In a rare win for both sides of the landlord-tenant divide, the city will streamline the process for plugging vacancies in affordable apartments for the next year.
From May 1 through April 30, 2026, landlords and brokers can tap sites like StreetEasy and Craigslist to list units previously required to be advertised exclusively through the city’s Housing Connect system, The City reported.
Apartment hunters who meet the income requirements will be able to apply directly through those third-party platforms, and owners and brokers will review their applications on a first-come, first-served basis.
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development will still need to give the green light. But once it does, the tenant can move in.
The change should speed a delay-ridden process that holds hundreds of affordable units empty in a city desperate for housing.
“It was leading to long-time vacancies, loss of revenue for owners and this delayed access of New Yorkers getting into affordable housing,” Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference told The City.
In February, a Gothamist story based on a NYHC report highlighted a $1,250 two-bedroom on Tiebout Avenue in the Bronx that had sat empty since 2023. The apartment, situated in a building owned by nonprofit the University Neighborhood Housing Program, boasts a fresh kitchen, polished hardwood floors and new plumbing and electric, and was available for families earning 60 percent of the area median income.
It’s likely UNHB would have had no trouble turning the unit through StreetEasy. But under city regulations, it had to use Housing Connect, which would show the apartment to tenants who had entered lotteries for new buildings and, critically, checked a tiny box indicating they were interested in re-rentals.
The housing provider was then required to hold a mini-lottery that gave small pools of prospective renters 10 days to respond until it churned through 250 applications. Only then could it apply for a waiver to use outside marketing.
The Real Deal highlighted the bottlenecked system two months ago and HPD at the time said its “housing access team” was working on improvements.
With that addressed, HPD told The City it is now upgrading Housing Connect and simplifying lottery requirements.
“When it comes specifically to re-rentals and resale units, we find the way it’s set up doesn’t get people right when they are, where they are, connected to the unit that is perfect to them,” HPD Associate Commissioner Emily Osgood told The City.
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