CityFHEPS vouchers are supposed to give low-income New Yorkers more choice in where they live, but data shows that voucher holders are predominately renting in certain Bronx and Southeast Brooklyn neighborhoods.

Jasmine Smith wanted to live in Brooklyn. Her family lives there. Her commute would be shorter to Midtown. Her daughter would be able to get to school in lower Manhattan faster.

But for seven months in 2021, when Jasmine and her children were living in a homeless shelter and searching for a place to use her housing voucher, she couldn’t find a place in Brooklyn that would take it.

A housing voucher is supposed to be a lifeline. Families moving out of New York City shelters with a voucher only pay 30 percent of their income in rent, giving them a chance to find a stable home somewhere in the city. But data uncovered by City Limits shows that families holding New York’s City Family Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (CityFHEPS) vouchers tend to use them in certain neighborhoods.

“There is no choice really. You just kind of have to take what you can get and you have to feel like a beggar and beggars can’t be choosers,” said Smith. She ended up finding a place in the South Bronx, where she still lives with her three children. “It would be I live in the Bronx or I stay in a shelter.”

Housing vouchers should provide families more choice in where they live, experts say. The city’s voucher program faces criticism from advocates and unhoused New Yorkers who say administrative hurdles and discrimination contribute to the challenges they face in using their vouchers in wealthier areas.

The Department of Social Services (DSS) pointed to the city’s historically low housing vacancy rate and the subsequent lack of affordable apartments as driving those difficulties. DSS spokesperson Mitch Abramson touted last year’s progress in moving people out of shelter using the subsidies in a statement to City Limits: “Nearly 14,000  households—a record number— leased apartments using CityFHEPS vouchers, reflecting a 42 percent increase compared to [the prior fiscal year].” 

City Limits analyzed zip code data from last year’s voucher payment timeliness reports, finding that CityFHEPS voucher payments were highly concentrated in the Bronx and Southeast Brooklyn—areas of the city where there are lower incomes, higher poverty rates, and more people of color.

“Housing vouchers are supposed to give people choice,” said Manon Vergerio, head of data and advocacy at Unlock NYC, an organization that tracks voucher discrimination. “In theory this will deconcentrate poverty. In reality, this shows CityFHEPS is totally failing to do so,” she said.

DSS hasn’t reported quarterly voucher payments since September of last year, when it recorded 44,742 payments. As of last week, there were 51,924 active vouchers, according to DSS commissioner Molly Park’s testimony at a recent City Council oversight hearing. Since July 1 2024, another 7,100 have leased up, DSS officials told the City Council last week.

While voucher payments went to all but 12 of the city’s nearly 200 zip codes, they were highly concentrated in just a few. Two zip codes which cover portions of the Bronx along East Tremont Avenue between Grand Concourse and Bronx Parkway had more voucher payments than any other, with over 1,700 in each. Those two zips have just 1.5 percent of the city’s population but over 8 percent of all CityFHEPS vouchers.

Only 16 percent of New Yorkers live in the Bronx, but it’s home to 46 percent of voucher holders. Manhattan, which has 21 percent of the city’s population, had under 10 percent of CityFHEPS families. And Queens, home to over 2.3 million New Yorkers, had just 6,757 of the program’s nearly 45,000 CityFHEPS vouchers in September of last year.

“Really the only two places you might be able to get an apartment from is the Bronx or Brooklyn,” said Smith. Smith looked in Crown Heights, Williamsburg, Park Slope, and Midtown before getting her place in the South Bronx.

112 payments went to zip codes outside New York City in September of last year, after Mayor Adams’ administration made changes enabling vouchers to be used outside the five boroughs.

According to the Department of Social Services, spending on the CityFHEPS program is growing rapidly, with $578 million spent on the program since July, outpacing the $855 million sum from the previous 12 months ending in June. The mayor has yet to implement City Council laws expanding eligibility for the program that lawmakers passed in 2023. 

The top 10 zip codes where the most voucher holders lived had median incomes of around $40,000. In the rest of the city’s nearly 200 zip codes, the average median income was $95,000.

To be sure, some voucher families prefer to live in parts of the city with more vouchers because they’ve built families and lives in those communities. But others who tried to access opportunities in other parts of the city often left empty-handed. Some, expecting disappointment, didn’t even bother applying to apartments in wealthy neighborhoods.

“Certain zip codes I was not even considered for no matter how well I spoke, how good my credit was, how presentable, it is just not an option here,” said Michael Bell, a former CityFHEPS voucher searcher.

Users also said that their vouchers don’t pay enough for them to compete in higher rent neighborhoods. “My voucher is $1,580—the city is way more expensive than that. That’s why everyone is pushed to the Bronx,” said Smith.

