City Council overrides mayor’s veto of housing bills
/
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams led the Council in a rare vote to override a mayoral veto on Thursday, July 13, 2023. Photo by Emil Cohen/ NYC Council Media Unit
By Jacob Kaye
The City Council took a rare step on Thursday and voted to override the mayor’s veto of a package of housing bills recently passed by the legislative body.
The Council voted 42 to eight late Thursday afternoon to overturn Mayor Eric Adams’ veto of a set of bills that included legislation that expands the eligibility and eliminates the waiting period for the city’s Family Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement vouchers. The expanded eligibility of the FHEPS vouchers was at the heart of the dispute between the mayor and his fellow Bayside High School graduate, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.
Though not unprecedented, it’s been a decade since the Council last successfully voted to override a mayoral veto. During the vote on Thursday, the speaker said that she was disappointed that the fight over the bills had come to this point.
“This is a personal matter for many of us,” the speaker said. “The fact that we have to override a veto is incomprehensible to me.”
The fight between the council and the mayor centers around the expanded eligibility for the vouchers and its estimated price tag.
Currently, to qualify for a CityFHEPS voucher, a New Yorker’s income must be below 200 percent of the federal poverty level and they must already be in the city’s shelter system.
The council’s legislation would allow New Yorkers facing eviction to apply for the vouchers without first entering a shelter and would increase the income-level cutoff to those making 50 percent of the area median income.
The legislative package also eliminates a rule that required New Yorkers to wait 90 days to apply for a voucher after entering into a shelter.
The mayor was supportive of eliminating the waiting period and recently removed it himself through an executive order.
However, the mayor and his administration took issue with the estimated price tag of expanding eligibility for the vouchers. The Adams administration pegged the total cost over five years at $17 billion. The City Council said that it expects the expansion to cost the city $10 billion over five years.
“Unlike the council, we do not, however, believe that New Yorkers should spend $17 billion on a package of bills that would put New Yorkers in shelter at the back of the line for a CityFHEPS voucher and make it harder for them to find permanent housing,” the mayor said in a statement following the council’s vote on Thursday. “We will continue to do all that we can to build more housing and tackle decades of exclusionary zoning policies that have prevented our city from building an adequate housing supply.”
Queens City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán blasted Adams for the veto and pushed back on his administration’s claims about the package of bills.
“What we are pushing through today is a common sense, cost effective legislative package that will move struggling New Yorkers from the shelter system into permanent housing more efficiently – period,” Cabán said.
“Any claims that it is fiscally imprudent or logistically impractical are, at best, flagrant errors or, at worst, outright lies,” she added.
Should the mayor decide that he wants to continue to fight the council’s package of bills, his next step would likely be to take the legislation to court – in his statement issued Thursday, the mayor said, “we are reviewing our options and next steps.”
If the mayor brings the issue to the courts, he’ll likely face opposition from the Legal Aid Society, which has supported the effort to expand eligibility for the vouchers.
“Should the Adams administration refuse to implement these measures or bring a challenge in court, we are prepared to intervene with litigation on behalf of our clients,” the public defense firm said in a statement. “Given the magnitude of the local housing crisis, we have an obligation to ensure that the New Yorkers we represent have every available option to secure a long-term, safe and affordable place to call home.”
