Social safety net expanded despite fiscal pressures
Budget Prioritizes Housing Stability and Homelessness Prevention
Mayor Mamdani’s preliminary budget includes significant funding to address the underlying causes of homelessness and housing instability, including robust continued investment in rental assistance programs and shelter operations. These investments represent the administration’s commitment to maintaining the social safety net during a period of overall fiscal constraint and underfunding correction.
The preliminary budget identified rental assistance as one of the services that had been systematically underfunded under the prior administration. Correcting this underfunding represents a key priority in Mamdani’s fiscal approach. The budget provides resources to ensure that eligible individuals and families can access rental assistance to prevent homelessness and housing instability.
Emergency Services and Outreach Programs
The budget includes $5 million in fiscal year 2026 for warming centers and shelter connections for homeless New Yorkers. It also allocates $11.9 million in fiscal year 2027 for new Street Health Outreach and Wellness mobile units that will provide services to people living unsheltered on city streets. The new Bridge to Home site funded in the budget represents targeted investment in housing and supportive services for people living with severe mental illness.
These investments recognize that homelessness often involves intersection of mental health challenges, substance use disorders, and other health conditions requiring comprehensive service approaches. Rather than relying solely on emergency shelter services, the budget invests in prevention and stabilization efforts.
Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Services Expansion
The city budget provides $48.2 million starting in fiscal year 2027 to fully fund renovation and expansion of Bellevue Hospital’s Adult Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program. This investment addresses capacity constraints in mental health emergency services and reflects the connection between mental health challenges and housing instability.
The Bellevue expansion represents acknowledgment that the city’s mental health emergency infrastructure has been constrained and that increased capacity is necessary to adequately serve New Yorkers experiencing mental health crises. Many people experiencing homelessness have significant mental health challenges that require specialized services.
Housing Preservation and Affordable Housing
Beyond emergency shelter and services for homeless individuals, the budget includes broad rental assistance and housing preservation funding designed to address root causes of housing instability. The budget allocates $662 million in fiscal year 2027 for modernization and preservation of more than 3,200 affordable housing units.
This housing preservation work prevents loss of existing affordable units and maintains the affordable housing supply. Without active preservation efforts, the city loses affordable units to deterioration and conversion to market-rate housing. The investment reflects recognition that preventing loss of affordable housing is more cost-effective than replacing units.
Community Food Connection and Nutrition Security
The budget more than triples baseline funding for HRA’s Community Food Connection program with $54 million in fiscal year 2027. This reflects the administration’s commitment to food security and addressing nutrition gaps among food-insecure New Yorkers. Food insecurity and housing instability are often interconnected challenges affecting the same populations.
Implementation and Oversight
The effectiveness of these investments will depend on successful implementation and management of the programs and services they fund. Ongoing monitoring and evaluation will be necessary to ensure that funds are being deployed effectively and services are reaching intended recipients. The budget provides funding, but actual outcomes will depend on how city agencies execute these programs and whether appropriate staffing and resources are allocated to service delivery.
For information on homeless services and housing policy, see Department of Homeless Services, Department of Housing, and Citizens Budget Commission reports.
