New York State is making an unusual promise to its residents. New York’s constitution states that the state must provide “aid, care, and assistance to the needy.”
But this is at least the fourth time in nearly 40 years that the state has been sued for failing to fulfill that promise and putting poor families at risk of homelessness.
A new lawsuit filed last month alleges New York State is failing for the same reasons. The issue is that New York State’s welfare benefits for housing, known as “shelter benefits,” fall short of the state’s rents, which are among the most expensive in the nation. The Legal Aid Society and the Empire Justice Center, both nonprofit organizations, are calling on the state to increase benefits and provide enough financial aid to families and individuals to maintain housing.
“I don’t want to sleep on the street. I don’t want to go to a shelter,” said Minerva Pacmio (54), a plaintiff in the lawsuit who is being evicted. “I don’t want to lose everything.”
New York state’s evacuation benefits do not cover rent for modest private housing anywhere in the state, according to the lawsuit and an independent analysis conducted by New York Focus and ProPublica. The state did not raise the monthly allowance for families with children in 2003. At the time, the monthly allowance for a family of four in New York City was set at $450. And for adult-only households, the amount has changed little since 1988.
Parkmio receives a monthly stipend of $250 toward the cost of the one-bedroom apartment he rents in Queens for $1,900. She lives with her two adult daughters, one of whom has a disability. Park Mio takes care of herself five days a week. The other person has mental health issues and has not been able to find work, Parkmio said.
Parkmio said he owes several thousand yen in back rent.
“I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made that by leaving housing benefits unchanged for 40 years for singles and 20 years for families, New York State isn’t even serious about fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide aid and care to needy people,” said Pavita Krishnaswamy, chief attorney in the Legal Aid Society’s Civil Practice Reform Unit.
A lack of assistance is driving people to emergency shelter systems that cannot meet the demands of rising homelessness: New York Focus and ProPublica found last year that nearly half of unhoused families and individuals in the state outside of New York City were placed in hotels with minimal support to return to permanent housing. According to news outlets, the state typically pays more to put someone in a hotel than it does to cover the rent for a modest home.
The Office of Temporary Disability Assistance, which is responsible for setting the shelter benefit, said in response to past requests to increase the benefit, the Legislature needs to allocate more money from the state budget. The budget is already projected to run into a multibillion-dollar deficit over the next few years.
In the past few legislative sessions, state lawmakers have sponsored legislation that would peg this allowance at fair market rent, the federal government’s estimate of how much it costs to rent quality private housing. These bills have repeatedly failed, and proponents say little will change without the governor’s support.
“The governor controls the budget process, and every governor in New York State controls the budget process. The governor can’t arbitrarily fund something he doesn’t agree with,” said Democratic state Rep. Linda Rosenthal, who chairs the housing committee and sponsored the bill that has repeatedly failed in the state Legislature.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, also a Democrat, did not respond to multiple requests for comment or written questions. A spokesperson for the Office of Temporary Disability Assistance did not respond to New York Focus and ProPublica’s questions about whether the agency has ever requested additional funding for shelter benefits. He declined to comment for this article, citing pending litigation.
In past cases, states have argued that the Constitution does not mandate the state to meet all the needs of poor families.
“Kafka-like situation”
For Legal Aid, this is a familiar area. This is at least the fourth lawsuit New York has filed against the state, accusing it of not providing enough welfare benefits for renters. In the late ’80s, the nonprofit filed a landmark lawsuit on behalf of Barbara Jiggetts, a single mother of three who was renting an apartment in Queens. Ms. Jiggetts received $270 a month to cover her $381 rent. This is about 70% of the amount you owe each month. Legal Aid argued that the state was evading its obligation to safely house her and her children.
In the Jiggetts case, the court ordered the state to temporarily pay rent to a New York City family with children facing eviction until a “legal” housing benefit could be established to keep them living together.
But the state waited until 2003 to increase evacuation benefits, well over five years past the court’s original deadline.
The state also created a permanent supplement to bridge the gap between benefits and rent. However, the supplement offered by the city is only available to families with children. So when Parkmi-O’s youngest son turned 18, he lost the subsidy that made up the bulk of his housing assistance. Outside of New York City, the subsidies are voluntary, with only 15 of 57 counties choosing to provide them to families with children, according to the Empire Justice Center.
The new lawsuit seeks to increase shelter benefits and/or expand the subsidies to the entire state, regardless of household size.
Since 2003, the Office of Temporary Disability Support has reviewed this allowance four times, every five years, as necessary. The last review in 2023 attracted more than 100 comments, many of which asked the agency to increase benefits. Some shared personal stories from unhoused New Yorkers, according to the state registry. They said shelter benefits are not enough to prevent homelessness.
Petitions also came from the county itself. At the time, Ulster County Social Services Commissioner Michael Iapos wrote that there were no livable apartments available for rent that would qualify for evacuation benefits.
“Shelter allowances are completely unreasonable and arbitrary,” he said. “There is no good reason to keep evacuation allowances and subsidies this low.” His comments on the regulations were attached as evidence in the lawsuit.
Susan Antos, chief public interest attorney at the Empire Justice Center, said the current situation is that people poor enough to qualify for welfare are finding themselves in a “Dickensian, Kafkaesque, brutal situation” looking for rental properties. Shelter allowances are too low to afford even a modest place, but under the rules recipients can have their benefits reduced if they stop looking for shelter.
State Sen. Brian Kavanaugh, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Housing Committee, said it’s difficult to say how much it would cost to increase housing benefits because the number of welfare recipients can change over time. As of June 2025, the latest month for which statistics are available, approximately 550,000 people were on welfare.
Kimberly Maldonado is also one of the recipients. She has lived in the same rent-stabilized apartment in Brooklyn since she was 22 years old. He is 55 years old and lives alone, but said he was forced to quit his job last June due to ongoing health problems and is now relying on his daughter to pay the rent. Maldonado receives $215 a month to cover $1,114 in rent, but because she doesn’t have any minor children, she doesn’t qualify for state subsidies or receive any other financial aid from the state for housing.
Ms. Maldonado, a plaintiff in the new lawsuit, told New York Focus and ProPublica that she fears the state will never provide New Yorkers in financial need the help they need.
“We will never get help and we will never change anything unless people are silent and we speak up and ask for help and change laws and regulations and whatever it is.”
