As state and local agencies grapple with the housing and mental health needs of unsheltered New Yorkers, internal city numbers obtained by THE CITY show long odds for getting a spot in apartments designed to support people who need psychiatric or substance use treatment.
Out of 955 people who were living on the streets and subways who were approved for supportive housing during the period tracked by the city social service and health agencies over several months last year, 175 successfully obtained a spot — just 18% of the total.
Nearly 400 people were still waiting to be referred to a supportive housing provider for an interview, despite thousands of apartments sitting empty, while 131 people waited more than a year and had their applications expire without getting a placement.
Dozens didn’t appear for their interview or had it cancelled on them. Another 33 people were rejected by the nonprofit housing provider that interviewed them, and four died before they could be housed, figures obtained by Legal Services NYC through a Freedom of Information Law request show.
“It is a true indictment of the deep bureaucracy of discrimination and of other issues that have riddled supportive housing application placement for years,” said Craig Hughes, a housing social worker at Bronx Legal Services who obtained the data. “Instead of really dealing with it, we have continued it year after year after year in New York.”
Seth Frazier, a supervising social worker at the Safety Net Project, who works closely with homeless New Yorkers pointed to the thousands of supportive housing units sitting vacant.
“There are 4,000 empty supportive housing beds. That’s more than enough to house everyone on this list plus nearly all street homeless folks,” he said. “It’s a tragedy.”
Supportive housing with medical and social services on site is a long-proven model for helping chronically homeless people obtain a stable place to live, while also helping them avoid costly emergency hospitalizations and interactions with the justice system.
The 955 people tracked by the Department of Social Services and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene all lived unsheltered for some period of time last spring on the streets and subways, according to a description of the initiative shared with state officials.
All had successfully been approved by the city for supportive housing, an onerous process that requires extensive documentation of the applicant’s history of mental illness, medications, hospitalizations, psych evaluations and treatment.
‘The Cycle Repeats’
Curbing street homelessness has been an issue mayors have attempted to tackle for decades. The issue once again lurched into the headlines again last week after a 57-year-old homeless woman, Debrina Kawam, was set on fire by another homeless man riding the F-train at the Coney Island subway stop.
In response to Kawam’s killing — and another incident this week, where straphanger Joseph Lynskey was shoved onto the tracks — Gov. Kathy Hochul called on state lawmakers to pass a change in law, supported by Mayor Eric Adams, that would make it easier to involuntarily commit a person in psychiatric crisis.
Advocates swiftly slammed Hochul’s proposal, pointing to the latest data showing how difficult it can be to access mental health and supportive housing resources.
“With no supportive housing or care manager who can help access scarce mental health and housing services, the cycle repeats,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, in a statement. “Further criminalizing people with mental health issues, who are themselves 11 times more likely to be the victim of crimes, will not improve care or our housing shortage.”
For his part, Adams had promised to tackle the red tape burdening the supportive housing system early on in his tenure.
Allison Maser, a spokesperson for the mayor, said the city remains “laser-focused on solving street homelessness and securing stable housing for all New Yorkers.”
She pointed to the 4,800 people the city had connected with supportive housing in 2024, a 19% jump from the year prior.
City officials cited other other indicators of improvements under Adams, like a declining vacancy rate in supportive housing units. Last fiscal year, 94% of the city’s 36,094 apartments were filled, compared to a 91% occupancy rate two years earlier, according to the city’s annual Mayor’s Management Report.
“We’re also doubling down our efforts to expand high-quality supportive housing, adding over 1,000 new units in the last fiscal year alone,” Maser said. “We will continue to work with our state and mental health partners to reduce barriers to housing and ensure long-term stability for all New Yorkers.”
A high-ranking source at the Department of Social Services familiar with the supportive housing system, who was not authorized to speak to reporters, said there are several reasons why a person’s supportive housing application might expire: if, for example, they moved in with family or qualified for a housing voucher.
The source also said people who live on the streets often have multiple underlying health conditions, though they declined to comment on the specifics of the four people who had died while waiting for housing.
Thousands of Vacant Units
Data also obtained by Legal Services NYC through a FOIL request showed 4,117 vacant units of supportive housing as of Sept. 3, 2024, across dozens of nonprofit providers. Some of the units had been vacant for months or even years, a persistent issue that has been criticized by advocates and the City Council.
Just under half, or 1,971 of those apartments, are designated as “online,” meaning a tenant could move into them. The data shared with THE CITY showed more than 400 of those units have been sitting empty for a year or more.
The high-ranking DSS source said certain types of supportive housing units can sit vacant longer than others. Some units have multiple rooms with roommates, which are often turned down by prospective tenants. Others are overseen by the state’s Office of Mental Health and can require as much as 70% of a person’s monthly income.
Justin Mason, a spokesperson for OMH, said the state “will continue to work with our partners in New York City and our service providers to ensure these placements occur as timely as possible.”
Still another 2,146 units were deemed “offline,” meaning they need renovation or rehab of some kind before a tenant can move in. More than 700 of those apartments have been “offline” for more than a year, with some sitting empty as far back as 2020.
‘Impossible By Design’
Early in his tenure, Adams pledged his administration would take aim at the stunning number of vacant supportive housing units. Curbing street homelessness has been a main goal of his administration, which he has lamented, creates a “sense of disorder in our city,” while also depriving people of the services and support they desperately need.
“This generational crisis has been ignored for too long,” Adams said in July 2022. “We refuse to ignore it and we are going to meet it head on.”
But advocates and tenants point to continued long delays and red tape in securing a placement.
Corey O’Connor, 36, a supportive housing resident and member of Supportive Housing Organized and United Tenants, or SHOUT, said he had stayed in homeless shelters while trying to navigate the supportive housing application process.
O’Connor submitted his application six times before it was approved, then waited for months more, attending several interviews with housing providers before getting approved to move into an apartment, a process that took two years altogether, he said.
“I would think [the interviews] went really well, and then I would just never hear anything back,” O’Connor said.
“The burden just constantly falls on the applicant who’s homeless, has limited resources and [who is] experiencing mental illness,” O’Connor said. “You have to jump through so many hoops, and it’s people in the worst economic, mental health situations. It just seems impossible by design.”
O’Connor said now he’s lived in his apartment for three years, which has been transformative. “I feel like I’ve returned back to the life I had before homelessness, and I’m moving past that,” he said. “Supportive housing is an amazing thing.”
For those still trying to get a placement, advocates also say the process remains byzantine and opaque. There’s no one master list of applicants, they point out. Instead a patchwork system of social workers refers people to interviews with housing providers, who have ultimate discretion on whether to approve or deny clients.
“The tenant has absolutely no recourse and no way to complain. They don’t even have …information of why they didn’t get housing,” said Sean Murray, another SHOUT member, who successfully navigated the supportive housing system in 2013.
Another persistent issue, insiders say, is that supportive housing units have so many different funding streams, each with specific requirements. One provider might have several units open, but the people referred to them don’t meet the specific requirements for those units.
“We unfortunately have a system that has 46 distinct eligibility criteria across 18 different programs, which is confusing for all, most importantly, for prospective clients.” said Pascale Leone, the executive director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York, an industry group for the state’s supportive housing network, pointing to the complex interactions between city, state and federal bureaucracies.
“There’s absolutely a need to simplify and streamline our system.”
