Long waits for lottery apartments could ease as HPD considers replacing Housing Connect
- HPD is revamping the housing lottery process and homeless placement systems
- An single log-in system already in the works; other fixes proposed to fix delays
“Extensive changes are already underway to create a simpler, less technically complicated housing lottery system that is fairer and faster," said HPD spokesperson Natasha Kersey told Brick.
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For New Yorkers seeking rent-stabilized apartments, scoring one through the city's housing lottery can be life-altering. But the current process comes with hurdles, like lengthy delays and reams of documentation.
In March, The Real Deal reported that Department of Housing Preservation & Development Commissioner Dina Levy announced the agency is planning a full overhaul of the housing lottery system, including potentially replacing the Housing Connect portal with a new system.
Some of those changes could come out of recommendations from Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development (also known as SPEED) task force, convened to identify bottlenecks in producing more affordable housing in the city.
Levy said HPD will soon be releasing a new system for tracking leases for housing voucher holders who live in homeless shelters, according to The Real Deal.
The Housing Connect website is now 13 years old, and the most recent version has been in place since 2020.
“We are in the process of revamping the housing lottery and homeless placement systems, incremental fixes will not go far enough,” HPD spokesperson Natasha Kersey said in an email. “Extensive changes are already underway to create a simpler, less technically complicated housing lottery system that is fairer and faster.”
Kersey added that for the 15,000 families who received placements through Housing Connect and homeless placements in fiscal year 2025, the system was already “life-changing,” enabling “a shorter commute, a bedroom of their own, a place where they can finally exhale.”
Speeding up the lottery process
The city has already made tweaks to the lottery process to speed it along, according to the renter advocates who help applicants and developers navigate the lottery requirements. That includes simplifying the documentation that applicants must produce.
Starting soon, according to a banner on the Housing Connect website, applicants will be able to log in using NYC.ID, New York’s sign on service. That will make it easier to keep key information up to date in the system, and cut down on the number of password and username combos that New Yorkers seeking housing have to remember.
Tapping the ‘re-rental’ market
Last year, a temporary rule allowed property owners with housing lottery apartments to re-list units when they become available on listings sites such as Streeteasy; these are known as “re-rentals.” That waiver is set to expire at the end of April, and HPD hasn’t yet said if it will be extended.
Sam Rosenberg, executive director of Reside New York, a marketing company that helps renters and developers navigate the housing lottery, said that the new re-rental process has worked much better than the lottery.
Instead of a lottery, the re-rental process operates as first-come, first-served. This means any applicants for an apartment truly want that particular apartment and are ready to move forward.
"If someone applied today for this opportunity, they're probably interested, and they're ready to move. But if this applicant applied today, and they have to wait 60 days until the lottery is over, in the meantime, they could have been settled somewhere,” Rosenberg said. This process speeds wait times along and there have been discussions about making the entire lottery function on a first-come, first-served basis as well, he said.
Potential fixes to Housing Connect
While some housing advocates have called for getting rid of the Housing Connect site altogether, others believe there are other ways to make the lottery process less burdensome without scrapping the entire online system.
Sam Posner, president of Tax Solute Consulting, said that overall the Housing Connect system functions well in its current iteration. However, Posner, who acts as a middleman between HPD and owners, could identify a few helpful changes such as a notification system that would let his company know when pre-selected applicants have submitted documents.
“If I reach out to you and I reach out to a bunch of people, tomorrow I won't get any notifications that you uploaded the documents,” Posner said. “You have to go through a logbook with 3,000 people. It’s hard, every morning, to go through 3,000 people who have uploaded their documents.”
Rosenberg doubts that the city will get rid of Housing Connect entirely, given how much has been invested in its use. It’s also not as simple as fixing a piece of software:
"When you talk about the lottery process, it’s based on the rules, the laws that technically these are all something City Council approved, and they must follow these steps,” he said.
A question of timing
Ilana Schwartz, CEO of OMG, a real estate marketing company that creates campaigns for housing lotteries (and is a Brick Underground sponsor), said the issue isn’t Housing Connect itself but the overlapping timing of the lotteries.
“There are so many lotteries that go live at the same time instead of spreading them out,” she said. This leaves buildings competing with each other for the same eligible applicants at the same time.
Another challenge arises when marketers like her are trying to promote apartments with rents at 100 percent of area median income (AMI is the metric used to determine affordable rents). That pits owners with lottery apartments available against the owners of market-rate apartments which are immediately available, instead of after 60 days, for the same pool of prospective renters.
“If I can just apply to a building at a market rate and move in next month, I’m confused,” she said. “I won’t know if I get selected in the lottery until the lottery closes.” That uncertainty makes housing lottery slots less appealing.
“I don't think the challenges are necessarily in the 2.0 Housing Connect website, but a larger conversation about what is affordable housing, when these lotteries should be going live,” she said.
What should lottery applicants do now?
For now, Rosenberg advised prospective renters to continue applying to the lotteries. “There are so many units available. I would say every day you have another project coming up on Housing Connect,” he said.
There are many rental opportunities for middle- and moderate-income earners, not just those with low incomes, Rosenberg said.
He advised applicants to respond promptly when someone reaches out to them for documents so they don’t miss out on an opportunity.
"This is a very fair and transparent process. So when someone is in it, I believe they have a good chance to win it,” he said.
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