HPD Promises Housing Connect Overhaul

The city’s housing agency plans to overhaul its housing lottery system after making a number of tweaks aimed at getting tenants into apartments faster.

Dina Levy, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said on Tuesday that the agency is taking a close look at Housing Connect, the portal used by prospective tenants to apply for publicly subsidized affordable housing in the city. Though the agency has made changes over the years, Levy said “incremental fixes” aren’t enough and indicated that the entire system could be replaced.

“We plan to revamp both our housing lottery and our homeless placement systems,” she said during a City Council preliminary budget hearing. “We are taking a hard look at every part of the process, and if necessary, we will migrate to a more efficient and nimble system.”

She didn’t share what alternatives the agency is exploring, but said recommendations may be released as part of a report by the Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development, or SPEED, task force. Levy said the agency is close to releasing a new system for tracking leases involving housing voucher holders living in city homeless shelters.

The city launched Housing Connect in 2013, and a new version of the system in 2020. The potential replacement of the lottery system comes after the agency made changes to the application and listing process, including allowing owners to relist available affordable housing units on sites like StreetEasy and Craigslist. Previously, such units were exclusively listed on Housing Connect.

That change is supposed to last through April 30, and it wasn’t immediately clear if the agency would extend that rule change as it contemplates broader overhaul of Housing Connect. Last year the agency also eased paperwork requirements for prospective tenants in hopes of speeding up the application and approval process.

Levy noted that HPD placed more than 10,000 households through Housing Connect and more than 4,600 households out of city shelters through HPD’s homeless set aside requirements last year. That’s a 15 percent increase from the year prior.

Still, the median time for approving a tenant who has applied for an affordable apartment through the lottery was 142 days in fiscal year 2025. For placement through the homeless set aside program, the median was 235 days.

Last month Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a $127 billion preliminary budget. The mayor has threatened to raise property taxes and tap into the city’s reserves to make up for a $5 billion budget gap if the state doesn’t hike taxes on the state’s wealthiest. Gov. Kathy Hochul hasn’t warmed up to the idea, but state lawmakers have pitched their own increases.

Under the preliminary budget, HPD’s expense budget for fiscal year 2027 is a little more than $1.4 billion, and its capital budget is $2.9 billion. The agency has 2,400 staffers and 431 open positions, working out to a 15 percent vacancy rate, Levy said.

She noted that three-quarters of the agency’s funding comes from the federal government, through programs such as Section 8 and various grant programs, sources that have repeatedly come under threat.

During her prepared testimony, the commissioner acknowledged that “operating expenses are strangling property owners” and that a “majority of property owners and managers in this city are working in good faith.” Levy said the city is working on proposals to address rising insurance costs. But she also said the agency will aggressively go after bad actors in the industry.

“For that small group of landlords who have willfully ignored the law for decades, functioning in essence as professional slumlords, I would like to make sure that our message here today is clear,” she said. “Their time is up.”