According to data from the Furman Center, the median rent in 2022 was below the maximum voucher amount of $1,580 in just six of the city’s 59 community districts. Those areas included Mott Haven, Hunts Point, Morrisania and Belmont in the Bronx and East New York and Brownsville in Brooklyn.

By contrast, some federal housing vouchers—which tenants say many landlords are more likely to accept than CityFHEPS—are scaled to the rent of certain “high opportunity” neighborhoods. A NYCHA Section 8 voucher used in the Financial District, for example, will pay more than one used in East New York.

There also just aren’t enough housing options in city overall. 

DSS did not provide official numbers on how long an apartment search takes with a CityFHEPS voucher, saying that the program’s rolling eligibility assessment makes it hard to identify start dates. But a report from the state comptroller’s office in October, which looked at 52 client files, found that it took nearly 10 months on average. It also found that just 21 percent of those given a shopping letter—which indicates a family is eligible and how much their voucher will pay—got an apartment with their voucher.

“Looking for an apartment in New York City is a full time job,” said Bell.

DSS disputed the findings in the comptroller’s report, arguing it picks anomalous cases from a small sample and doesn’t reflect current procedures, including reforms made in recent years to streamline the CityFHEPS application and approval process.

The city’s housing vacancy rate fell to 1.4 percent in the five boroughs in 2023, the lowest since 1968. The vacancy rate for homes renting for under $1,650 was even lower, at below 1 percent.

“There’s a lot of factors that go into how long it takes to use the shopping letter. But we absolutely know that the incredibly low vacancy rate is hurting our clients,” said Park.

Landlords also sometimes refuse to rent to voucher holders because of stigma, competition, or to avoid the hassle of an administrative process, tenants say.

Park emphasized that while DSS closely coordinates with the city’s Commission on Human Rights to report voucher discrimination, tight housing markets make it harder to catch landlords who discriminate against voucher holders—which is illegal.

“There are absolutely instances where people will say ‘no vouchers allowed’ and that’s very clear cut… where there’s a viewing with 30 people there and 10 of them walk in with cash on hand, it’s harder to say what is income discrimination versus a really tight real estate market,” said Park.

As of January 20, 11,000 households were eligible for CityFHEPS vouchers but were still looking for an apartment where they could use it, according to Park. Over 147,000 people were staying in New York City shelters in October, according to City Limits’ shelter tracker.

Some say their hardship is further compounded by administrative issues. Voucher holders who spoke to City Limits for this story described the process as emotionally draining, stressful and humiliating. They felt hopeful upon getting their vouchers, only to be ghosted by brokers, rejected from apartments, and held up by red tape, all while returning day after day to sleep in shelters.

Required inspections and paperwork can also cause delays even after finding a place and make vouchers less desirable to landlords, voucher users testified at the City Council last week.

“I do think I would have gotten an apartment in Manhattan if the process wasn't as long,” said Smith, who recalled finding a Midtown apartment that would take her voucher, but says she lost it due to administrative delays.

Once a voucher holder finds a place and submits for approval, Park said that it took 24 days on average before they moved out. “Process improvement is an ongoing endeavor,” she said.

DSS’s Abrahmson said they will continue to make improvements to the program by training shelter staff, holding providers accountable to exit targets, and implementing technical improvements so they can approve housing packages faster.

DSS officials suggested that increasing the supply of affordable homes would help ease pressure on voucher holders, and pointed to a new program called Affordable Housing Services that has financed the construction of 240 units across four new affordable buildings in the Bronx. 

The program, which uses the expected rent payments from CityFHEPS to finance construction, will create a total of 900 affordable units during the Adams administration, Park said, with two more sites under construction in Manhattan and Queens.

CityFHEPS users who testified at the City Council hearing last week suggested increasing the value of vouchers and cracking down on landlord discrimination to widen the pool of apartments they can apply to.

Among them was Noam Weinberg, who expressed his frustration on behalf of fellow shelter residents looking for a place. “When we tell people we want them to work, that we want them to obtain housing, but there’s all these barriers and these bureaucratic hurdles to doing so, it’s basically telling people it's more important to prolong your stay in the shelter rather than obtain your basic needs,” Weinberg told lawmakers.

When CityFHEPS vouchers are used successfully, they can be transformative.

“I'm grateful and thankful for the program and I'm actually on my way to getting off of the program. So it definitely served its purpose as being a stepping stone to making better choices,” said Smith.

Now that Smith is making enough money to afford an apartment on her own, she hopes to move to Brooklyn.

To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org.

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