Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
A typo. A missing screw. These are the small snags keeping NYC families in shelters.
By
Karen Yi
Published Nov 3, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. ET
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
Karen Yi / Gothamist
By
Karen Yi
Published Nov 3, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. ET
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Roxy Shweky’s job is to make sure New York City apartments pass their inspections. Once they do, families living in city shelters can use housing vouchers to move into them.
Shweky works for the housing nonprofit Anthos Home, acting as a liaison between the landlord, tenant and the city.
During a recent tour of a Brooklyn apartment that had already failed twice, she showed an inspector the smoke detector that needed to be moved closer to the bedroom and the electrical outlet that needed grounding. Then he noticed a tiny detail on a kitchen window frame. On a metal bracket where there should be two screws, there was only one.
The apartment failed again. Shweky would need the landlord to make the fix before the apartment could get the OK for a family to move in.
“We all care deeply about households moving into quality, safe, dignified housing,” said Chris Mann, vice president of public policy and strategy for WIN, the city’s largest provider of family homeless shelters and supportive housing.
“But the complexity doesn't need to be this way.”
New York City’s cityFHEPS housing vouchers are a lifeline for people trying to leave the homeless shelter system. But getting city approval for a voucher can be a serpentine process — where one wrong move can mean starting over.
Housing advocates said even the smallest issue — like a burned out light bulb during an apartment inspection or a typo on a form — can delay a family moving out of a shelter and into an apartment by weeks. The pitfalls can happen at nearly every step of the process: from the moment a household applies for rental assistance, to finding an available unit, to the nearly 70-100 pages of paperwork and forms the city requires before giving a final OK.
“ We're talking about people's lives,” Mann said. “Every day in shelter is a day too long for a family.”
Housing advocates said the municipal voucher program is unnecessarily convoluted, trapping New Yorkers who desperately need a place to live in shelters for too long.
The Mamdani administration has announced a series of changes to speed up the process and said it’s already cut down the number of days it takes an application to be reviewed.
Nicholas Jacobelli, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Services, which administers the vouchers, said the administration has “taken numerous steps to cut the red tape required for New Yorkers to move out of shelter and into stable housing. We continue to test new mechanisms to further expedite these processes with the goal of housing New Yorkers more quickly.”
He said the city reduced how often applications from shelter residents are returned from 94% to 58% and cut down the number of times an application is returned prior to its approval by more than half. City officials also launched a new pilot to make move-ins for shelter residents into housing much faster by working directly with landlords.
But nonprofit groups and shelter providers said there’s still more to fix, and the stakes are high: A record number of New Yorkers are residing in city shelters every night as the rate of available apartments remains historically low.
Several bills introduced by City Council members aim to streamline parts of the system, like requiring city officials to approve or deny voucher applications within 15 days. The city said it now takes an average of 24 days to approve or deny an application, down from 28 days in the past. Applications are usually returned over missing, incorrect or incomplete forms, according to the Department of Social Services.
Jackie Mallon, chief operating officer for Anthos Home, a nonprofit focused on getting shelter residents into housing quickly, describes a process reminiscent of the board game Chutes and Ladders.
“There are a lot of points in the process where you could be stuck, have to go back to the beginning and start all over, and it's frustrating and difficult,” Mallon said. “It's just incredibly hard to do it on your own.”
Erin Dalton, the social services department's commissioner, said during a recent city council hearing the agency needed to balance making inspections faster while making sure the apartments taxpayers are subsidizing are safe.
She said once a person is found eligible for a voucher, it takes an average of nearly 8 months, or 236 days, for a family to move into a unit. City officials said the dearth of affordable housing and the city’s 1.4% of empty apartments can make the search process longer.
About 14,200 people are currently in shelter who have been found eligible for a voucher and are authorized to look for an apartment, city officials said.
Growth and savings
The CityFHEPS voucher program is one of the largest municipal voucher programs in the country.
More than 74,000 households rely on the program that’s expanded due to high demand. Recipients pay no more than 30% of their income toward rent. The city covers the rest.
With federal cut backs to rental assistance programs and only modest state rental aid, the vouchers are the primary way New Yorkers are able to leave the city’s homeless shelters.
But even as the city is pushing reforms, some efforts have backfired. Earlier this year, the Mamdani administration announced it would make the $1.2 billion program more efficient and save $500 million by cutting back how much it pays brokers and landlords.
In April, officials began checking to make sure the city wasn’t overpaying rents — an initiative that resulted in even more delays.
