New York City’s social services agency is rejecting tens of thousands of tenants who apply for emergency assistance loans to cover their back rent, even as evictions rise and the homeless shelter system is stretched to the brink, city records show.
During the first nine months of 2022, the city’s Department of Social Services rejected two-thirds of the 50,585 applications it received for so-called “One-Shot Deal” payments to cover rent arrears, records show. That’s roughly double the rate at which the department rejected applications five years earlier, according to press reports.
For many in arrears, the emergency assistance program is a lender of last resort and a final opportunity for them to hang onto their homes after falling behind on payments, according to tenants, attorneys and DSS workers who spoke with Gothamist. The drop in approvals comes as landlords filed more than 178,000 eviction notices in New York City over the past 18 months and the city’s homeless shelter population surpassed 100,000 people.
“Clients losing their apartments and going to stay at a shelter is something that the city doesn’t want because it costs more to house people in shelters than it is to keep people in their current apartments and stabilized,” said Denise Acron, the head of government benefits at the organization Manhattan Legal Services.
The grants averaged around $4,300 in the 2022 fiscal year, according to DSS data. New Yorkers can apply for One-Shot Deals to cover a range of expenses, like storage fees, electric bills and moving costs along with back rent. Under state rules, most One-Shot Deal recipients must prove they can pay back at least some of the amount, usually in installments.
From January to September 2022, the Department of Social Services rejected 66% of applications specifically related to rent arrears, according to the city data, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request by the organization Mobilization for Justice and shared…
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