Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Metropolis Council Speaker Julie Menin agreed Tuesday to a $125.8 billion funds, together with a further $175 million for rental assist, following tense negotiations within the last days over funding for housing vouchers.
The Eleventh-hour deal comes on the ultimate day earlier than the funds is due, and was handed hours later by the council with a 45-6 margin.
“We have worked together to usher in a new era of fiscal health for our city,” Mamdani mentioned at a Metropolis Corridor press convention.
Menin additionally praised the “transformative” funds settlement, noting that she and the mayor “have come together in the spirit of collaboration with the shared interest of wanting what is best for our city, and that is the essence of this handshake.”
Funds negotiations had been at a standstill days earlier than the deadline over funding for the city-funded housing voucher program often known as CityFHEPS, in addition to the mayor’s continued lawsuit to cease this system’s growth.
Councilmembers and advocates rallied exterior Metropolis Corridor for an growth of the CityFHEPS housing voucher program on June 26, 2026, as Mayor Zohran Mamdani sought to move a funds settlement with the Metropolis Council. Credit score: Alex Krales/The Metropolis Reporter
As a part of the funds deal, the administration agreed to drop its lawsuit, which was filed below former Mayor Eric Adams after the Council voted to broaden this system’s eligibility in 2023.
Beneath the settlement, the town will create a brand new rental program to help extra New Yorkers who’re presently not eligible for the prevailing CityFHEPS program, and are dealing with eviction.
That program will probably be created below a invoice sponsored by Councilmember Pierina Sanchez, who led the cost for extra money for CityFHEPS within the funds.
“This is a historic win for vulnerable New Yorkers — and a turning point in our city’s approach to homelessness,” she mentioned in a press release.
Former Council speaker Christine Quinn, who’s now the president and CEO of shelter and supportive housing supplier WIN, praised the deal.
“Expanding CityFHEPS will help thousands more individuals and families leave shelter and move into permanent, stable housing, while making smart use of taxpayer dollars,” she mentioned.
Ballooning Prices
CityFHEPS is taken into account a lifeline to the roughly 67,000 New York households that depend on it to maneuver from shelter into everlasting housing. The voucher permits households to pay a few third of their revenue in direction of lease.
However this system’s price has ballooned at a price many have warned was unsustainable: from about $26 million in 2019 to nearly $1.8 billion in 2025. That’s earlier than the growth dictated by a 2023 regulation, which might have made extra New Yorkers eligible for the voucher — bringing program prices to over $4 billion by 2030, in keeping with an estimate by the Impartial Funds Workplace.
The Adams administration didn’t implement that regulation, and Mamdani continued his authorized struggle towards doing so regardless of his marketing campaign promise to broaden this system.
The present voucher program utilized to folks in shelters working at the least 10 hours weekly however making not more than roughly $31,920 for a person or $66,000 for a household of 4.
Council Speaker Julie Menin (D-Manhattan) speaks at a Metropolis Corridor rally to save lots of FHEPS housing voucher funding, June 26, 2026. Credit score: John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit
The 2023 regulation would have expanded voucher eligibility to folks dealing with eviction — not simply these in shelters — and households incomes at a barely greater revenue: about $56,700 for a person and $81,000 for a household of 4.
With the newly negotiated funds, CityFHEPS will apply to New Yorkers at that elevated revenue degree, in addition to to these dealing with eviction from rent-stabilized residences, and people in shelters past what the Division of Homeless Companies runs — like runaway youth and other people displaced by fires or vacate orders.
Robert Desir, Authorized Help Society workers legal professional, in a press release lauded the deal that introduced the “needless litigation to a close.”
“More New Yorkers will now be able to access the support they need before losing their homes, reaffirming what we’ve long known: investing in rental assistance is both the humane choice and the fiscally responsible one,” he mentioned.
The funds is the primary negotiated between Mayor Mamdani and Speaker Menin, and got here after assist from the state to plug a greater than $12 billion deficit.
It additionally elevated funding for Truthful Fares by $54 million, which offers reductions on MTA subway and bus rides, and extra everlasting funding for libraries at $31.7 million.
Mamdani additionally introduced the creation of a portal to launch paperwork associated to the air high quality and well being impacts after the Sept. 11, 2001 assaults, which can price greater than $34 million subsequent 12 months. Earlier mayoral administrations had refused to launch the paperwork, sparking a years-long advocacy marketing campaign that this week criticized the town for persevering with its delay.
No New Cops
The funds doesn’t embrace funding so as to add 580 extra law enforcement officials, regardless of its inclusion earlier within the mayor’s govt funds. That preliminary inclusion was protested by elected officers and the Democratic Socialists of America, and diverged from Mamdani’s marketing campaign promise to maintain NYPD staffing ranges flat.
The NYPD funding was first reported by the New York Put up.
Mamdani mentioned he and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch “were able to identify ways to keep the NYPD headcount of the originally authorized 35,000, while also meeting all of our crime-fighting needs, and implementing the new programs that were announced from here this year.”
Regardless of some financial savings, funds consultants panned Mamdani’s balancing act.
“The mayor was exactly right: The city has a huge structural budget problem. Unfortunately, this budget fails to solve it,” Andrew Rein, the president of the Residents Funds Fee, mentioned in a press release.
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