25 Million Applications: The Scramble for N.Y.C. Affordable Housing (Published 2020) (2024)

For more than five years, William Sencion did the same task over and over. He signed onto the New York City’s housing lottery site and applied for one of the city’s highly coveted, below-market apartments. Each time, he got the same response: silence.

That was until late last year, when he was told that he might qualify for a one-bedroom unit in the Bronx. But first he had to prove his eligibility by printing a month’s worth of financial, banking and tax documents, along with a letter from his employer, and providing them in person to a marketing agent for the apartment.

He finally moved into the Bronx apartment last month, nearly six years after he first filed an application with the city’s affordable-housing system. His new one-bedroom home costs $1,554 a month, about $700 less than a comparable market-rate unit, he said.

For many New Yorkers, the most desirable jackpot is not the New York Lotto, but to be selected in the city’s extraordinarily competitive affordable-housing lottery. Tens of thousands of people, and sometimes many more, vie for the handful of units available at a time. Since 2013, there have been more than 25 million applications submitted for roughly 40,000 units.

As New York City enters a third month of economic turmoil and unprecedented job losses because of the coronavirus outbreak, the city on Tuesday will roll out an overhauled and much more modern method to apply for affordable housing.

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.