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Q&A
City FHEPS voucher usage and eligibility criteria
0:30:13
ยท
6 min
Council Member Diana Ayala discusses City FHEPS voucher usage and eligibility with Commissioner Molly Wasow Park and Administrator Scott French. They explain how the program works for both shelter residents and those at risk of eviction.
- About 15,000 households (31,000 New Yorkers) obtained or maintained housing using City FHEPS vouchers
- Approximately one-third of vouchers are used by households applying through Homebase to prevent eviction
- Eligibility criteria include facing eviction, having prior shelter history, and income at or below 200% of federal poverty level
- Homebase offices provide assistance in evaluating individual circumstances for voucher eligibility
Diana Ayala
0:30:13
You mentioned that nearly 15,000 households comprised of more than 31,000 New Yorkers were able to obtain permanent housing or stay in their homes using city fabs vouchers.
0:30:28
So one of the I'm trying to get into without getting into the legality of it, but one of the changes that the council was advocating for was the ability to keep folks that are already housed with a threat of eviction housed by giving them that would ordinarily qualify for city thefts had they been in shelter, a city thefts voucher.
0:30:55
That kind of sounds like that's what you're doing here.
0:30:59
So if so, how are you who's making that determination?
0:31:05
Like, how is this working?
Molly Wasow Park
0:31:06
So it's been long term policy that there are certain category of households who apply through home base who are able to access city feps.
0:31:18
There's a lot of very specific aspects to the rules and we can certainly send those over, but generally speaking households that are facing eviction and who have a prior shelter history are able to access city feps through home base without coming into shelter.
0:31:37
It's been relatively consistent that about a third of lease ups every year with Citi FEPPs are those clients who are applying via Homebase.
Diana Ayala
0:31:46
So I wouldn't understand.
0:31:47
A third of the 15,000?
Molly Wasow Park
0:31:50
Right.
0:31:50
So it was approximately 10,000, 10 thousand two hundred, I believe, who were exits out of shelter using city faps.
0:31:57
And then the remaining 5,000 or so were in community households, meaning that they applied through home base.
Diana Ayala
0:32:06
Do they have to be the community vouchers, are those specifically for the DV clients or does it matter?
Molly Wasow Park
0:32:14
No, the most typical category, as I said, there are nuances on the eligibility, but it is people who are facing eviction and who have shelter history, which could mean as a child or something like that, but that is a relatively strong predictor of who will enter shelters, so that is a population that has been eligible for in community city FEPS vouchers for many years now.
Diana Ayala
0:32:39
Perfect.
0:32:40
Just a follow-up question, just piggybacking off of that.
0:32:44
If an individual, if a client is receiving FEPS, has a voucher from the state and they become ineligible.
0:32:54
Is there some sort of conversation that's happening between the state and the city that says, hey, this person doesn't qualify for state FePs but may qualify for city FEPPs?
0:33:06
Or is it on the does it fall on the client to make that determination?
Molly Wasow Park
0:33:13
There's not an automatic transition from FEPPs to city FEPPs.
0:33:18
Some of those clients will be eligible.
0:33:20
Not all of them will be.
0:33:21
And we can certainly look at those on a case by case basis.
Diana Ayala
0:33:23
I'm just trying to figure out what is the most seamless way of making that connection, right?
0:33:28
Because as people just because you helped me with a case like this the other day and it kind of, you know, it triggered a whole bunch of questions in my own head about how do we, you know, how are we connecting the dots because some of these folks are coming out of shelter and getting a Phelps voucher and so we don't want them to go back into shelter should their circumstances change.
Molly Wasow Park
0:33:57
So the best option there would be for that family or individual to connect with their local home based office.
0:34:05
We have 26 offices around the city.
0:34:09
There are staff there who can assist to evaluate the individual circumstances because it is very household specific.
0:34:17
Administrator French, anything you want to add there?
Scott French
0:34:21
I think you covered most of it commissioner.
0:34:23
I think one of the things it is based on each household because one will often come off of FEPs because they've also come off of cash assistance because you need to be on cash assistance to receive FEPs.
0:34:33
So there has definitely been a change in income in the family, and we'd really need to look at that on a case by case basis.
Diana Ayala
0:34:39
I'm just I'm just afraid that people will fall off, you know, the cliff because they don't know, right, that they may qualify and they may see city, Pheps, and Pheps as one program, right?
0:34:51
And so I don't know if it's on the state level that folks should be informed, right, that they should at least check because in the case that the commissioner and I were discussing, the individual got off of cash assistance because they qualified for SSI.
0:35:08
So their income didn't really change dramatically, right?
0:35:11
They weren't getting enough income coming into the household to afford the apartment that they moved into coming out of shelter.
0:35:19
And so there has to be some sort of connector that says okay listen this person may qualify either to the to the client or to the ESS.
0:35:30
I'm not sure how that would work but I just I'm really concerned that folks will just end up back in shelter because they won't know any better and they won't be able to make rent.
0:35:39
Out of the 19,000 households that remained in their homes, do we know how many applied?
0:35:47
Because that seems like a really good and again, this is all really good.
0:35:49
Like, I I love the fact that we're giving out community vouchers, so it's not a critique.
0:35:54
Really just I'm trying to understand.
0:35:56
Out of the 19,000 households that went through Homebase that were able to remain in their homes, do we know how many didn't make it?
0:36:05
What the actual number was?
0:36:06
Were there 40,000 applications and 19,000 made it?
0:36:11
I'm trying to figure out how
Molly Wasow Park
0:36:13
I believe the Homebase track record is something upwards of 97% of those served are able to remain in their homes.
0:36:21
We can follow-up with the exact number.
0:36:25
And really Homebase is able to help connect people to the full complement of services that we have for housing stability.
0:36:32
So CityFeps is a piece of it but so is connecting people to emergency rental assistance, helping to refer people to an attorney if they need it, and then also people will come to Homebase for other kinds of services, assistance with benefits access or even employment assistance.
0:36:48
So it is a wide range of services that Homebase is offering.