New York City’s homeless shelter population is swelling, but one method for moving people into permanent housing is taking longer than ever to complete.
The median timeline for shelter residents moving into city-financed apartments reserved for them has nearly doubled since 2020, according to city data.
Last year, it took about seven months for someone to move into those apartments after the approval process, the annual mayor’s management report shows. But in the 2020 fiscal year, it took less than four months. That timeline is considered to be a "critical indicator" of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development's performance.
More New Yorkers did manage to move from shelters to HPD-financed housing last year compared to 2021, with that number again trending up between July and October 2022. The agency said that was due to more completed apartments opening up last year.
The longer wait times come as the city’s shelter population exceeds 80,000 people a night, many of them recently arrived migrants, and as Mayor Eric Adams seeks ways to move people out more quickly to free up space in the beleaguered system.
HPD spokesperson William Fowler said the agency is evaluating how to streamline the move-in process, and noted that more than 1,200 households have moved from shelters to HPD-financed apartments since January, a figure that is on pace to surpass last year’s total.
“The data shows clearly that we’re helping a record number of homeless New Yorkers move out of shelter and into permanent housing and we’re currently on track to exceed last year’s placements,” said Fowler.
But that’s little comfort to New Yorkers in shelters still struggling to navigate the bureaucratic lottery process, relying on the mail or cheap cell phones to send in applications, submit required paperwork and stay up to speed.
Brooklyn native Darren Whitney, 62, wonders if the affordable housing lottery offers a false hope for getting out of a shelter system where he’s lived for the past six years.
Whitney has applied for a spot in more than a dozen buildings through the lottery in recent months, according to records he showed Gothamist. He entered the shelter system in 2017 after his release from state prison and has undergone multiple hip replacement surgeries while trying to secure permanent housing from a group shelter on Wards Island, which has limited access to the rest of the city.
Last month, Whitney, who earns less than $10,000 a year but has a rental assistance voucher from the city, learned he was picked to proceed to the final stage of the selection process for a brand new seven-story building in East Flatbush. It was the first time he received anything more than a denial and he said he started feeling optimistic.
But Whitney didn’t submit the necessary documents in time, resulting in an administrative rejection.
“I thought I had this,” Whitney said. “This whole premise was leading up to this. That … if you get lucky, they'll call you. You have all your documentation, you have it.”
Whitney said he asked his case manager at the Wards Island homeless shelter to upload various forms of identification, a birth certificate, an income statement and other documents required by the building developer. But the case manager did not send the forms before the deadline, or during a 10-day extension, Whitney said.
Whitney appealed the rejection, explaining in a message to HPD that he lacked the “tech literacy” to upload the documents from his glitchy cellphone.
“There's no way that this should happen,” he said. “But it’s gone. Let’s face the facts.”
According to Whitney, his case manager did not send the required paperwork in time.
The building owner did not respond to an email, but an HPD official said the site still has some available apartments.
HELP-USA, which operates the shelter, declined to comment on the specifics of Whitney’s experience, citing client privacy, but said it currently has three housing specialists and a housing director on staff at his shelter.
“We are proud of the work we do every day to help people find and maintain housing,” said Stephen Mott, HELP-USA's chief strategy officer. “This search can be a difficult process, especially in a city as unaffordable as New York.”
But the problems go much deeper than the interactions between individual shelter staffers and residents, said Catherine Trapani, head of the agency Homeless Services United.
The housing lottery process is plagued by short supply, too much paperwork and too few staff members at city agencies and nonprofit providers, Trapani said.
Back in 2019, the city enacted a new law requiring developers to set aside 15% of units in new apartment buildings for people leaving homeless shelters. But four years later, securing one of those units can be like “finding a needle in a haystack” — especially for people living in shelters, she said.
“It’s one of those things that’s almost mythic,” Trapani said. “The process to attain them is not easy.”
Since 2014, New Yorkers have submitted tens of millions of lottery applications. Roughly 30,000 people have moved into units over that span, according to city data first reported by City Limits. Last fiscal year, 2,175 households moved from shelters to units listed on the affordable housing lottery, according to the mayor’s management report.
It’s the highest number yet recorded, but still a drop in the bucket, Trapani said. She said making sure applications are submitted correctly and then speeding up the move-in process were two important ways to reduce the city’s burgeoning shelter population.
One problem is supply. Production slowed amid inflation and rising interest rates, and most newly created homeless set-aside units are in supportive housing sites reserved for people with mental illness or other special needs. HPD data shows developers started 2,275 units reserved for homeless New Yorkers last fiscal year — down from 2,849 the previous year. New construction in the first four months of the current fiscal year trailed last year’s pace.
Competition for apartments priced for the lowest-income New Yorkers is also extremely tight, reporting by City Limits and the news site The City shows. The City’s analysis of more than 18 million lottery applications found that units priced for “extremely low-income” New Yorkers received an average of 650 submissions, compared to 123 for middle-income apartments
And staffing problems across city agencies and nonprofit providers are only making things harder, Trapani said.
“You look at the staff shortages, low rates of pay, high caseloads. it’s not really a wonder that people can’t get through,” the lottery process she said.
But for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness who do manage to beat the odds, the affordable housing lottery is a lifeline.
Karim Walker, an outreach organizer with the homeless rights group Safety Net Project, was approved in August 2020 for a one-bedroom apartment in East New York that he applied for two years earlier. It took about five months before he was finally able to move in.
Walker said he has thrived since then. He said his health is improving and he has been losing weight by preparing his own meals in his kitchen.
“I don’t have to sign in and out of my apartment. I have my own space,” he said. “I wish everyone could benefit from something like this.”
This story has been updated to correct that 1,200 households have moved from shelters to HPD-financed apartments since January, and 2,175 households moved from shelters into affordable housing units last fiscal year. A previous version also inaccurately characterized units set aside for homeless people.
