NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — The New York City Council on Thursday overrode Mayor Eric Adams’ veto of four bills designed to expand access to CityFHEPS housing vouchers for homeless New Yorkers and those facing eviction.
The City Council passed all four bills by a vote of 41 to seven on May 25. Legislators overrode Adams' veto by a vote of 42 to eight on July 13.
The legislation ends a rule that required homeless people spend 90 days in a shelter before qualifying for a voucher, expands eligibility to New Yorkers facing eviction, lowers the threshold required to be considered poor enough to receive a voucher and expands coverage of vouchers to some utility costs.
Adams signed an executive order to end the 90-day rule after the Council passed the package and before his veto.
Advocates for the legislation speculated the executive order was issued ahead of the veto in an attempt to pick off Council members whose main priority was the elimination of the 90-day rule and would be willing to ditch voucher expansion.
Adams first pledged to end the rule in June 2022, but he only signed the executive order to do so a year later — after City Council passed a bill that would do the exact same thing.
“The good news is that our efforts to house more New Yorkers, even in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, are working,” said Adams following the vote. “On Tuesday, we announced that since lifting the 90-day rule a few weeks ago, 500 households have become immediately eligible for CityFHEPS.”
Despite his support for ending the 90-day rule, Adams has fought vehemently to stop further expansion of the voucher program.
The mayor argued that expanding voucher eligibility would be too expensive. He also claimed a bigger pool of applicants would overwhelm the limited number of apartments, making it harder for homeless New Yorkers to access the program.
“Unlike the council, we do not, however, believe that New Yorkers should spend $17 billion on a package of bills that would put New Yorkers in shelter at the back of the line for a CityFHEPS voucher and make it harder for them to find permanent housing,” said Adams. “We will continue to do all that we can to build more housing and tackle decades of exclusionary zoning policies that have prevented our city from building an adequate housing supply.”
City Council members who support the bill say Adams’ price tag for the program is off by billions.
A Community Service Society of New York report released in June estimated expansion would cost the CityFHEPS program an additional $600 million per year — far below Adams’ $17 billion figure.
Women in Need, the largest shelter provider for homeless families in New York City, estimated that the program would actually save the city money when factoring in the burden lifted from shelters and social services.
“By taking into consideration the annual money spent in medical care, juvenile detention, education, foster care and shelter costs alongside the same number of households as Community Service Society’s preceding report, WIN finds the City could achieve annual savings of $730 million given the estimated costs of the current system and potential reform of CityFHEPS,” wrote the City Council in a press release.
The mayor has suggested he might challenge the legislation in court following the Council’s override.
“We are reviewing our options and next steps,” he said.
Thursday’s vote was the first veto override since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.
The fight between City Hall and the Council has lasted months, and attitudes have grown increasingly bitter and intransigent with each blow.
The City Council bashed the mayor with a mock-up of a poorly graded school paper after releasing a lengthy critique of his New York Daily News op-ed regarding the vouchers Wednesday.
Progressive legislators' critique of the mayor has surpassed the topic of voucher expansion to encompass his entire housing policy.
The Council’s press release contradicting Adams’ op-ed denounced “understaffing and lack of budget support for housing agencies” as well as misleading claims about progress made in the fight to end the housing crisis in New York City. Comptroller Brad Lander said Adams’ homeless encampment sweep program “failed utterly” after releasing a report that found only three people secured permanent housing after thousands of sweeps.
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