The new review process meant what used to take two days began taking an average of 53 days, according to Jade Vasquez, director of policy and research at WIN.
“ You don't want to overpay city dollars to landlords that are overcharging. But the process just seems very burdensome,” Vasquez said.
In September, the city moved the new rent review requirement to after a tenant moves into the unit to avoid further delays. But the change only applies to rent stabilized units. Market-rate units continue to experience move-in delays, providers said.
“It's like a half of a solution,” Vasquez said.
Repeat inspections
Housing advocates said inspections can be the most onerous part, setting back move-ins by months over issues that are often minor. Inspections are done by nonprofit partners, with the harder ones conducted by the Department of Social Services — and based on a strict checklist.
“Water temperature has to be between 120F and 128F. If it's too low, it won't pass. If it's too high, it won't pass,” said Shweky, housing unit readiness and repairs specialist at Anthos Home.
According to the Department of Social Services, 44% of inspections it conducts fail, with the top causes due to water temperature, electrical outlet deficiencies, missing or unlabeled apartment numbers, window guard and bracket violations or fridge and freezer temperature failures.
“ The porridge has to be exactly the right temperature for it all to magically be ready,” said Laura Lazarus, cofounder and CEO of Anthos Home.
Landlord and developer Iser Shepherd said the process can take so long that units are sitting vacant for months.
“Everyone gets frustrated. The tenant wants to know, the management wants to know. The landlord's getting furious like, ‘I'm not getting any response. Let me get another tenant,’” he said.
“Landlords, they want to accept vouchers. They just want to have a way that 's easy to do.”
City officials said they piloted a fast track inspection process that will expand next year.
Reams of paperwork
After a person is found eligible for a voucher, finds an apartment, gets the unit approved by the city and collects all necessary paperwork, everything is submitted to the city in a package.
The complete application includes forms like the last 30 days of income for everyone in the household over 18 years old, a letter from the homeless shelter, a checklist for the unit’s conditions, and a lease agreement. All of it can number as many as 100 pages.
Mann said a typo on the paperwork sent to the city — such as the apartment written as both 1A and A1 — can mean rejection, and having to resubmit everything again.
And if along the process, an applicant’s income changes by more than $125 a month, then they have to resubmit their pay stubs to the city so they can recalculate the budget.
Mario Vega, program director of operations for Anthos Home said since many applicants are hourly workers, just a couple work shifts can trigger the lengthy process
“I can't imagine a participant being able to do any of this without the support of their shelter worker or … us.”
Social services officials said homeless shelters are budgeted to have one housing specialist that can help with housing applications for every 40 residents, though not all shelters have one. Officials said all shelter staff should know how to navigate the housing voucher process.
Three case managers
Kelvin Wallace, 65, spent 11 months in a homeless shelter as he scrambled to figure out how to move out with a housing voucher. He said he worked with three different case managers in that time.
“I had to submit my application [on] at least three different occasions with three different case managers,” he said.
The challenge for him was figuring out whether he was even eligible for a voucher and being able to see the status of his application.
“ You have to reset each and every time,” a case manager changes, he said. Wallace said his case was ultimately referred to Anthos Home which helped him get an apartment in four months.
“I feel comfortable that I'm here. I'm on solid ground,” he said.
Tagged
bronx
homelessness
new york city
Karen Yi
Karen Yi covers homelessness and poverty. She joined the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom in 2020. Before that, Karen covered Newark for the Star-Ledger and spent almost a decade working for newspapers in New Jersey and Florida. She grew up in Miami and has a dog named Cashew. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-589-1460.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Child dies in raging Upstate New York measles outbreak
It’s the first measles death in the state in 30 years.
By
Caroline Lewis
Published Nov 3, 2026 at 11:52 a.m. ET
Medicaid is changing. We want to hear from NYers about what's ahead.
Upcoming changes could push hundreds of thousands onto the rolls of the uninsured.
By
Caroline Lewis
News
Medicaid is changing. We want to hear from NYers about what's ahead.
Upcoming changes could push hundreds of thousands onto the rolls of the uninsured.
By
Caroline Lewis
Early Addition: Why Sweetgreen is pivoting to wraps
By
James Ramsay
Ballot problems in Westchester: Lawler v. Conley race results could be delayed
By
Ben Feuerherd
How to spend $20M in East Williamsburg? A discussion begins.
By
Willow Higgins
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .