Spike in homelessness followed Cuomo's move to cut off voucher funds as governor

Politico

6 hours ago

NEW YORK — Mayoral frontrunner Andrew Cuomo thinks the state should take on a larger role funding rental subsidies for homeless New Yorkers — a pledge that's at odds with his actions as governor.
During his tenure in Albany, Cuomo did the opposite: he cut off state funding in 2011 for a rental voucher program known as Advantage, prompting City Hall to eliminate the program altogether. Housing experts have long blamed the subsequent sharp rise in the city's homeless shelter population on those critical decisions, even as they disparaged the voucher program at the time.
It was part of a pattern during Cuomo's tenure of shifting the cost of social services from the state onto the city, according to those policy experts and homeless advocates.
Cuomo dismissed those criticisms during a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO last month.
'It was 100 years ago,' he said, when asked about his oversight ending Advantage.
When reminded he is running on his record as governor — including accomplishments as old as the cancellation of Advantage, he dismissed the program as minor. 'I don't even remember what happened with that program, but since then there's been 50 other programs to do the same (thing,)' he said.
He also criticized Section 8 vouchers as too expensive, without providing much of an alternative to quickly create adequate housing that's affordable to the citys' lowest-income residents who are sleeping in shelters. 'Gotta find another way,' he said, when asked about the high cost to the city for funding affordable housing for New Yorkers with especially scarce means. 'I can't pay you. I'll give you the air rights above libraries. I'll give you the air rights on city properties all across the city. I'll give you old city buildings.'
If he's elected mayor, Cuomo will have to grapple with those decisions as he manages a mammoth homeless crisis, with some 86,000 people sleeping in city shelters on a recent night.
'The confounding thing about Andrew Cuomo as governor is he really claimed to be this expert on homelessness, and had such profound missteps in the course of actually playing it out,' said Shelly Nortz, who spent decades as deputy executive director of policy at the Coalition of the Homeless and has since retired. 'The Advantage mistake was just colossal, you just can't even make that up.'
Cuomo, who is now leading a packed field to unseat Mayor Eric Adams, has a background in homelessness and housing going back decades — something he often touts. In the 1980s, he created the organization HELP USA, which continues to be a major homeless services provider. Under former Mayor David Dinkins, he chaired a Commission on the Homeless, and he later spent four years as the secretary of the federal housing department.
But his record as governor is being scrutinized anew for choices that impacted the city's massive housing crisis that continues today.
A Cuomo spokesperson questioned the link between ending the voucher funding and the spike in shelter arrivals, and pointed to other state contributions towards affordable housing and homeless services.
'As Governor, he invested billions in housing and consistently delivered real results,' spokesperson Esther Jensen said in a statement. 'Now, with decades of proven experience and dedication, he's ready to bring that same commitment to City Hall — which is why New Yorkers across the city support him for mayor, knowing he is the only candidate with the vision and ability to tackle homelessness and deliver truly affordable housing.'
The Advantage program, established in 2007 during the Bloomberg administration, offered rent subsidies for up to two years to help people move out of shelters. At the time it was shuttered, there were some 15,000 families housed as a result of the vouchers. But it was facing growing criticism from advocates due to onerous requirements — including the time limits and work rules — with some describing it as a 'revolving door back to homelessness.'
After Cuomo eliminated $65 million in funding toward the program in the 2011 state budget, the city declined to shoulder the cost on its own and ended the initiative altogether. At the time, a spokesperson for the governor cited New York's 'significant fiscal challenges' in pulling the money.
'There were issues with the Advantage program, but the solution to that would have been to improve the program in a way that made it more successful, not to say, oh here are some issues so we're just not going to do to anymore,' said Joshua Goldfein, an attorney focused on homelessness for the Legal Aid Society.
Indeed, the shelter census immediately surged: between March 2011, when the program ended, and the end of 2013, the population in municipal shelters spiked 35 percent.
'Unfortunately, when it ended, a number of families went back to homelessness. It was really a tragedy,' said Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, deputy mayor for health and human services during the first year and a half of the de Blasio administration.
The effects of the elimination continued into the early years of de Blasio, according to Steven Banks, former commissioner of the Department of Social Services. People were gradually evicted from their homes after the subsidy was cut off; some entered shelters immediately, while others tried to double up with friends or family and entered the shelter system later on.
The de Blasio administration eventually replaced the Advantage program with a series of subsidies that became CityFHEPS.
'When we created new rental assistance programs, they were almost entirely city-funded, so the state succeeded in shifting the costs of subsidizing rents for New York City residents moving out of shelter,' Banks said in an interview.
Throughout his tenure, which stretched from 2014 through 2021, 'there were repeated requests [to the state] for cost-sharing of the rental assistance program and other social services programs that were denied,' he added.
The city continues to bear significant, and growing, costs for the CityFHEPS program. The subsidies are projected to cost at least $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2025, up from $25 million in 2019. Cuomo acknowledged the steep price tag in his housing plan and called for supplemental state funding in a questionnaire submitted to the New York Housing Conference.
'CityFHEPS is a vital tool for keeping families out of shelters, but it needs to be supplemented with a state housing voucher program so New York City is not bearing the full cost of preventing homelessness,' the former governor wrote.
There's been a push from housing advocates in recent years to create a state-funded rent subsidy known as the Housing Access Voucher Program. Gov. Kathy Hochul had resisted that legislation since she took office in 2021, but agreed to establish a small pilot as part of the state budget this year.
The elimination of the Advantage program had lasting impacts beyond the availability of funding and affected attitudes towards vouchers in the private sector, advocates say.
'Landlords were furious and to this day, having been burned by that, are skeptical of government commitments of housing subsidies,' Goldfein said. 'So we have rampant source of income discrimination,' he continued, referring to landlords declining to rent to tenants who use vouchers.
Goldfein and others hold both the Bloomberg and Cuomo administrations accountable for the outcome, and note that the city could have handled the situation differently after state funding was cut off.
'I think they're both responsible, but Mike Bloomberg is not running for a fourth term,' Goldfein said. 'Cuomo easily had the ability to solve that problem and did not.'
Sally Goldenberg contributed reporting.