to override the Mayor’s veto and ensure that the bills are implemented into law with care and adequate funding.
Our recent analysis has shown that:
- The cost of expanding CityFHEPS vouchers to low-income, housing-insecure households facing eviction would be $8.6 billion over 5 years.
- In the system as it exists today, the cost of housing 20 percent of those same households in the shelter system would be $4 billion; the cost of using rental vouchers to rehouse those households would be $1.5 billion for the same period of 5 years.
- The net additional increase in cost for using CityFHEPS as an eviction-prevention tool is $3 billion cumulatively over five years, or approximately $600 million per year. This would prevent almost 200,000 families from enduring the trauma of evictions and the instability of homelessness.
The Mayoral administration has argued that the City Council’s expansion of CityFHEPS will make it more difficult for existing voucher holders to compete for available apartments in a tight rental market. Our analysis shows that by preventing evictions, an expanded CityFHEPS program will reduce the number of households entering the shelter system long-term, creating less competition for those trying to use vouchers. Other reforms to the CityFHEPS program as included in the Council’s package, including the revision to the utility allowance rule, would make more homes available to voucher holders seeking to move out of shelter and also contribute towards reducing competition.
Numerous studies have demonstrated the social and economic benefits of paying for housing instead of paying for shelter, including: rising incomes for those who access permanent housing ($10,000 in additional income, $12,000 in taxpayer savings), lowering healthcare costs (by reducing hospitalization and emergency room visits), and raising children’s educational prospects and future wages (increasing 31 percent on average).
Shelter savings will go a long way toward defraying the cost of providing eviction-prevention vouchers, and the additional public money it still costs to keep people housed is ultimately money well spent by investing in our fellow New Yorkers.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. If you have any questions about our testimony or CSS’s research, please contact me at omironova@cssny.org.