A decades-old New York City program meant to keep tenants facing eviction in their homes is drawing fresh scrutiny from landlords, who say it has no spending cap and can be used repeatedly by the same tenants — leaving property owners holding tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent.
The program, known informally as the “one shot deal,” is administered by the city’s Human Resources Administration as emergency assistance for tenants who “will lose your housing” without help. Despite the name, tenants can apply more than once. More than 54,000 New Yorkers received the aid last year.
One landlord, who owns three 20-unit, rent-stabilized buildings in the Tremont section of the Bronx and asked to be identified only as “Elena,” said she inherited the properties from her Greek immigrant father-in-law, who put his life savings into them. She said unpaid rent in just one of her buildings now tops $100,000.
“Most tenants are good,” she said, “but there are a handful of bad seeds who just don’t pay.”
Elena said some tenants apply for one-shot assistance once she begins formal eviction proceedings over large arrearages, only to fall behind again within months of receiving the city’s help. She said one tenant in her buildings who previously got one-shot assistance has now built up a new arrearage of $22,000. A separate building manager described a case involving a single $90,000 arrearage.
Other cities place firm limits on how much aid a household can receive. A Los Angeles program, now closed to new applicants, capped assistance at $15,000. Philadelphia caps arrearage relief at $3,500. New York City’s program has no cap on either the size of payments or the number of times a tenant can apply.
New York City provided rental assistance to 52,200 households in fiscal year 2025 at a total cost of $555 million — more than $10,000 per household.
A Tool Some Say Is Misused
Valentina Gojcak, whose OneSource Property Management firm runs 40 rent-stabilized buildings, said the underlying concept is sound when used as intended. When a reliable tenant hits a temporary financial or health setback, the program can send funds directly to the landlord, letting both sides avoid a housing-court process that can stretch past two years and keeps landlords, in her words, from being “forced to provide unpaid shelter.”
But Gojcak said she has also seen tenants who appear to be deliberately withholding rent.
She described some as “working in cash-only jobs who are choosing to send money back to family in their home countries,” adding that they’re “using landlords as banks that don’t get any interest on what amounts to a loan.”
Gojcak said she has grown more concerned since Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office. City figures show the share of one-shot applications being turned down has risen: 75% of applications were declined in the first quarter of this year, compared with 62% in the same period of 2022, during Mayor Eric Adams’ first quarter in office.
Landlords argue that a higher denial rate, combined with the city’s existing eviction rules, means more owners are left without rent income while cases work through housing court — a process that can take years.
Gojcak proposed allowing tenants and landlords to jointly petition HRA for rental assistance when a tenant is genuinely in distress, with a faster decision on eligibility, as an alternative to the lengthy eviction process.
This account draws on reporting and commentary published by Howard Husock, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The Projects: A New History of Public Housing,” in an opinion piece for the New York Post.
