Mayor Adams must implement costly housing voucher plan, court rules

Mayor Eric Adams was handed a blow Thursday when a state court ordered his administration to comply with the city council’s controversial plan to expand the Big Apple’s housing voucher program — which Hizzoner has warned would saddle the city with an eye-popping $17 billion price tag over five years.

The Adams admin and the council have been locked in a years-long bitter feud over reforms that would amend eligibility for services under the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, known as CityFHEPS.

“The City Council, as the legislative branch of city government, has the right to pass local laws crafting putative shelter supplements,” the court’s decision read. 

The council’s reforms put New Yorkers facing eviction on the fast track to get housing vouchers without first having to spend three months in the city shelter system, would bar landlords from deducting costs of utility bills from a voucher, would increase the income level of cutoff to qualify for aid and would remove work requirements.

Hizzoner has argued that the expansion would cost taxpayers $17 billion over five years — and would make it harder for people to leave homeless shelters.

“Adding more vouchers will only make it harder for people to leave homeless shelters. The affordable-housing crisis won’t be solved by making people compete for nonexistent housing; it will be solved by building more housing — which the Adams administration has done at record levels — and actually connecting people who already have vouchers to homes,” Adams admin spokesperson, Liz Garcia, said in a statement.

Garcia also insisted that the Adams administration has already helped an “unprecedented number” of New Yorkers find housing.

“The Adams administration has utilized CityFHEPS more than any prior administration — helping an unprecedented number of New Yorkers obtain permanent housing last year, including nearly 8,000 New Yorkers we helped avoid shelter using CityFHEPS vouchers, in addition to thousands more we helped leave shelter,” she said.

“We accomplished this in the midst of a housing crisis with a 1.4% vacancy rate. But 13,000 households are still trying to use their CityFHEPS vouchers to find permanent housing, and we must focus on them.”

The city council, meanwhile, maintains that City Hall has overshot the cost of the reforms by $7 billion.

“It is unfortunate that for two years Mayor Adams’ administration stood in the way of removing barriers to housing vouchers that keep New Yorkers in their homes and move them from shelters to permanent homes,” said Rendy Desamours, a spokesperson for the city council.

The state court ruling is the Adams admin’s second notable blow in the last few weeks.

In a separate case, a Manhattan judge ruled on June 30 that the mayor “violated” the law when he blocked a council ban on solitary confinement using his emergency powers, rather than appealing to a federally appointed monitor. 

However, a federal court judge granted City Hall a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) preventing the complete implementation of the solitary confinement ban, local law 42, without approval from the monitor.

“As Mayor Adams has repeatedly said, enforcement of Local Law 42 as written would harm the safety of people in our custody, our correctional staff, court staff, and the public, and we are grateful that Judge Swain has paused its implementation,” spokesperson for the Mayor, Liz Garcia, said of the TRO.