Quinn Argues Expanding CityFHEPS Cuts Costs, Even as Mamdani Delays Program Over Budget Gaps

As New York faces a looming budget crunch, debates over expanding a key housing voucher programme reveal uncomfortable trade-offs in its quest to stem homelessness efficiently.

The shelves at Win, New York’s largest shelter provider, are stacked with bedding but bare of permanence. In a city where over 80,000 people sleep in shelters or on the streets nightly, such reminders are omnipresent, yet durable solutions have proved more elusive. Now, the ever-contentious CityFHEPS—New York’s signature housing voucher scheme—sits once again in the crosshairs, as a yawning $12 billion budget gap prompts cutbacks and recriminations in equal measure.

At the heart of the dilemma lies a recent city comptroller’s audit, which revealed that underbudgeting for housing assistance has directly contributed to the municipal shortfall. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration, bracing for tough choices, has signaled it will delay a planned expansion of CityFHEPS. The measure is designed to subsidise rents for residents at risk of homelessness—roughly 62,000 voucher holders today, by the city’s count—acting as a bulwark against entry into the shelter system.

Yet prominent voices contend that this move borders on penny-wise, pound-foolish. Christine Quinn, former City Council Speaker and president of Win, asserts that a well-funded voucher programme would ultimately save the city money, chiefly by sparing New Yorkers far costlier spells in shelters. Her logic is hard to dismiss: a year in New York’s shelters typically costs taxpayers upwards of $43,000 per household, versus an average rental subsidy of about $20,000. “Every time someone avoids the shelter system, the city saves,” she insists, echoing a mantra among housing advocates.

This debate holds significant implications for the city’s lifelines—literally and fiscally. Since its launch, CityFHEPS has furnished vouchers for tens of thousands, yet demand constantly outstrips supply. The expansion, first floated in 2023, promised to relax eligibility and increase benefit amounts. But as city hall’s red ink deepens, expansion plans have stalled. Meanwhile, the number of families seeking shelter, swelled further by an influx of asylum-seekers, continues its relentless march upward.

The quandary exposes bruising trade-offs inherent in New York governance: every dollar spent forestalling eviction or housing a family is one not spent on police, schools, or other priorities. But housing interventions also entail less obvious savings, not only by paring shelter expenses but also by reducing the social and health costs associated with homelessness. Newer research from Columbia University points to a positive multiplier effect: for every extra $1 the city spends on rental assistance, it could recoup between $1.50 and $2 over three years, in part through decreased shelter usage and improved stability among voucher recipients.

Hard-headed budgeters, meanwhile, fret that medium-term savings are not enough to plug immediate fiscal holes. Over the next two years, Gotham’s projected $12 billion shortfall comes chiefly from ballooning costs tied to migrants, pandemic recovery, and economic uncertainty. At the same time, critics warn that voucher expansion has not, as yet, yielded proportional reductions in shelter populations—a grim testament to the city’s miserly housing stock and the reluctance of landlords to accept vouchers, despite recent legal reforms.

A web of national constraints

New York’s struggles are hardly unique. While the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development dispenses Housing Choice Vouchers nationally, its reach is puny: just a quarter of eligible families nationwide receive one, and waiting lists are measured in years, if not decades. Cities from Los Angeles to Boston have grappled with similar schemes, often with mixed results, hamstrung by federal underfunding and recalcitrant property owners. Stockholm and Vienna, famed for robust public housing, still mark the global high-water mark; American cities fall woefully short.

Still, there is room for cautious optimism. New York’s housing voucher expenditures, even in their incomplete state, are among the most generous in the country. CityFHEPS is no panacea, but better data transparency and stricter landlord compliance could render the programme more effective. Politically, the city’s left-leaning electorate tends to support such expansion, but the spectre of further tax hikes—already among the nation’s steepest—dampens the city’s appetite for new spending.

Some lessons are clear. Targeting resources at eviction prevention, boosting voucher acceptability among landlords, and demanding robust evaluation can stretch every public dollar further than another night in a shelter. The city’s experiment with more aggressive voucher expansion could yet point a way through the morass, provided it avoids the lull of half-measures and holds fast to outcomes over mere intentions.

Yet, the risks cannot be wished away: New York’s chronic housing shortfall, now decades in the making, menaces even the cleverest subsidy programme. If supply does not rise, subsidies merely chase rising rents; landlords may pocket the difference without expanding access. Real progress will therefore require not only bolstering voucher outlays, but also accelerating affordable housing construction—a Sisyphean task given the city’s baroque regulatory machinery.

We find little magic in vouchers alone, but reckoning with the costs and consequences of doing nothing is starker still. Just as fiscal prudence demands belt-tightening, urban stewardship requires that societies find ways to stem—not merely warehouse—homelessness. Pruning the CityFHEPS expansion may balance a ledger in June, but will almost certainly swell future ones.

New York’s ongoing voucher drama thus portends an uneasy truth: in the contest between immediate austerity and longer-horizon savings, the hardest choices may prove both the most necessary and the least popular. The budget will come and go, but the city’s homeless—the index of its priorities—will remain. ■