President Donald Trump’s proposed budget released last week would shred New York’s housing safety net by cutting billions of dollars in federal aid, putting limits on vouchers used by some 500,000 people statewide.
Landlords, especially owners of smaller rent-stabilized buildings, would suddenly find that many of their tenants could no longer pay rent, leading to evictions, according to an analysis of the proposed Department of Housing and Urban Development spending plan by the New York Housing Conference, an affordable housing trade group.
“If these changes to HUD programs become law, they’ll trigger a devastating wave of evictions, homelessness, market destabilization, and mortgage defaults across New York,” said Rachel Fee, executive director of NYHC. “We’re calling on Congress to step up to protect renters, protect landlords, and stop this reckless disruption before it starts.”
Trump’s proposal, released Friday, called for cutting discretionary federal spending by $163 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Discretionary spending is the money that Congress appropriates every year for federal agencies, the military and programs like housing aid. Entitlements, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and food aid, as well as interest on the federal debt, are mandatory and are funded without annual appropriations.
Trump proposed large cuts to discretionary spending during his first term, but they were blocked by Republicans in his first two years in office — when the GOP controlled Congress — and then by the Democrats in the final two years. Republicans who have generally backed the president now hold very narrow margins in both the House and Senate and can afford only a few defections if they are to pass such a major change in the face of united Democratic opposition.
While officials like the city and state comptrollers are still digging through the details to assess the full effect in New York should these proposals pass Congress, the potential impact on the housing landscape is clear from the details released Friday. More than 1 million New Yorkers rely on the state’s housing safety net in some way, according to the New York Housing Conference analysis.
The Trump plan would combine Section 8 housing vouchers, public housing aid and assistance to the elderly and disabled into a single grant into each state and cut the total by almost $27 billion. New York State receives $13 billion a year for those programs and would see a major reduction.
Cuts to Section 8 would affect not only tenants and private landlords aided by the vouchers, but the New York City Housing Authority, which relies on the Section 8 program to help finance a private management program being used to help refurbish tens of thousands of apartments.
Trump’s proposal would place a two-year limit on vouchers for “able-bodied recipients.” In New York the average length of time a household uses a voucher is 15 years. NYCHA residents have an average tenure of more than 25 years.
President Donald Trump speaks at the White House on his Investing in America plan, April 30, 2025. Credit: Joyce N. Boghosian/White House
Close to 123,000 households in New York City use federally funded vouchers, according to a 2024 analysis from the Furman Center at NYU. More than 70,000 are used for apartments at rent-regulated buildings owned by private landlords.
The Furman report says most voucher households have incomes under $20,000, making it highly unlikely they could afford an apartment without financial help.
“These proposed cuts would create chaos to housing in New York and be felt by renters whether or not they use a voucher,” said Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association, which represents owners of rent-regulated buildings. “Without federal vouchers, thousands of apartment buildings will go bankrupt and tens of thousands of renters will be put in danger.”
Helping people who lose their federal vouchers would cost billions of dollars.
The state is likely to pass its first-ever voucher program in the budget being approved in Albany this week, but it calls on spending only $50 million this year. A separate New York City program now costs $1 billion a year, but other cuts eyed by Republicans could put enormous pressure on the city budget.
The next mayor also will face a major problem in city agencies if Trump is successful in eliminating the Community Development Block Grant program, which sends about $320 million annually to localities in New York. These grants cover one-third or $36 million of the budget at the Department of City Planning.
Two other programs on the Trump chopping block are the Home Investment Partnership, which helps build affordable housing, worth $116 million to the state, and the Fair Housing Initiatives Program, which provided $1.7 million last year to groups that seek to test fair housing laws.
The Fair Housing Justice Center in New York is likely to be able to continue its work because the federal program provides only a small part of its $3 million budget, which has been bolstered by
$445,000 it received from a state fund set up last year for six fair housing groups in New York State.
A statement on behalf of Mayor Eric Adams noted the importance of federal housing funds to New Yorkers.
“We will continue to closely monitor federal proposals and advocate for the resources our city needs to keep New Yorkers securely housed,” added spokesperson William Fowler.
While the Trump budget does not target entitlement programs, Republicans in Congress are seeking cuts to Medicaid and food programs in a tax and spending cut bill they hope to pass this summer. Reductions in those programs would add to the pressure on state and city budgets.
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