By: Rusty Brooks
With the coronavirus response by government literally destroying the economy, many New Yorkers are moving as far away from the city as possible, while others who are staying will scramble for more affordable housing, including the well known lottery for below market apartment rentals
The online system, known as NYC Housing Connect, had been derided as antiquated and rife with technical problems that posed significant impediments to getting affordable housing even as the city has grown more expensive, the NY Times reported.
The new system which has recently gone live, makes the process much easier and fixes all the glitches. The online lottery started in 2013, and the site has not been modernized until now.
The current system, had become outdated and still required applicants to conduct some work in person, such as providing reams of financial statements. On the new site, those documents can be uploaded online.
“This pandemic not only caused a health crisis — it has caused an economic one as well. As stress is mounting on families across the city, we are fighting to ensure all New Yorkers are supported,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “The new and improved NYC Housing Connect will make applying for affordable housing easier than ever at a time that we know families need all the help they can get”
The housing lottery is the central clearinghouse for the vast majority of affordable-housing units in the city, including developments financed and subsidized by New York. The redesigned site will go online on Tuesday and the first units will appear in early July, the NY Times reported.
There will be roughly 2,500 apartments offered on the site in the coming months, which will be available mostly for those with household incomes below or slightly above the median income. (The median income in New York City for a family of four is $113,700.)
Mr. de Blasio has pledged to create and preserve at least 300,000 affordable homes by 2026, 200,000 of which the administration says it plans to achieve ahead of schedule in 2022.
About 164,000 affordable homes have been created or preserved since 2014. Over the past year, more than 8,700 units have been advertised in the online lottery system, the most in any fiscal year, the city said, the NY Times explained
After applicants create profiles stating their household size and household income, which together determine a person’s eligibility, they will be shown apartments that they are most likely to qualify for. That is a significant change from the old system, in which applicants typically applied to every building on the lottery site without knowing if they were even eligible.
The new site also improves on technical issues, such as freezing and crashing.
