Rental assistance program helps NYC tenants pay back $1 million in arrears, avoid eviction
- Home 4 Good connected 400 households to subsidies or housing vouchers
- Landlords refer tenants to the program and pay a fee if arrears are paid back
Home 4 Good also offers financial counseling to tenants.
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Brooklyn native Shaisha fell thousands of dollars behind on her rent last year after she was forced to make a tough choice: paying rent, or purchasing medication to manage her diabetes.
Her landlord could have evicted her for her roughly $4,500 in arrears. But instead, Shaisha secured emergency cash assistance to cover her debt, thanks to the fledgling rental assistance program Home 4 Good.
“It was a tremendous help to me,” said Shaisha, who asked only to be identified by her first name. “I just appreciate the outreach that they had, because if it wasn't for them, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
Shaisha is one of roughly 800 New Yorkers that Home 4 Good has helped avoid eviction since September 2024. The program partners with landlords who refer tenants that are behind on rent to housing nonprofits, such as RiseBoro Community Partnership and Help USA, which then help those tenants apply for public rental assistance.
Landlords pay on average $2,500 per tenant who scores rental assistance, less than the $12,000 cost of evicting a tenant, RiseBoro previously told Brick Underground.
Since September 2024, Home 4 Good has recouped more than $1 million in arrears for NYC landlords, said Baaba Halm, senior vice president of programs and interim co-president of the solutions division at Enterprise Community Partners, another Home 4 Good partner. Home 4 Good works with five landlords across NYC, including L+M Development Partners, and Halm hopes to recruit more this year.
“The impacts to tenants are enormous," Halm told Brick Underground. “We’re getting them support early on, well before there's even an eviction filing. We have prevented the trauma of housing court, of being subject to litigation that can result in that tenant losing their housing.”
Preventing evictions and paying landlords
Home 4 Good has helped 400 NYC households since it launched in September after a brief trial run, with a goal of securing rental assistance for 2,500 households by 2028, Halm said.
“That’s 400 households in which an eviction action hasn't been started,” Halm said. “We’ve been immensely proud of the outcomes that we’re seeing.”
Many of those tenants fell behind on rent because of a personal tragedy, like losing a loved one, said Antoinette Edwards, a housing navigator at Help USA who assisted Shaisha in securing cash assistance from NYC through a one-shot deal.
“Most of the clients have just fallen on hard times, which is totally understandable,” Edwards said. “Life isn’t perfect and things happen. Some lost their job, or had a death in the family, and most do apply for one-shot deals and get granted them.”
After a tenant’s arrears are paid, Home 4 Good also offers tenants financial counseling to help keep them out of debt in the future, Halm added.
Bringing public subsidies to tenants
The funding Home 4 Good relies on to cover a tenant’s rent are primarily public subsidies, Halm said—funds that renters across NYC could apply for themselves.
But as Brick Underground has reported, these programs can be difficult to navigate and slow moving. It can take a month or longer for a one-shot deal or other forms of rental assistance, such as a CityFHEPS housing voucher, approved by the NYC Human Resources Administration, Edwards said.
Shaisha said having Edwards walk her through the application process for a one-shot was crucial.
“I’ve never done something like this, [and it helped me] to understand the resources available to me,” Shaisha said. “They helped me out tremendously.”
