NYCHA to move Emergency Housing Voucher holders into Section 8; pauses voucher issuance to wait list

Council Member Chris Banks convened the New York City Council Committee on Public Housing for an oversight hearing on the administration of Section 8 and the Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) program.

NYCHA told the committee it will begin transferring all EHV participants into the agency’s regular Housing Choice Voucher (HCV or Section 8) program after HUD announced the EHV funding stream will end. “NYCHA will begin transferring all of our EHV participants to the HCV program because we want to support at risk families and keep them stably housed,” NYCHA Executive Vice President of Leased Housing Lakisha Miller said. Miller said EHV participants’ rental subsidies and program rules would not be reduced and that the move will convert time-limited EHV awards into non–time-limited Section 8 vouchers.

The shift follows HUD guidance allowing public housing authorities to transition existing EHV households to HCV. NYCHA said the EHV allocation will fund households through calendar year 2026 and that the agency received a HUD waiver to transfer participants without requiring each household to reapply. To accommodate the administrative work required for the conversion, NYCHA temporarily paused outreach and voucher issuance to applicants on its general HCV wait list; applicants who have not yet received a voucher will be returned to their prior position on the wait list and will not be removed, Miller said.

Brian Honan, NYCHA’s executive vice president of intergovernmental affairs, told the committee federal budget proposals threaten housing funding but that the EHV transition is intended to avoid disruptions for current participants. Honan said NYCHA is working with HUD and with federal partners in Washington to preserve assistance and that the pause on issuing new vouchers is a funding and staffing decision to avoid overextending resources during the transition.

NYCHA told council members it expects the administrative transition to take about 18 months. Program staff will handle the EHV-to-HCV moves and NYCHA said there is no anticipated interruption in rental subsidy payments for affected households. The agency also said current voucher holders are unaffected by the operational pause.

Committee members pressed NYCHA on landlord counts, program scale and the risk of evictions during the conversion. Miller said NYCHA currently serves about 110,000 households through Section 8 and related programs and that more than 5,400 households were in EHV at the time of the hearing. Honan and Miller said the agency has sought congressional and HUD commitments and obtained a waiver to streamline the transfer process.

The council did not take formal action at the hearing. NYCHA staff emphasized they will notify affected households in writing and by phone, and that they will use existing staff (including the team used to issue vouchers on turnover) to support the transition while voucher issuance from the public wait list is paused.