Day Decries New NYC Plan To Honor Housing Vouchers Statewide

ROCKLAND COUNTY, NY — A New York City housing voucher now will pay for rent beyond the five boroughs, a move Rockland County Executive Ed Day predicted would oust current Rockland residents from their homes and force them into dangerously overcrowded conditions.

He accused the city of trying to "unload its failed homeless policy" — the city's right-to-shelter rule guaranteeing a bed for single adults without a home is mandated under a decades-old court order — and "exporting its homeless residents to be backfilled with migrants."

"Landlords considering participating in this be forewarned; it is my opinion this directly violates our State of Emergency as a misdemeanor carrying a daily fine of $2000," Day said.

SEE: Rockland Issues New Emergency Order On Asylum-Seekers

Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday that City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, or CityFHEPS, vouchers can be used to pay for permanent housing across the state.

The move is directly tied to the city's dual crises of housing and 110,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in the past year, Adams said.

"These reforms will give longtime New Yorkers the ability to move out of our city’s shelter system to other parts of the state with more affordable housing options, while simultaneously opening up space in our city’s shelter system for the approximately 10,000 migrants who continue to arrive in the city seeking shelter month after month," Adams said in a statement.

Under the plan CityFHEPS, participants secure 5-year leases, paying 30 percent of the cost, and NYCDSS pays the rest. Typically, CityFHEPS provides landlords three months’ rent upfront plus a 15 percent bonus.

Day predicted the existence of the NYC vouchers would inflate local housing costs. He also predicted that current Rockland residents would be ousted from their homes or forced into dangerously overcrowded conditions.

The CityFHEPS change was hailed as the "definition of a win-win" by Christine Quinn, the president and CEO of WIN, the largest provider of housing and supportive services for homeless women and children.

"This policy will help New Yorkers find permanent, affordable homes from Buffalo Avenue in Brooklyn to the City of Buffalo in Western New York," Quinn said in a statement. "At the same time, it will provide stable income for landlords across the state and save the City millions of dollars in shelter costs."

Placing low-income individuals in housing in Rockland is already extremely difficult due to current housing shortages, Day said.

"Any such plan would drive our price of housing up further in an already unaffordable market and cause competition among local programs," Rockland County Department of Social Services Commissioner Joan Silvestri alleged.

She insisted that homeless people must be housed in the municipality where they are homeless. "The City cannot change the rules because they are unable to handle their homelessness."

In a joint call between the 57 counties outside New York City and City Department of Social Services Commissioner Molly Wasow Park, Day said, "all county executives who spoke echoed concerns about the City’s lack of cooperation as it once again blindsides municipalities with this plan, in addition to criticizing the costs beyond housing including school, health, and more that will result from this shift."

For those suburban communities, an influx of poor people would be a problem.

"As a matter of law, if one of these people loses their jobs or has other needs for public funding, it will be burdened upon the new county to provide," Rockland County Attorney Thomas Humbach said.

Day alleged that illegal immigrants are "eager to backfill the spots in City shelters as they open."

"This problem is unsustainable and why I’ve echoed countless times that our immigration system needs to be fixed once and for all or else this problem will have no end in sight," he said.