New York makes an uncommon promise to its residents: Its structure says the state should present “help, care and assist for the needy.”
However for no less than the fourth time in nearly 40 years, the state is being sued for failing to reside as much as this dedication by placing impoverished households vulnerable to homelessness.
A brand new lawsuit filed final month argues New York is failing for a similar cause it has prior to now: The welfare allowance it offers for housing, often called a shelter allowance, doesn’t come near the price of the state’s rents, that are among the many highest within the nation. The Authorized Support Society and Empire Justice Heart, each nonprofits, are demanding that the state improve the allowance and supply sufficient monetary help to maintain households and people housed.
“I don’t need to sleep on the street. I don’t need to go to the shelter,” mentioned 54-year-old Minerva Pacumio, a plaintiff within the lawsuit who’s going through eviction. “I don’t need to lose all the pieces.”
New York’s shelter allowance doesn’t cowl lease for modest personal housing wherever within the state, in response to the lawsuit and an impartial evaluation carried out by New York Focus and ProPublica. The state hasn’t raised the month-to-month allowance for households with youngsters since 2003 — when it was set at $450 for a household of 4 in New York Metropolis. And the quantity has barely budged for adult-only households since 1988.
Pacumio receives a $250 month-to-month allowance to cowl the one-bedroom house she rents in Queens for $1,900. She lives together with her two grownup daughters, one among whom is disabled; Pacumio handles her care herself 5 days out of the week. The opposite, Pacumio mentioned, has psychological well being points and has been unable to search out work.
Pacumio mentioned she owes 1000’s in again lease.
“If you don’t change your shelter allowance quantities for 40 years for single folks and 20 years for households, I feel there’s an inexpensive argument that might be made that you simply’re not even actually making an attempt to fulfill your constitutional obligations to offer help and care to the needy in New York State,” mentioned Pavita Krishnaswamy, a supervising lawyer for the Authorized Support Society’s Civil Apply Legislation Reform Unit.
The dearth of help pushes folks towards an emergency shelter system that can’t meet the demand of rising homelessness: New York Focus and ProPublica final yr discovered that just about half of the state’s unhoused households and people exterior of New York Metropolis are positioned in lodges with minimal assist to assist them return to everlasting housing. The state repeatedly pays extra to place somebody up in a lodge than it could have value to cowl lease for modest housing, the information organizations discovered.
The Workplace of Non permanent and Incapacity Help, the company accountable for setting shelter allowances, has responded to previous requires an allowance improve by saying the Legislature must allocate extra funding within the state price range. The price range is already projected to run multibillion-dollar deficits in coming years.
Over the previous a number of legislative periods, state lawmakers sponsored payments that might have pinned the allowance to honest market lease, the federal authorities’s estimate of how a lot it prices to lease modest personal housing. These payments have repeatedly failed, and their sponsors say little will change with out the governor’s backing.
“The governor controls — any governor of New York state controls — the price range course of. We will’t simply fund issues that the governor wouldn’t comply with,” mentioned Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, a Democrat who chairs the housing committee and repeatedly sponsored the failed laws within the state Meeting.
The workplace of Gov. Kathy Hochul, additionally a Democrat, didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark or to written questions. An Workplace of Non permanent and Incapacity Help spokesperson didn’t reply to questions from New York Focus and ProPublica about whether or not the company had ever requested extra funding for shelter allowances. He declined to remark for this story, citing the pending litigation.
In previous litigation, the state has argued that the structure doesn’t command the state to fulfill all of poor households’ wants.
A “Kafka-esque Scenario”
For Authorized Support, that is acquainted floor. That is no less than the fourth lawsuit it has filed towards the state accusing New York of failing to offer sufficient welfare help for lease. Within the late ’80s, the nonprofit filed a landmark case on behalf of Barbara Jiggetts, a single mom of three who was renting an house in Queens. Jiggetts was receiving $270 a month to assist cowl $381 in lease — about 70% of what she owed every month. Authorized Support argued that the state was shirking its obligation to maintain her and her youngsters safely housed.
Within the Jiggetts case, the court docket ordered the state to briefly cowl lease for New York Metropolis households with youngsters going through eviction till the institution of “a lawful” shelter allowance that might hold them housed collectively.
However the state waited till 2003 to boost the shelter allowance, blowing previous the court docket’s authentic deadline by 5 years.
The state has additionally created a everlasting complement to fill the hole between the allowance and lease. However the complement provided within the metropolis is simply accessible to households with youngsters. So, when Pacumio’s youngest turned 18, she misplaced the complement, which constituted nearly all of her housing help. Exterior New York Metropolis, that complement is optionally available, and simply 15 of 57 counties select to supply it to households with youngsters, in response to the Empire Justice Heart.
The brand new lawsuit seeks both a rise within the shelter allowance or a compulsory growth of the complement statewide, no matter family composition — or each.
Since 2003, the Workplace of Non permanent and Incapacity Help has reviewed the allowance 4 instances — each 5 years, as required. Throughout its final overview in 2023, greater than 100 feedback poured in, many imploring the company to extend the profit. Some shared private tales from unhoused New Yorkers who mentioned the shelter allowances weren’t sufficient to stop homelessness, in response to the state register.
Pleas additionally got here from the counties themselves. Michael Iapoce, the social companies commissioner for Ulster County, wrote on the time that there wasn’t a single liveable house accessible for lease that might be coated by the shelter allowance.
“The shelter allowance is completely irrational and arbitrary,” he mentioned. “There isn’t a reasoned justification to maintain the shelter allowance and dietary supplements so low.” His feedback on the laws had been hooked up as an exhibit to the lawsuit.
Because it stands, folks poor sufficient to qualify for public help and in search of a spot to lease discover themselves in a “merciless Dickensian or Kafka-esque scenario,” mentioned Susan Antos, the managing lawyer for public advantages at Empire Justice Heart. The shelter allowance is just too low to permit them to afford even a modest place, however underneath the foundations, recipients might have their advantages lower in the event that they cease wanting.
State Sen. Brian Kavanagh, the Democratic chair of the Senate’s housing committee, mentioned it’s arduous to tease out how a lot it could value to extend the shelter allowance due to how public help caseloads might change over time. As of June 2025, the newest month for which figures can be found, practically three-quarters of 1,000,000 folks had been receiving public help.
Kimberly Maldonado is without doubt one of the recipients. She has lived in the identical rent-stabilized house in Brooklyn since she was 22. Now 55 and dwelling alone, she mentioned that she was pressured to cease working in June of final yr due to ongoing well being points and depends on her daughter to cowl her lease. Maldonado receives $215 a month to assist cowl $1,114 in lease, doesn’t qualify for a state complement as a result of she doesn’t have minor youngsters, and receives no different monetary help for housing from the state.
Maldonado, a plaintiff within the new lawsuit, instructed New York Focus and ProPublica she was afraid that the state would by no means present the assistance financially determined New Yorkers want.
“So long as persons are quiet and we don’t attempt to communicate up and get assist and get them to vary the legal guidelines, the foundations, or no matter it might be, we’re by no means going to get assist, we’re by no means going to get nothing modified.”
