NEW YORK, NY– With the city’s vacancy rate at a record low and thousands of New Yorkers in need of stable housing, the City is cutting through red tape to speed up the housing process. Today, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC) announced major updates to the Marketing Handbook, which outlines how affordable apartments are rented and sold through NYC Housing Connect, the City’s online platform where hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers apply for affordable housing opportunities each year. Changes include requiring fewer pay stubs for employed applicants, streamlining verification for applicants with disabilities, eliminating tax return requirements unless you're self-employed, and more—all aimed at making the process easier.
This announcement builds on two years of reforms aimed at removing barriers from the affordable housing process. Since 2022, the City has required all marketing agents to meet clear qualifications and training standards—bringing more consistency to the process, eliminated credit checks for voucher holders, introduced audit-based file reviews to save time on the front end, and reduced applicant documentation requirements leveraging federal guidelines released last year. These updates continue momentum to remove barriers, speed up approvals, and help New Yorkers move into homes faster.
“Our administration’s number one goal has been to remove barriers that prevent New Yorkers from accessing the crucial services and benefits they have earned and deserve.” said Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce Adolfo Carrion Jr. “These important changes to Housing Connect and the Marketing Handbook will make it easier and faster for families to qualify for affordable housing so they may focus on uplifting their lives, rather than navigating bureaucracy.”
“As we roll full steam ahead on our aggressive and historic housing agenda to unlock, build, and preserve record levels of housing across our city, we must be equally focused on ensuring New Yorkers have easy and efficient access to the thousands of affordable homes that become available through the Housing Connect lottery each year,” said Executive Director for Housing Leila Bozorg. “These recent reforms to the lease-up process begin to recognize the urgency of the moment, where we have a 1.4% rental vacancy rate and an ongoing housing emergency, and must therefore be doing everything in our power to deliver fair and efficient processes to house more of our neighbors.”
"Last year, more than 10,000 households secured affordable homes through Housing Connect, and hundreds of thousands applied. As we continue to see the number of users and successful connections increase, our responsibility to make sure the system is working efficiently and expeditiously only becomes of even greater importance. Building on two years of momentum to remove barriers and cut red tape, today we’re releasing the latest installment of our primary guidelines which includes measures that eliminated outdated rules, simplified requirements, and made the process easier to navigate—so the system works for the people it was built to serve,” said HPD’s Acting Commissioner Ahmed Tigani.
“The recent updates to the Marketing Handbook reflect HPD and HDC’s commitment to making it easier for New Yorkers to find and access affordable housing,” said HDC President Eric Enderlin. “Thanks to the dedicated work of our agency staff, applicants will benefit from the removal of undue administrative burdens and simplification of key requirements at every step of the process.”
Real Changes That Make a Real Difference
This is the latest in a series of efforts to modernize how affordable housing works in New York City. By removing unnecessary requirements and streamlining the way applications are reviewed, these changes help move people from application to move-in more quickly, with more predictability and clarity for both applicants, marketing agents, and owners
New updates include:
- Applicants who are employed now only need to submit one month of pay stubs instead of several, right sizing the workload for New Yorkers who previously had to collect months of additional documentation.
- Applicants with less than $51,600 in assets can now self-certify without providing bank statements, up from $5,000 reducing eligibility review times and unnecessary effort for a greater number of applicants and effort.
- What were previously called affidavits, now known as self-certifications, no longer need to be notarized, removing another added unnecessary step from the process.
- Applicants who receive federal benefits such as SNAP, TANF or SSI will now face fewer documentation requirements, due to new federal guidelines.
- Tax returns are no longer required unless the applicant is self-employed.
- Applicants with disabilities now have a variety of ways to verify eligibility for set-aside units using existing items like driver’s licenses and school records creating a faster, more accessible and equitable process.
These updates also make the process easier for marketing agents, who help manage applications and match New Yorkers with affordable housing. The reduced documentation requirements simplify the review process and will allow agents to process more applicants in less time. The City has removed or revised several outdated policies that have become burdensome over time. Agents no longer need to follow as strict newspaper advertising rules or be limited to specific mailrooms to collect paper applications and agents no longer need to update and submit log reports. These are just a few of the changes aimed at giving agents more flexibility, saving time, and allowing them to focus on helping people get housed.
In 2024 alone, HPD helped connect nearly 14,654 households to affordable homes, including more than 10,000 through Housing Connect lotteries and another 4,600 transitioning from shelters into permanent housing. Every improvement to the application process helps speed up these placements and reduce barriers for the New Yorkers who need it most.
For more information on the Marketing Handbook or to apply for affordable housing, visit Marketing - HPD.
“Obtaining an affordable housing unit through Housing Connect is life changing for families and individuals in need,” said Baaba Halm, Senior Vice President of Programs, Enterprise Community Partners. “But the full process, from submitting an application to being handed the keys, should not feel like the bureaucratic equivalent of running a marathon. An overly burdensome process keeps New Yorkers in housing insecurity for longer than needed and threatens the sustainability of mission-driven affordable housing owners. We applaud the teams at HPD and HDC for their demonstrated commitment to streamlining, reducing steps and simplifying the process, and look forward to continued partnership to go even further.”
