Hochul says housing voucher bill is still too expensive

Tenant advocates and the real estate lobby are pushing Gov. Kathy Hochul to include the Housing Access Voucher Program as part of her affordability agenda, but the governor continues to insist that the program would be prohibitively expensive.

Supporters of the bill, which is sponsored by state Senate Housing Committee Chair Brian Kavanagh and Assembly Housing Committee Chair Linda Rosenthal, had hoped that the governor might embrace the bill now that affordability is the 2025 legislative session’s buzzword – especially as lawmakers stare down budget negotiations that will have them thinking about D.C. nearly as much as New York. But the bill faces the same pushback from the executive chamber that it has for years: It’s too expensive.

The Housing Voucher Access Program would provide homeless New Yorkers and residents facing eviction with vouchers that subsidize housing costs above 30% of their income. At an unrelated housing announcement late last month, Hochul reaffirmed her belief that the bill would cost too much.

“Well, we have housing vouchers, but they’re not going to be able to do it at the scale that was recommended,” Hochul told reporters. “That was not contemplated because we have other strategies to help people. We had a lot of tenant protections last year. We have been doing everything we can to make New York more affordable, but there are also some initiatives that are so expensive (that) if you contemplate them, it's going to affect our ability to do other projects.”

In the past, Hochul has suggested the bill would cost $6 billion in total, though the bill’s supporters estimate it would cost closer to $1 billion. During last year's budget negotiations, state lawmakers proposed $250 million in funding for the housing voucher program, but it ultimately didn’t make it into the final state budget. 

Kavanagh said last week that the governor is massively overestimating the cost and scope of the program. “As we’ve structured this, it is not intended to meet all housing needs across the state,” he said.

Supporters of the bill argue that it would provide relief for the state’s overtaxed shelter system, reducing the costs of caring for a large population of homeless New Yorkers..

“In just one year, New York state’s homelessness population doubled – and over 146,000 school children were homeless during the 2023-2024 school year,” tenant advocacy organization Housing Justice for All said in a statement. “There’s a clear solution: to house the homeless and prevent homelessness with the Housing Access Voucher Program. But Governor Hochul, who has pledged to reduce child poverty, has refused to support this bill – and in effect has doomed hundreds of thousands to shelters and the streets.”

Real estate interests also support the plan. The Real Estate Board of New York has backed the bill since its inception, putting it in the unusual position of siding with tenant advocacy organizations like Housing Justice For All with which it is usually at odds.

“Vouchers like HAVP are a proven policy solution against housing insecurity and far less costly to the taxpayer than additional social services necessary to offset growing homelessness,” REBNY Senior Vice President Aravella Simotas said in a statement. “We are hopeful stakeholders can identify sustainable funding solutions for this important program.”

Rosenthal said that given the governor’s focus on affordability for New Yorkers, the bill would help the least advantaged New Yorkers cope with economic realities. “The governor's theme, as she's repeated, is affordability, and for people who are homeless and sleeping in shelters around the street, or people who are on the verge of eviction, affordability can mean to them a state housing voucher,” she told City & State. 

For Rosenthal, the Trump administration is also cause for concern, with executive orders flying on a daily basis that can upend local policies and initiatives – making state action to assist low-income New Yorkers all the more important. “The president has made no secret that he has no affection for this state, and certainly no regard for poor people or people of low or moderate income, and so we have yet to see, but I'm sure there are more executive orders coming,” she said. 

Budget negotiations are still in a nascent stage, but lawmakers plan to push for the housing voucher program as the one-house budgets are finalized.