A homeless advocate of 40 years says finding homes for unhoused New Yorkers with vouchers has never been so hard

A huge number of homeless New Yorkers are families. Almost 120,000 New York City schoolchildren were homeless at some point during the 2022-2023 school year. And an unknown number of other New Yorkers are spending their nights on the streets.

Just a few years before Greenberg started his organization — the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing, which works with religious organizations to aid unhoused people — a court imposed a so-called “right to shelter” mandate requiring the city to provide a shelter bed for every unhoused person.

These days, the limits of that mandate are being tested as the homeless population has swelled, in part due to a significant influx of homeless migrants. With city shelters struggling, the government has set up more than 200 emergency shelters to house migrants, including in former jails and hotels.

“The nonprofit community is better at doing what we do than we’ve ever been before,” Greenberg said. “We’re also severely overworked and overtaxed.”

It’s no surprise that New York City is dealing with a homelessness crisis. Homelessness is, fundamentally, a housing problem. And the Big Apple has a dangerously low supply of both affordable and market-rate homes. The city has underbuilt homes for years, even as its population has boomed, creating 800,000 new jobs in the last 10 years while building just 200,000 new homes.

With rents and home prices sky-high, many are just a missed paycheck away from losing their homes. More than half of city residents are rent-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of their before-tax income for housing.

An inadequate solution

The country’s biggest and most effective housing assistance program is helping get some unhoused New Yorkers into homes. New York City’s housing authority operates the largest Housing Choice Voucher Program — also known as Section 8 —in the US, with about 85,000 voucher households and 25,000 landlords.

But the program is severely underfunded and need far outstrips the supply of vouchers in New York and across the country. Nationally, just one in four eligible Americans receive a voucher. About 10 million additional low-income households are going without the help they qualify for.

Greenberg’s organization helped push to expand the city’s voucher program, known as CityFHEPS. New York Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly rejected efforts to expand it, citing a lack of funds.

“We know that it’s less expensive to put someone in housing than it is to have them on the street, have them in shelters, or at the hospital,” Greenberg said.

Greenberg said he decided to seek out homeless voucher holders after hearing from those who’d had an excruciating time finding an apartment. “Two women who had already been housed using the vouchers said that the ordeal was so difficult, it was almost not worth it,” he said. “A bell went off for me.”

The Interfaith Assembly set up a pilot program about six months ago to help homeless voucher holders find homes. Their volunteers have worked with about a dozen people to determine what kind of assistance they need and help them find and secure a home. Greenberg said the work has exposed how much the most vulnerable voucher holders need an advocate to help them secure housing.

“Each situation is very particular and requires some real digging to figure out what’s wrong,” Greenberg said.

But the most difficult part, he said, is finding a new home.

Greenberg emphasized that the city needs more landlords who aren’t just profit-driven and instead care about helping some needier New Yorkers.

“Until there’s a large amount of available units, landlords are going to select someone that they feel is the best bet, and generally someone in a shelter is not going to make the cut unless it’s a very substandard apartment,” Greenberg said. “What we need to do is find landlords that really have a sense of mission to support this tenant.”

One approach is to assure landlords that they’re not taking a risk by accepting vouchers. Greenberg wants to see a city fund designated to reimburse landlords for any damages that exceed a voucher holder’s security deposit as a way to encourage landlords to take voucher holders — something Oregon and Washington State have done.

“I’ve spoken to landlords who want housing voucher holders, who’ve experienced some real damage to their apartments,” Greenberg said. “What we hope is for landlords to realize that the folks we’re working with are in a support system, so they’ll be more stable and less likely to be a bad tenant.”

There are a slew of other Section 8 reforms housing advocates have proposed, including providing more logistical and cash assistance to voucher holders and shortening the home inspection process. Ultimately, though, nothing will make up for the dearth of both vouchers and housing.