Opinion: Mamdani must act and expand CityFHEPS, after three years of delays

Three years ago, we sat together in City Hall and celebrated what we believed was a turning point in New York City’s fight against homelessness.

The City Council had just passed the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement expansion bills into law. CityFHEPS was meant to do something simple, humane, and urgently necessary: keep New Yorkers in their homes before they are evicted, and help families already in shelter move into permanent housing.

It was supposed to be a paradigm shift.

Instead, three years later, not a single New Yorker has benefitted from that expansion. More than 42,000 families have been evicted since these laws passed – an estimated 25,000 of those evictions could have been prevented. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers have been pushed into crisis while the city has chosen litigation over implementation.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has an opportunity – and a duty – to end this now.

During his campaign, he promised homeless New Yorkers, tenants, advocates and the council that he would drop the lawsuit. Instead, he continued the Adams administration’s appeal, choosing to keep blocking relief for the very families he claimed he would fight for. That decision is indefensible.

Every day this appeal continues, more families are harmed. A working mother expecting her third child faces eviction. A senior chooses between rent and food. A family of four remains trapped in a shelter for years, their children commuting hours each day to school. These are not abstractions. They are New Yorkers whose lives are being destabilized by a policy choice.

And the math does not justify the harm.

CityFHEPS is one of the most effective tools we have to keep families housed and move people out of shelter. It currently helps house approximately 150,000 New Yorkers at a fraction of the cost of the shelter system. In fiscal year 2027, the city is projected to spend $4.14 billion on shelter contracts for roughly 44,000 households. By comparison, CityFHEPS serves far more people at far lower cost.

The direct cost comparison alone should end the debate: keeping people in permanent homes costs a fraction of what it costs to keep them in shelter. But even that understates the moral failure. Because the true cost of homelessness is not only what appears in a budget line. It is the emergency room visits. The disrupted education. The trauma. The family instability. The violence. The anxiety and depression. The children growing up without the stability every child deserves.

In New York City, students living in homeless shelters experience a 63% chronic absenteeism rate. Housing instability is associated with higher emergency room use and increased risks of intimate partner violence. Shelter stays are connected to anxiety, depression, trauma in adults and behavioral challenges in children.

So when the city chooses to spend billions maintaining a shelter system instead of investing in permanent housing, it is not being fiscally responsible. It is paying more to produce worse outcomes.

That is unforgivable.

Advocates, including the Homes Can’t Wait coalition, have been clear: the mayor must stop standing in the way of lawful, lifesaving rental assistance. They are right. Now that the New York state budget is wrapping up, there are no more excuses for delay. The mayor must drop the appeal, sit down with the City Council, and settle on a real path forward – one reflected in the fiscal year 2027 budget.

That means funding CityFHEPS expansion this year.

Last week, when the mayor released his executive budget, he said he would not let working New Yorkers foot the bill while balancing the budget. But working New Yorkers are already paying the price for his refusal to act. They are paying through eviction. Through shelter stays. Through instability. Through children missing school. Through the long-term damage caused by preventable homelessness. Let’s get this done.