(GATEWAY HOUSING) Ted Houghton, April 3, 2022

Advocates & legislators continue to push for new state-funded housing vouchers & hotel conversions

With voting on the state budget slated to begin Monday, it’s unclear whether key homeless housing measures supported by advocates, providers and policy experts will be included, despite broad support in the Legislature and the general public.The state budget looks like it will be finalized over the weekend, delayed a few days by disagreements over bail reform and spending hundreds of millions of public dollars to build a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills. Apologies for the multiple emails this past week, but important new tools that would help house thousands of homeless New Yorkers still hang in the balance as negotiations are expected to continue through Sunday.

The state budget items under consideration that have the greatest potential to reduce homelessness include:The establishment of the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP), a new state-funded rental voucher modeled on Section 8, that both the Senate and the Assembly propose to fund at $250 million this fiscal year. Sponsored by Senator Brian Kavanagh and Assembly Member Steve Cymbrowitz, and many other legislators, the voucher would help approximately 20,000 homeless and at-risk households afford housing across the state in its first year.$150 million in additional funding for the Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act (HONDA) to convert distressed hotels into permanent affordable and supportive housing. This would come on top of $100 million appropriated last year that remains unspent because regulatory relief was not included in last year’s bill, bringing us to the final item:Regulatory relief to allow efficient conversions of hotels into housing. Because regulatory relief was removed from the HONDA bill right before passage last year, it continues to be too expensive and time consuming to convert hotels into permanent housing in New York. As a result, no NYC hotels distressed by the pandemic have been converted in the two years since the onset of COVID. By comparison, California is well on the way to converting over 100 hotels into housing with more than 6,000 units during the same time period. Regulatory relief language has been introduced in both the Senate and the Assembly budget bills, as well as in the Governor’s budget proposal, but inclusion of this essential measure in the final adopted budget is still uncertain. If it is not included, it is unlikely that any HONDA funding will be spent, or any hotels converted to housing. Most likely, many available hotels will be turned into as-of-right shelters instead, with no opportunity for public input or review.Media coverage of the fight for these important measures has been substantial. The latest articles include:“Advocate for Homeless New Yorkers urges Albany to Spend Money on Hotel Conversions,” Dean Moses, amNY, March 29, 2022 – On Tuesday, advocates led by VOCAL-NY, Housing Justice 4 All, Community Service Society and many others “descended on Albany” to advocate for hotel conversions and HAVP. The Adams Administration’s housing team also made the rounds to push for affordable housing legislation. In this article, Shams DaBaron, “Da Homeless Hero,”  calls for additional funding for the Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act (HONDA) paired with regulatory relief that will facilitate such conversions. “Homelessness and a Budget Opportunity We Cannot Afford to Miss,” NY Daily News Op-Ed, March 30, 2022. Laura Mascuch and Brenda Rosen of the Supportive Housing Network and Breaking Ground make a compelling case for regulatory relief for hotel conversions as a way to increase supportive housing production to house homeless New Yorkers.“Governor Newsom Announces $136.6 million in Awards for 10 New Homekey Projects,” State of Californias press release, March 230, 2022. Another step forward in California’s effort to quickly create homeless housing out of hotels shows what can be done when state government treats homelessness as the emergency it is. Here’s hoping New York’s leaders do the same this weekend!    Other articles we have previously shared on the issue: 

“New York Law to Turn Vacant Hotels into Homeless Housing is Failing” – Martin Z. Braun, Bloomberg City Lab The title says it all in this article about the regulatory barriers that remain in place and continue to thwart New York’s effort to convert hotels into affordable housing. Assembly Member Cymbrowitz, one of the champions of the hotel conversion effort, promises that regulatory relief will be passed after the budget is finalized. But the article shows how quickly the window is closing on the opportunity to acquire hotels, as tourism returns, hotels reopen and acquisition and development costs increase. Advocates urge Albany to provide relief as soon as possible.

“From ‘Illegal’ Hotel to Housing for the Homeless on the Upper West Side” – Mihir Zaveri, New York Times
This article recounts the Fortune Society’s January 2022 acquisition and preservation of an old SRO hotel on the Upper West Side, still the only hotel that has been successfully acquired for conversion to permanent affordable housing in New York City since the onset of the pandemic two years ago. Assisted by Gateway Housing, Fortune was able to acquire the hotel to turn it into housing because the hotel was operating illegally in a building already approved for housing, so regulatory relief was not needed in this specific (and unusual) instance. The article cites the comparative experience of California, which also made sure to pass regulatory relief when it allocated $1 billion for what is now an initiative converting over 100 hotels into more than 6,000 permanent affordable housing units for formerly homeless individuals.

Source: Gateway Housing