Housing advocates and City Council members rallied on June 5 to demand that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration stop fighting the 2023 laws that would expand who qualifies for the city’s biggest rental voucher, and start funding them instead. As first reported by AMNY, the Council passed those laws in 2023 over then-Mayor Eric Adams’ veto, but the rules never took effect because the Adams administration sued to stop them, and AMNY reported that Mamdani’s City Hall has kept that court fight going despite campaign promises to the contrary.

CityFHEPS, short for the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, is the voucher that helps New Yorkers leaving shelters or facing eviction pay rent. The 2023 expansion would ease work requirements for recipients, raise the maximum income limits to qualify, and let people facing eviction get a voucher before they lose their homes, rather than after they land in a shelter.

The fight is about money. Council Member Pierina Sanchez, a Bronx Democrat who chairs the Committee on Housing and Buildings, told protesters that 25,000 evictions could have been avoided if the expansion laws had been enforced.