Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The Erie County Legislature's Republican Caucus is calling upon County Executive Mark Poloncarz to declare a State of Emergency in response to a new NYC policy that seeks to allow NYC-funded rent vouchers to be used in any county in New York State.
Under a new policy unveiled by NYC Mayor Eric Adams last Tuesday morning, people who receive rental vouchers from New York City will now be able to use those benefits throughout the state instead of restrained to the five city boroughs. The proposed solution seeks to address the city's issues of affordable housing scarcities and overcrowding in the city's shelter system, which has been compounded due to the 100,000+ migrants coming to the city since last spring.
"The mayor of New York City has decided that he wants to continue to help run the State of New York with the governor, and to allow these vouchers to be cashed outside of New York City," said Erie County Legislature Minority Leader John Mills. "That means migrants can hop on the bus, hop on the train, come up to Buffalo, New York and use these vouchers for housing. We feel that's very unfair."
"It's just another step in starting more fires for us out here. It's going to impact our social services, our housing stock, and many, many other issues that are going to happen."
To be eligible for a voucher, a person must be at risk for eviction and also meet one of a list of criteria, which includes a status as a veteran, or having a history in the city shelter system.
The legislators make reference to the county's own set of problems in regards to limited affordable housing and high poverty rate which they believe could significantly worsen if those with vouchers choose to come to Erie County.
"The county executive, in his State of the County this year, partnered with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to allocate $25 million to address what they called a housing stock crisis for low-income housing," said Legislator Chris Greene. "That will be wasted money if we start bringing in New York City's population with a $30,000 head start on our low-income housing stock, it will put a stress on our social services, particularly our mental health services. There's an old saying in politics, 'You can you can't cure a problem unless you cause a problem.' We're asking the county executive to avoid this problem."
Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente Jr. has last week issued an executive action to prevent their local landlords from accepting such vouchers.
WBEN asked Erie County Executive Poloncarz on Tuesday what he thinks of the Mayor Adams' new policy.
"There's question as to whether it's even legal to do that," Poloncarz said. "I know right now, there's some of the other counties that are talking about, potentially suing, it hasn't happened yet. So it's hypothetical. But there's a question as to whether it's even legal, and we'll just have to wait and see what the courts decide.
"Right now we have housing issues in our community, they could say we're gonna give you rent vouchers, but there's just not that much available in space anyway, so it's not like it's going to make a difference. They couldn't put thousands of people in our community because there's no room for them. Our regular apartments, they could put two hundred, as we've seen, or 500 in a hotel, but putting them into homes, into apartments, complexes, there's just no room here, so I'm not as worried about it, as probably others are."
As it stands now, Poloncarz has prohibited New York City from bussing migrants to the county after two seperate sexual abuse charges involving migrants being housed in Cheektowaga hotels.