NEW YORK — A small-scale program that Mayor Eric Adams’ administration launched in late 2022 to tackle street homelessness has proven effective amid a concerning surge in the city’s unsheltered population — but there are no plans to expand the initiative due to a maze of bureaucratic barriers, the Daily News has learned.

The “Street to Housing” pilot program, announced by Adams in November 2022, has secured apartments for 130 people who used to live on the streets, and nearly all of those individuals remain housed in the same units to this day, according to new data.

Despite the apparent success, Adams’ administration has no plans to expand the initiative, mayoral spokeswoman Liz Garcia said last week. Garcia cited the decision to not grow the effort to bureaucratic hurdles that come with developing and administering supportive housing for homeless individuals in New York.

Instead, Garcia said Adams’ administration is “applying the successful elements from the pilot, along with lessons learned, to our citywide work in addressing street homelessness.”

“We remain focused on pragmatic, sensible solutions to homelessness rather than pithy campaign slogans and overly simplistic approaches that fail to address the actual scope of the crisis,” she added.

Garcia’s campaign-related broadside appeared to be aimed at City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s running against Adams in this June’s Democratic mayoral primary and released a homeless plan earlier this month that included the new data on the Street to Housing pilot.

The pilot uses the so-called “Housing First” model, which is focused on moving people living on the streets directly into supportive housing apartments as opposed to first sending them through the homeless shelter system.

The idea behind the model is that paperwork related to supportive housing and rental subsidy eligibility can be resolved while individuals are in apartments, as opposed to in shelters, which is the common format.

The data disclosed in Lander’s plan shows that of the 130 people enrolled in Street to Housing since Adams’ administration established it, 109 remain in their apartments with signed leases and rental subsidy support. Of the 21 who are no longer in the program, six “returned home to networks of support after reconnecting with family,” while 13 “found alternative housing,” one of the individuals died and another “entered long term treatment,” the data reveals.

Lander’s plan argues the results show the Housing First concept works and that the city should make it a key component of its battle against homelessness, which has surged across the five boroughs in recent years amid soaring costs of living.

According to the city’s annual unsheltered homelessness survey, 4,140 people were sleeping on streets and subways in summer 2024, the highest number the census has recorded in over a decade, as the shelter population is at an all-time high, too.

In pressing for a pilot expansion, Lander’s plan points to other major U.S. cities, including Philadelphia, Houston and Denver, that have had successes with Housing First models in driving down homelessness.

But Adams administration officials say Lander’s proposal doesn’t take into account the myriad difficulties that would come with scaling up the Housing First approach in New York.

Officials at the Department of Social Services, which oversees the city’s shelter programs, told The News the administration’s pilot has, in part, been successful because it’s operating out of four municipal government-owned supportive housing buildings.

That structure has given the city a great deal of flexibility in how to move homeless individuals directly into permanent housing — a flexibility the officials said doesn’t exist when the buildings are privately-owned, as is more common.

Privately-owned supportive housing buildings are generally developed with low-income housing tax credits and other funding streams that come with a lot of strings attached as it relates to what type of residents can permanently reside in them, the officials explained. Such eligibility criteria, for instance, holds that some units can only be occupied by residents with certain mental health and substance abuse conditions.

With those restrictions, a person who’s moved into a supporting unit via the Housing First model could later be forced to vacate it in the event it’s determined they’re not eligible for it, a risk the officials said Adams’ administration wants to avoid.

In order to change the status quo and make Housing First a more tenable system in the city, the officials argued legislative changes would be required on state and federal levels to ease restrictions around the low-income housing tax credit and other funding streams. Adams’ administration hasn’t publicly called for any such law changes.

The Street to Housing pilot is administered by Volunteers of America-Greater New York.

Catherine Trapani, VOA-GNY’s assistant vice president of public policy, agreed legislative changes would make Housing First more operational in the city. But she questioned why Adams’ administration hasn’t then publicly sought any such changes.

Trapani also said her group has identified that at least some of the thousands of vacant supportive housing units in the city’s stock could be immediately used for Housing First purposes without risk.

“Even if you can’t do it with all, if you can do with even 50 more, that would be 50 more people who can get housing immediately,” she said. “Is it a game changer and a solution to all of our problems? Perhaps not, but it could be if we address the barriers standing in the way.”

Trapani said her group has urged Adams’ office to expand the pilot. “We’re really proud that we’ve done and we’d certainly be open to expanding it. I think the record of success of the program speaks for itself,” she added.

Besides the bureaucratic roadblocks, Garcia, Adams’ spokeswoman, argued expanding Housing First in the city doesn’t make sense at the moment as only “highly-specific groups” of unsheltered individuals have the type of paperwork available required to immediately pair them with the right supportive housing unit.

Garcia said Adams’ administration is instead focused on pairing eligible individuals with the right type of supportive housing in the first place, even if that process can be more time intensive. Garcia cited data showing about 4,800 individuals were set up with supporting housing in the city in the last fiscal year.

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