City Council President Lakisha Collins-Bellamy, noting that the new State budget will include a housing voucher program that she has been pushing for three years, said the vouchers will directly address increased homelessness in Yonkers and surrounding communities.
Following the State Legislature’s inclusion of the vouchers, which was announced yesterday, Collins-Bellamy said the next step is to prevent the Trump Administration from gutting the federal Section 8 housing voucher program.
“At my request the Yonkers City Council has repeatedly urged the State to implement a housing voucher program to help those who are in imminent danger of losing their homes, so we’re pleased that the program has finally made its way into the State Budget,” said Collins-Bellamy, “There were an estimated 1,611 homeless people in Yonkers and Westchester County in 2024, and it’s increasing, so housing vouchers are essential in order to keep people in their homes, as well as avoiding the much higher cost to the taxpayer of putting people in shelters.”
Collins-Bellamy expressed concern, however, that the Trump Administration is proposing harsh limits on the federal Section 8 housing voucher program, which assists millions of lower income Americans with paying their rent. Among those proposals is a two year limit on vouchers.
“These vouchers provide a lifeline to hard working Americans in lower wage jobs who cannot afford the high rent levels we see today,” said Collins-Bellamy, adding, “Throwing them out of the program is going to bring homelessness to a level we’ve never seen before and will overwhelm he progress that we’ve just made in the New York State budget.”
“Ideally the federal and state voucher programs would work together, with the federal Section 8 program providing long term assistance and the State program filling the gap on more immediate needs. I commend Governor Hochul and the State Legislature for stepping up, and now we need to stop Donald Trump from blowing things up from his end.”
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2024 there were more than 158,000 homeless New Yorkers, or about 20 percent of the nation’s total homeless population. Almost a third of the homeless population are children in New York.
“Homelessness is heartbreaking, but especially so when it involves children,” said Collins Bellamy, “Here in Yonkers, we have a growing number of our public school students who don’t have a home to go to at night. This action by the State, which I have been promoting for several years, is a major step in the right direction.
