Low-income New Yorkers sue Mayor Adams over refusal to expand rental voucher access

Four New Yorkers who are either at risk of becoming homeless or already living in the shelter system sued Mayor Adams on Wednesday for refusing to implement a package of laws that would make it easier for them to access the city’s rental assistance program.

The lawsuit, filed by the Legal Aid Society in Manhattan Supreme Court on behalf of the four plaintiffs, asks a judge to force the mayor to comply with the new laws, which he has said he can’t due to cost and housing supply concerns.

“All of these plaintiffs have one thing in common: If Mayor Adams would implement the laws … their housing needs would be met,” Adriene Holder, Legal Aid’s chief civil attorney, said while announcing the suit during a Wednesday morning news conference on the City Hall steps. “No more sleepless nights in shelters, no more trips back and forth to Housing Court, and no more harassing calls from landlords and management companies demanding and threatening eviction.”

The disputed laws revolve around CityFHEPS, a city-funded voucher program that subsidizes rent on open market apartments for low-income New Yorkers.

The laws — which have been a source of tense debate since the City Council first passed them last summer — would expand access to vouchers by increasing the income cap for eligibility and removing a rule requiring beneficiaries to enter a shelter before they can apply, among other provisions.

If the shelter entry requirement is scrapped, income-eligible New Yorkers could use a rent demand from a landlord as grounds for getting a voucher, allowing them to stay in their homes while applying.

The new lawsuit is seeking class action status to represent all New Yorkers who’d become eligible for CityFHEPS under the contested laws.

One of the suit’s named plaintiffs is Marie Vincent, a cancer survivor who has lived in a city shelter with her 12-year-old grandson since being evicted from their Bronx home last May when their landlord sold the building.

Vincent, who works nights as a housekeeper at a local hospital, said she can’t apply for a voucher because she earns too much under current CityFHEPS rules.

At the same time, Vincent said she earns too little to afford a new apartment, forcing her to remain in a shelter. If the new laws were to take effect, she would be able to get a voucher, and she said the mayor is breaking his 2021 campaign promises by refusing to implement them.

“Mayor Adams, you ran a campaign promising to help working people, people like me, but I realize that it was all lip service. Promises made, promises broken,” she said. “My grandson, I’ve been promising him that we wouldn’t be in this situation for much longer, I told him we would be out by October. It is now almost his 13th birthday, and we’re still in the current situation. It’s extremely hard on him, it’s extremely hard on a lot of our families.”

The three other plaintiffs are New Yorkers on the brink of being evicted from their apartments, including an 86-year-old Brooklyn woman who has been unable to afford rent since her husband died during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to court papers.

Kayla Mamelak, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said City Hall believes the Council’s CityFHEPS reforms “violate state law as they seek to legislate in an area where authority is reserved to the state.”

Mamelak also reiterated the mayor’s contention that the laws, if implemented, would add $17 billion in cost to the city over the next five years, a price tag Council Democrats say is exaggerated.

“With more than 10,000 households with CityFHEPS vouchers already in the city shelter system unable to find housing and a rental vacancy rate of just 1.4%, a historic low in the last 60 years, the Council’s bill will only make it harder for New Yorkers in shelter to move into permanent housing,” Mamelak also said.

Last week, the Council authorized Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) to take legal action against the mayor over his refusal to put the new CityFHEPS laws into practice.

Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala (D-Bronx, Manhattan), who attended Wednesday’s news conference on the City Hall steps, said the Council still hasn’t decided whether it’s going to file its own lawsuit.

“We are still exploring our options,” Ayala told reporters.

Council sources have said the speaker could opt to join Legal Aid’s suit instead of filing her own.

The mayor vetoed the Council’s CityFHEPS reforms last summer, but was ultimately overridden in July. Since then, he has refused to implement the laws.

Ex-City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), who runs family shelter provider Win and has been a booster of the CityFHEPS reforms, acknowledged the lawsuit might not produce a quick resolution.

“Before we have to go through months and months of court trials and all of those machinations, the mayor should, as we saw him do in the budget, change his position and implement these laws immediately,” she said.