A Step Towards Ending Homelessness: VOA-GNY on CityFHEPS Expansion and the FY27 Budget

JUNE 30, 2026—VOA-GNY released the following statement in response to CityFHEPS Expansion and the FY27 Budget:

“Today, the City Council and housing advocates secured a major policy win with the announcement that the Mayor will drop the lawsuit blocking CityFHEPS expansion and include funding in the FY27 Final Budget to begin implementation. The agreement preserves the intent of the 2023 expansion laws: ensuring thousands more people in shelter, and many New Yorkers facing eviction, have access to the City’s most effective tool for preventing and ending homelessness. Ultimately, further investment will be needed to achieve a dramatic reduction of homelessness in New York City.  

VOA-GNY applauds the agreement, which will expand access to CityFHEPS for more shelter residents—including youth, domestic violence survivors, and people who are working but still cannot make rent—as well as New Yorkers in some rent-stabilized apartments facing eviction. The agreement also eliminates arbitrary barriers that keep people trapped in shelter, including an income cliff that discourages career advancement and a work requirement that many struggle to meet.

Though this agreement is transformative, the budget includes just $175 million to implement the expansion–about a third of what is needed to fully provide vouchers to everyone made eligible under the new law, and less than the Mayor’s Executive Budget proposed to cut from the existing program. The agreement also leaves behind low-income renters living in unregulated housing. 

The result is that while more New Yorkers will become eligible for rental assistance, the City has not yet committed the resources needed to ensure the program can meet the scale of the need. New York City spends as much as $80,000 annually for a single shelter bed, while a CityFHEPS voucher costs roughly $20,000 per household and fewer than 5% of voucher recipients return to homelessness. We cannot expect to make meaningful progress in reducing homelessness when agencies are expected to serve more people with less. 

“We recognize it is early in the new administration and look forward to partnering with Mayor Mamdani to fulfill his promise of a fundamentally new approach to affordability and homelessness,” said Jeffrey R. Ginsburg, President and CEO of Volunteers of America-Greater New York. “Thanks to the bold leadership of the New York City Council, today’s agreement is a major step forward that will help thousands more New Yorkers access stable housing. Now we must ensure the program has the resources it needs to deliver on that promise and leave no homeless New Yorkers behind.”

We are deeply grateful to Speaker Menin, our steadfast ally Council Member Pierina Sanchez, the Progressive and Black, Latino, and Asian Caucuses, and all the Council Members for their advocacy for New Yorkers facing homelessness. We look forward to continuing our partnership with the Administration and Council to ensure that everyone these laws are intended to serve can access this critical support.”