Opinion: Homeless New Yorkers Need Vouchers, Not SROs

“Many low-income New Yorkers—including those who are homeless but not in shelters—have been counting on Mayor Mamdani to implement the CityFHEPS expansion. His decision to stall, blaming the prior administration’s poor budgeting, leaves them in continued limbo.”

Despite racking up early wins such as a settlement for delivery workers, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has already backtracked on one of his campaign promises: to expand eligibility for the CityFHEPS voucher.

As City Limits has reported extensively, the CityFHEPS program’s current eligibility rules make it nearly impossible to obtain a voucher without first residing in a homeless shelter—in direct opposition to one of the original goals of the program, which was to help prevent evictions. In 2023, the City Council voted to remove the shelter requirement, as well as to raise the income cap from $31,300 to $56,700 for an individual, or from $64,300 to $81,000 for a family of four. But Mayor Eric Adams continued to block the legislation in court until the end of his term.

Many low-income New Yorkers—including those who are homeless but not in shelters—have been counting on Mayor Mamdani to implement the CityFHEPS expansion. His decision to stall, blaming the prior administration’s poor budgeting, leaves them in continued limbo.

Meanwhile, the City Council has been hearing testimony on Int. 1475, a proposal that would legalize and regulate shared living arrangements, including so-called “single room occupancy” setups: dorm-style housing centered around a communal kitchen and bathroom.

Former Councilmember Erik Bottcher (who recently left the Council to join the State Senate), is cosponsoring the bill with Councilmember Lincoln Restler, and argue that it will provide tenant protections to the many New Yorkers who are already living in shared apartments, and offer “dignified alternatives to shelter” to those who are homeless or at risk of losing their housing.

As a community organizer who has lived in unregulated, overcrowded settings for the better part of a decade—and became homeless in 2020 as a direct result—I commend the City Council for acknowledging the reality that the average working-class or disabled New Yorker cannot afford their own apartment, let alone qualify for a standard lease. 

However, I do not believe that SROs are the solution, nor am I convinced that anyone other than politicians and developers is actually asking for them. Overwhelmingly, single adults with lived experience of homelessness say they want their own one-bedroom or studio apartments. It is the bare minimum that we deserve.

I moved to New York City in 2016 with no family and a serious undiagnosed illness, making $16,000, just above the poverty line. I lived in several quasi-legal shared settings in and around gentrifying Bushwick, with a revolving door of women and queer people in similar financial circumstances. Everyone I knew lived like this—especially working in the book publishing industry, where the salaries were and are notoriously low. The only people I knew who were able to get their own leases were those who lived with their partners—which came with its own risks of abruptly losing housing if they were to break up.

In 2020, I was sharing a two-bedroom walkup on Myrtle/Broadway with two virtual strangers, one of whom slept in the living room. Officially, they were my subletters, as I had lived there long enough to inherit the lease from a previous tenant. Despite now making an entry-level salary of $40,000, there was no way I would have qualified for a lease on my own, or been able to pay the $2,000 per month that the apartment cost on paper.

When the pandemic hit, both my roommates moved home with their parents. My only family members were medically vulnerable and lived halfway across the country. So I stayed in my Brooklyn apartment, even though my monthly rent had skyrocketed from $700 to $2,000—fully 60 percent of my income.

Even with the eviction moratorium, I didn’t feel safe. As the spring turned to summer and the empty streets echoed with sirens and fireworks, I racked up a debt of $11,000. My landlord would bang on the door of the apartment at 10 p.m. with no mask on. I locked the chain lock. Outside my window, there were families living in tents beneath the train tracks.

I applied for the COVID Rent Relief Program, a predecessor to the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), but my application was rejected—presumably because I had not lost my primary income, although the rejection language was unclear, and I could not get an answer over the phone. 

So I left, and availed of the only lifeline I had, moved in with a friend and her husband. That was stable until it wasn’t, when I got in a fight with the husband and he kicked me out. A stranger from social media was kind enough to let me stay with her for two months, but then I had to move again. At this point I was exhausted, sick, and deeply traumatized. All I wanted was a place that no one could take from me.

If you had told me at the time that I was homeless, I don’t think I would have believed it. But according to the federal McKinney-Vento Act, which funds services across the country through the Continuum of Care network, “sharing the housing of other persons” (colloquially known as “couchsurfing,” “doubling up, etc.”) is indeed a type of homelessness. By choosing not to count individuals and families in these types of informal arrangements—many of whom would not be safe in the shelter system or have been explicitly turned away—New York is deliberately suppressing the true scope of its homelessness epidemic. 

Supporters of Int. 1475 might argue that, had there been legislation to regulate apartment shares back in 2020, I would not have been on the hook for my roommates’ rent and therefore might never have gone into debt or become homeless in the first place. But I believe this bill will make conditions worse for low-income renters, including myself, in the long run. I have shared apartments with more strangers than I can count, and the only good thing to be said about it is the flexibility to work out informal deals among ourselves. By contrast, legalizing SROs will fuel gentrification in neighborhoods like Bushwick by allowing landlords to charge even higher rents than they already do.

Five years on, I am once again living in a very similar situation—this time, sharing a one-bedroom—with no end in sight. I cannot stress enough that a 350-square-foot apartment is not appropriate housing for two disabled people who both have complex medical needs. But more to the point, it’s not appropriate housing for anyone. We should not be normalizing the idea of a city in which 30- and 40-year-olds, many working full time, cannot afford to rent their own apartments. It’s absurd.

Do I feel “dignified,” as former Councilmember Bottcher would have it, because I am not in a shelter? Absolutely not. I feel invisibilized, and abandoned by the city I call home.

What would have helped me in 2020—and would help me now—is expanded access to rental assistance, specifically the CityFHEPS voucher. Now is the time for Mayor Mamdani to work directly with the City Council to fulfill his original campaign promise. Homeless, low-income, and disabled New Yorkers deserve to live with dignity—not in SROs but in our own apartments, in the neighborhoods of our choice. We have waited long enough.

Miranda DeNovo is a former publishing and communications professional, and the founder of Long COVID Safety Net, which advocates for people with post-viral illnesses experiencing homelessness and poverty.