Testimony: Ensuring Housing Stability and Equity in New York City’s FY26 Budget

Testimony: Ensuring Housing Stability and Equity in New York City's FY26 Budget

Oksana MironovaSamuel SteinIziah Thompson

Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today's hearing of the City Council Committee on Housing and Buildings and the City Council Committee on our city housing budget needs. Our names are Oksana Mironova, Samuel Stein, and Iziah Thompson, and we are housing policy analysts at the Community Service Society of New York (CSS).

CSS has worked with and for New Yorkers since 1843 to promote economic opportunity and champion an equitable city and state. We center the voices and experiences of communities of color and those with low incomes, powering change through a strategic combination of research, services, and advocacy.

We commend the City Council for securing a $5 billion commitment in funding for an inclusive policy agenda during the City of Yes negotiations. Our testimony will focus on ensuring that commitment remains steadfast in FY26 budget negotiations, as well as on identifying key programs that require additional funding during a period of unprecedented federal upheaval.

Right to Counsel

One of those key programs is Right to Counsel. In her original City for All proposal, Council Speaker Adams called for "a major increase of funding for the Right to Counsel program," which could "help expand access to legal services that reduce housing insecurity caused by evictions, strengthening the program and its workforce to help more eligible New Yorkers." Unfortunately, this funding expansion did not make it into the final City for All package.

Our March 2025 eviction analysis found that Right to Counsel, in tandem with a stronger rent stabilization system, has helped reduce eviction filings by 49 percent. But even as the program's impact is clear, gaps in implementation are growing. Increasingly, qualified tenants are not being offered legal counsel. And we are also seeing a troubling rise in evictions of moderate-income tenants.

Right to Counsel is an empirically proven policy tool that helps keep people in their homes. But without full funding, its potential is being undermined-with dire consequences for tenants. It is imperative that the program is funded fully. Full implementation requires at least an additional $350 million to ensure there are enough attorneys to represent every tenant entitled to counsel under the law.

We call on the city to honor its commitment to full implementation of Right to Counsel. No eligible New Yorker should ever be forced to face an eviction without legal support.

Neighborhood Pillars and Open Door

Last year, we joined advocates, Councilmembers, and the Comptroller's Office in calling for increased funding for Neighborhood Pillars and Open Door, as part of the Homes Now, Homes for Generations campaign to expand investment in social housing in the city. The final budget included a two-year, $30 million investment in Neighborhood Pillars and a $110 million investment in Open Door.

Yet, as we near the end of the third quarter of FY25, neither program has been relaunched with new term sheets, much less produced new units.

These delays undermine the city's commitment to expanding affordable housing. We call on the city to follow through on its promises and relaunch both programs immediately.

Community Land Trust Initiative

Alongside these programmatic investments, the city must continue supporting community-driven housing models, including the growing network of community land trusts. Since 2017, the city has provided support to the community land trust (CLT) movement through the citywide CLT Initiative. Despite receiving just $1.5 million annually in municipal funding, grassroots organizers have seeded 19 CLTs throughout New York City thus far. Increased investment would expand these groups' organizational capacity and help launch additional local projects.

As part of its $5 billion City for All plan, the City Council pledged to double funding for the citywide CLT Initiative to $3 million a year, contingent on the State's commitment to the City for All plan.

We call on the city to follow through on this promise in the FY26 budget and double funding for the citywide CLT Initiative.

Legacy social housing funding: Public housing, Mitchell Lama, HDFCs

Preserving and strengthening the city's existing social housing infrastructure is just as important as supporting new development and community ownership. We commend the City Council for ensuring that the $2 billion capital commitment-equally split between the city and state-includes funding to preserve our legacy social housing stock: Mitchell Lama developments, public housing, and HDFC coops. We are also encouraged by the complementary funding for public housing and Mitchell Lama preservation in both the Senate and Assembly one-house budgets.

