By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams on Monday boasted about his administration’s back-to-back record-breaking years producing and connecting New Yorkers to new, affordable homes.
For the second year in a row, the City has produced the most supportive housing and housing for formerly homeless New Yorkers, Adams said. As the city faces a generational housing shortage and an affordability crisis, the administration, this year, financed the most new affordable homes in history.
Following decades of disinvestment, the City also converted 3,678 New York City Housing Authority apartments into newly renovated residences. The Adams administration additionally moved a record number of homeless New Yorkers into permanent housing through the highest usage of City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (CityFHEPS) housing vouchers, affordable housing through the city’s housing lottery program, and placing formerly homeless households into permanently-affordable housing. In total, city agencies financed a combined 28,944 affordable and public housing units in Fiscal Year 2024 through new construction and preservation initiatives.
Adams said the administration is continuing to prioritize transitioning homeless New Yorkers from streets, subways, and homeless shelters into stable, permanent housing. In FY24, the City built the highest ever count of supportive homes and homes for the homeless in the city’s history, and increased production of housing for the formerly homeless by 15 percent.
More New Yorkers are being connected to affordable housing at a faster rate. The City Department of Housing Preservation and Development approved 9,550 households for new housing lotteries, connected 3,990 homeless households to permanently affordable homes, and marketed a record 315 housing lotteries through Housing Connect. HPD exceeded its fiscal year completions target by more than 40 percent, completing a total 21,159 units of affordable housing.
The City Department of Social Services helped 16,902 households move out of shelter and into permanent housing over FY24, 12,526 of which were placed into subsidized permanent housing — a more than 20 percent increase over FY23. DSS had back-to-back record-breaking years connecting New Yorkers to housing using CityFHEPS vouchers.
“Over back-to-back years, our administration has faced a housing crisis head-on by building and connecting more New Yorkers than ever to affordable housing,” Adams said. “These record-breaking years are the result of countless City agencies coming together to make sure all New Yorkers — from our formerly homeless to families at the edge of poverty to those just struggling to make ends meet — have access to safe, stable housing. While today we celebrate our progress, tomorrow we get back to work and aim even higher. ‘City of Yes for Housing Opportunity’ is another tool we have to produce over 108,000 new homes that our city needs and deserves in the next 15 years. Today, I’m calling on all of our partners in government to come together and say ‘yes’ to helping the City build its way out of this crisis.”
Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar (D-Woodhaven) added, “In a city where half of tenants are rent-burdened, we will continue to implement every policy so that all New Yorkers have safe, affordable housing.”
