In 2024, 352,000 New York City households participated in rental assistance programs, including Section 8/Housing Choice Vouchers, Shelter Allowance, City FHEPS, and SCRIE/DRIE. These programs provide low-income and often vulnerable New Yorkers access to safe, stable and affordable homes. Research has shown that rental assistance programs can be effective in reducing homelessness and helping people out of poverty. Rental assistance programs such as the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, should also allow New Yorkers to find housing in the neighborhoods that are best for them, a guiding fair housing principle and central tenet of the City’s balanced approach to fair housing.
Source of income discrimination is a major barrier to rental assistance holders’ access to affordable housing
Locally and nationally, however, rental assistance programs have failed to create housing choice for the households who participate. The concentration of households who use rental assistance, both nationally and locally, is the result of a number of factors. The lack of low-cost housing in many neighborhoods is one factor. Source of income (SOI) discrimination, which is illegal in New York City and New York State, is another.
–2025 questionnaire respondent
–2025 questionnaire respondent
Data suggests that these conditions are worsening. While the City committed to a number of actions in WWL2020 to improve the overall effectiveness and usability of rental assistance, several factors have made it increasingly difficult to use rental assistance successfully. The worsening vacancy rate citywide, especially among the lowest-cost homes (referenced above), and the increasingly high rents citywide (median asking rent reached $3,000 per month, with even much higher rents in some neighborhoods), make it harder to use rental assistance and increase the risk of SOI discrimination. Recent studies suggest that success rates have dropped both nationally and locally. A 2024 study found that only 53% of new NYCHA HCV recipients successfully used their rental assistance to lease a home in 2022, which is also down from 66% in 2018. (For more discussion of Source of Income discrimination, see Goal 1.)
Figure 5.16: Median Monthly Contract Rent by Borough, Type of Housing
Source: NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey, 2023
Housing Choice Vouchers are heavily concentrated in a few neighborhoods, restricting broader access to the city’s resources
In New York City, renters using Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs) tend to be concentrated in neighborhoods in the Bronx, upper Manhattan, and central and southeastern Brooklyn. The Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) program, funded through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, provided New York City with nearly 8,000 new vouchers administered by NYCHA and HPD since WWL2020.
This led to a temporary surge in voucher lease-ups during 2021 and 2022, which came with enhanced supports:
- Broker fee and security deposit assistance
- Housing navigation services
- Streamlined eligibility and documentation requirements
Figure 5.17: Number of Apartments Leased with an Emergency Housing Voucher by Borough, 2025
Source: NYC Housing Preservation and Development, 2025
Despite representing a smaller share of the city’s total housing stock and mobility, Brooklyn and the Bronx together accounted for 73% of all voucher-based moves during this period, reinforcing patterns of geographic concentration.
While households who want to live in the Bronx, upper Manhattan, and central and southeastern Brooklyn neighborhoods should have that choice, no household interested in living elsewhere should be limited from accessing other parts of the city.
Exception Payment Standards aim to address cost barriers to housing mobility, but rely on criteria that do not universally reflect New Yorkers’ priorities
One way the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program attempts to alleviate some of these challenges is by increasing the payment standard (or the maximum rent an HCV will support) in certain neighborhoods via Exception Payment Standards (EPS). In EPS-eligible ZIP code tabulation areas (ZCTA), subsidy levels are higher than the standard “Fair Market Rent.” Currently, these EPS ZCTAs in New York City are determined by a combination of:
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1) A poverty rate lower than 10%
2) A violent felony crime rate lower than2.8 per 1,000 people
3) The ZCTA being substantially located in one of seven school districts with the highest proficiency rates on 4th grade math tests
This approach has been common nationally: Many fair housing programs have embraced the idea that certain neighborhoods can be identified as “high opportunity.” However, determining EPS neighborhoods based on characteristics other than rent creates norms around where New Yorkers with rental assistance should live instead of using EPS payment standards to remove cost as an obstacle. For example, only approximately 22% of HPD’s HCV program participants are families with children. For the many households using HCVs who do not have children, school performance is likely is not relevant to their neighborhood choice.
The City’s programs should empower rental assistance holders to choose where they to want live and should focus on removing obstacles to accessing the neighborhood of their choice. In addition to its prior commitments to expand the number of homes available to New Yorkers who use rental assistance and improving the effectiveness, efficiency and experience for participants in those programs, the City is newly committing to recalibrating the EPS formula so that it is more closely tailored to the problem of high neighborhood housing costs.
Section 8 funding is essential to supporting vulnerable New Yorkers’ housing needs
Of the more than five million people that receive Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs) nationally, an estimated 40% are children, and 16% are over 61 years old. Additionally, one quarter are disabled. In New York City, roughly 120,000 households participate in the HCV program, which disproportionately serves the most vulnerable New Yorkers. Roughly 65% of HPD’s Section 8 recipients are older adults and/or people with disabilities. Despite the fact that many more income-eligible households nationally and locally are in need of rental assistance, these federal funds are currently at risk. Losing current HCV funding would be incredibly destabilizing for New Yorkers and our housing market and would undermine many of the goals of this plan. The City will fight to protect Section 8 funding to ensure we can continue to help the households who so desperately need it and to protect one of our most important remaining federal fair housing tools.
