Menin delays budget handshake, pressing Mamdani on rental voucher expansion

There could have been a budget handshake on Friday, a triumphant end to a banner week for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. If not for City Council Speaker Julie Menin.

The City Council speaker instead gathered with more than a dozen council members, former Speaker Christine Quinn, and a crowd of advocates for a rally on the steps of City Hall to call for more funding in the 2027 budget for the rental voucher program known as CityFHEPS.

“I think we’ve been pretty clear about what we have been looking for, and that is around $300 million dollars a year,” Menin told reporters. “That is something that we have been pushing for.” Though the council didn’t include expanding CityFHEPS in its initial list of priorities responding to Mamdani’s preliminary budget, it’s become a final sticking point in negotiations. The council earlier this month projected increased tax revenue that could cover the price tag.

The rental voucher program cost has ballooned since it launched in 2019. It initially cost $25 million, but is expected to cost $1.7 billion this fiscal year, according to the fiscally conservative budget watchdog the Citizens Budget Commission. And that’s without an expansion in eligibility for the program that the City Council is calling for this year.

As a candidate in the mayoral race, Mamdani had promised that he would implement the laws expanding eligibility for the rental voucher program. Those laws were passed by the City Council in 2023, but former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration refused to implement them, citing the high cost. The issue has been tied up in the courts ever since. First, the Legal Aid Society and City Council sued, hoping to force Adams to comply with the laws. While a state judge initially ruled in the mayor’s favor, it was later reversed by an appellate court. Enter Mamdani, who’d said he would negotiate a settlement with the City Council and housing advocates. However, facing his own multibillion dollar budget gap upon taking office, he pivoted, asking the Court of Appeals to overturn the latest ruling while taking up his predecessor’s argument that the City Council lacks the legal authority to expand the program. 

The originally proposed expansion could have cost up to $22 billion over 5 years, according to the city Comptroller Mark Levine. Now the council is seeking a settlement with a much smaller expansion of the program.

"Mayor Mamdani has been clear that this Administration believes that CityFHEPS is a lifeline for thousands of New Yorkers leaving the shelter system and seeking stable housing,” Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement. “As the stewards of CityFHEPS, and as an administration that firmly believes in its purpose, we want to protect it by placing it on firm financial footing. That is why we are pursuing major reforms that protect the program's future."

Not allocating additional funding to expand the program would cast a long shadow over the mayor’s first budget. City Council Member Pierina Sanchez, who chairs the council’s Committee on Housing and Buildings and helped lead the voucher expansion, has said that she and other council members may vote against the upcoming deal if a significant expansion of CityFHEPS is not included. Progressive Caucus co-Chair Sandy Nurse confirmed some members may not vote to support a budget without extra funding for the program.

Several council members who spoke at the rally thanked Menin for taking a strong stand on the rental vouchers issue. 

Former speaker Christine Quinn, who now leads Win, the city’s largest shelter provider, did not mince words as she urged Mamdani to side with “homeless children” and not “break a promise and turn your back on the most needy of New York’s cutest in this budget.” She called Menin’s decision to join them on Friday “unorthodox.” “On the day that was supposed to be the handshake, I don’t know that I would have done it,” Quinn said. “It is truly, truly significant and speaks to the steadfast support we have received from Speaker Menin and her colleagues.”