Additionally, we are glad to see a coordinated plan to help improve and stabilize Mitchell Lama projects through a joint City-State Mitchell Lama Action Group. Our legacy social housing developments house over 275,000 families. As the city and state undertake their stabilization efforts, it is crucial that their deep and permanent affordability is preserved.

HPD and DOB capacity

Investing in buildings alone is also not enough. The city must also ensure that existing housing is safe, habitable, and not undermined by speculative ownership or landlord neglect. As the current federal administration destroys its own administrative capacity, high-functioning and well-resourced local agencies are more important than ever for helping to helping to protect tenants, enforce housing quality standards, and hold negligent landlords accountable.

With a commitment for 200 staff lines in City for All, we encourage the Department of Buildings and the Department of Housing and Preservation Development to immediately expand proactive inspections, code enforcement, and litigation against unscrupulous landlords. This need is especially urgent in neighborhoods like the Northwest Bronx, Southeast Brooklyn, and Upper Manhattan, where there has been a troubling increase in housing violations. These neighborhoods were hot spots for predatory investment in the early 2000s, saw a wave of foreclosures in the ensuing mortgage bubble, and experienced renewed speculation in the 2010s, fueled by predatory lending practices from banks like Signature and New York Community Bank.

The tenants in many of these buildings have endured unsafe and unsanitary living conditions for years-sometimes decades-because of poor financial decisions made by their landlords. These conditions demand strong public intervention, facilitated by proactive code enforcement and strategic litigation.

Preservation

Proactive code enforcement and litigation must be part of a broader recommitment to housing preservation. While the current administration has oriented its housing agenda around development, distress is mounting across the full spectrum of housing where low-income New Yorkers live: unregulated and regulated, subsidized and unsubsidized, public and private.

The City Council's commitments to preservation in City for All-including additional capital and a revamped J-51 program-are important steps forward. But more is needed. The city must also employ existing and new tools for taking away properties from landlords who force their tenants to live in unconscionable conditions. These include revamped Third Party Transfer (TPT) and 7A programs, both of which allow the city to directly address gross mismanagement of rental properties. Similarly, if passed, the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) would give tenants and mission-driven entities the first chance to purchase distressed properties before they fall into speculative hands.

All three of these strategies will require increased funding for effective implementation. We urge the city to fund TPT and 7A, and to pass COPA.

CityFHEPS

Just as we need stronger tools to preserve and stabilize housing, we also need stronger tools to prevent displacement. We appreciate the City Council's championship of CityFHEPS and particularly City Council's Housing Chair Sanchez's multiyear commitment to in-community expansion of the program.

Preventing eviction is more effective-and less traumatic-than responding to it after the fact. That is precisely what in-community expansion of CityFHEPS is designed to do: to intervene before a family loses their home.

However, the administration's budgeting practices continue to undermine this potential. The city consistently underbudgets CityFHEPS, only to reallocate money to cover the need later in the year. As a result, the additional $215 million allocated to CityFHEPS under City for All will not actually result in any additional service whatsoever. It will only mean a smaller mid-year reallocation to cover the people who would already be covered. To have a meaningful impact, the city must earmark the additional CityFHEPS funding for in-community expansion. To have the most impact with the resources available, we recommend prioritizing households that:

1. Are currently being sued by their landlord in Housing Court;
   
2. Are regulated (rent stabilized, rent controlled, Mitchell Lama, LIHTC, or Good Cause eligible);
   
3. Have a senior, a person with a disability, or a minor child (under 18); and
   
4. Have an income at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level;
   
5. Are paying rent at or below the CityFHEPS rent levels; and
   
6. Would use a voucher for their current apartment.

We believe New York City can lead the way in ensuring housing stability for its residents. The FY26 budget is an opportunity to move us closer to that future. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. If you have any questions or want to discuss further, please reach out to us at omironova@cssny.org, sstein@cssny.org, and ithompson@cssny.org.

Issues Covered

Affordable Housing

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