CM Restler on supportive housing vacancy data clarification

Thank you very much, Chair Lee and Chair Caban.

You know, I've been giving Chair Lee shout-outs at every one of these hearings for her endurance, but I feel like Brian doesn't get enough attention and love.

So I want to thank Brian for being here.

here at every single one of these hearings too.

It's been a marathon.

Okay, Commissioner already heard my first question, but I'm gonna repeat it again.

I'll do it briefly.

465 vacant supportive housing units without a referral process that are under DOHMH purview, according to the most recent report that was provided to our office earlier this year.

Recognizing that OMH is doing a far worse job, I'll just say that, you're not the worst actor out there, but it's still too many vacant units and it's unacceptable.

So what are, can you give us a breakdown of why these units are vacant without a referral in process?

Do they need significant repairs?

What are the investments that we can make that we'll see more of those units activated over the course of FY27?

Thank you for the question.

Let me hand it over to Assistant Commissioner Jamie Nichols.

Yeah, so we've got over 13,300 units of permanent affordable supportive housing in our contract portfolio.

The last quarterly report from Local 135 showed that we had 104 of those units were vacant with no referral.

So that's a bit lower than the number you cited.

523 are vacant with a referral in process.

That means a person has seen the apartment and said, yes, I want to move in, and they're in the process of getting tax credit documentation and the move-in, right, which takes a little bit of time.

So I think our vacancy rate is pretty good.

There's some offline units, 376 as of that last quarter.

They report are offline.

Typically, there's two main drivers of that.

One is serious repairs are needed, so those are being done.

The second is that the prior tenant deceased in the unit and it is sealed.

That's a really challenging issue.

We're really glad the mayor's housing plan identified a number of initiatives to improve housing and reduce vacancies, and they're really going to be helping us focus on the sealed unit issue.

Okay, so of the 370-odd that are offline, there's a resource need on the repairs to see those units brought back online?

Do you have an estimate of what that would cost to see those units brought back into your portfolio and activated?

I don't have an estimate at this point.

That's changing all the time, right?

New units, this is every day the numbers are a little bit different.

So a unit that's being repaired today will be available for move-in tomorrow.

Those are not long-term same units vacant.

The providers do have some money in their budgets for repairs, and they do that, and the landlords as well will pay for those repairs.

So that's not a budget number that's visible to us.

Okay.

I mean, I'm looking at the last report that I'm seeing, which is listing 465 as either offline plus no referral.

So I do want to dig into this data.

We'll follow up with you directly.

So we're concerned about just making sure we have the correct

understanding of where we are.