(GATEWAY HOUSING) Ted Houghton, March 29, 2022

In their response to to Governor Hochul’s budget proposal, the State Senate and Assembly proposed an initial allocation of $250 million to fund a new rent subsidy for homeless and at-risk households called the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP). If enacted, the State-funded program would grow to $1 billion annually to assist as many as 80,000 households across the state to help cover the rent so that they can move into and hold onto affordable homes.

HAVP’s lead co-sponsors, Senate Housing Chair Brian Kavanagh and Assembly Housing Chair Steve Cymbrowitz, hosted a rally with legislative colleagues and advocates in support of including the new program in the final adopted state budget on Tuesday. Gateway Housing joined other advocates to speak in support of the legislation, including VOCAL-NY, Housing Justice 4 All, Make the Road, Neighbors Together and the Legal Aid Society. Other organizations supporting HAVP include the Family Homelessness Coalition, Homeless Services United, the Coalition for the Homeless and many, many others. In addition to the housing chairs, legislators who spoke in support of HAVP at the rally included Senators Gustavo Rivera, Rachel May, Luis Sepulveda, Brad Hoylman and Cordell Cleare, and Assembly Members Emily Gallagher and Chantel Jackson.

With Section 8 reaching only one out of every four eligible households, the establishment of a state-funded rental voucher would be a game changer for our ability to house New Yorkers who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. The resulting increase in housing stability would allow assisted households to improve an array of health, mental health, education and employment outcomes. And the bill has the support of landlord groups, because it would increase the rental incomes of buildings that house low-income New Yorkers, helping to improve the maintenance and upkeep of New York’s housing stock. It’s really the best investment the state can make to combat homelessness and to assist in New York’s recovery from the pandemic.

For more on HAVP, read:David Brand’s article in City Limits. Baaba Halm & Harry Bronson’s op-ed in the Daily News.

Regulatory Relief to Facilitate Conversions of Hotels Can Still Be Included in Budget
Senator Kavanagh and Assembly Member Cymbrowitz are also leading the effort to pass long-stalled regulatory relief necessary to allow hotels to be converted into affordable permanent housing. Empty hotels in financial distress as a result of the pandemic can be converted into affordable housing. But these conversions cannot happen without modest regulatory relief that will permit quick, cost-efficient conversions.

Since the pandemic began, California and its nonprofits have acquired over 100 hotels that are being converted into more than 6,000 permanent supportive housing units for formerly homeless individuals, while in New York, only one small hotel has been acquired for affordable housing.

Both the Governor and the State Senate have proposed regulatory relief in the budget negotiations to rectify this failure. But if this legislation is not included in the final adopted budget, existing regulations will only permit empty hotels to be turned into shelters instead of housing.

Gateway Housing continues to work with our elected leaders and other advocates to include the regulatory relief necessary to create quality housing for formerly homeless New Yorkers in this year’s budget legislation.