How NYCs perverse housing help makes the citys poor worse off

New York City’s new budget includes thousands of new rental-housing vouchers, billed as a means of helping low-income citizens remain in an increasingly unaffordable city. But this misguided compassion actually encourages poverty — by incentivizing low-income households to form in the first place, and to remain low-income for years on end.That’s largely because, unlike cash welfare, Gotham’s housing handouts come with neither a work requirement nor a time limit.Mayor Zohran Mamdani acceded to Council Speaker Julie Menin’s push to expand a city-funded housing voucher that pays 70% of rent for those eligible. The new $175 million program will subsidize some 8,000 households, per the mayor’s office.Yet debate over the program’s cost ignores an inconvenient fact: The city already provides more housing vouchers than anywhere else in the US.The expanded voucher program was breathlessly deemed urgent by the supposedly moderate Menin. “Every New Yorker deserves a safe, affordable home,” she declared, “and this agreement will help more families avoid eviction and homelessness.”But her enthusiasm overlooks the fact that the housing crisis she seeks to address has not been eased by the 119,000 federal housing vouchers the city’s Housing Authority already distributes. Nor have the 39,000 vouchers given out by the city’s Housing Preservation and Development agency, which will administer the added program, made a dent. Add in the city’s 177,000 public housing units, and some 335,000 NYC households get housing help to pay just 30% of their income in rent.That’s a substantial 14.5% of all rental housing of any kind in the city.And under the perverse incentives of voucher housing, the city’s rules are actually worsening poverty — by encouraging the formation of more poor single-parent households.The Housing Authority operates a complex ranking system to qualify New Yorkers for either public housing or a voucher — a system it calls prior...