The city agency that is often a last resort for vulnerable adults in need of housing help and other services is rejecting four of every five New Yorkers referred for aid, data shows.
The city’s Adult Protective Services program, part of the sprawling Department of Social Services, steps in to assist adults whose physical or mental impairments leave them vulnerable to abuse, exploitation or financial problems, including eviction. The office provides one of the few avenues for low-income New Yorkers to obtain a city-funded housing voucher to cover their rent without first going into a shelter.
Adult Protective Services has routinely denied services to a majority of New Yorkers referred for aid in past years, citing strict eligibility requirements set by the state. But city data shows the rate of rejection is surging as more people apply for assistance, and staff levels plummet. The agency received nearly 6,000 more referrals for New Yorkers in need of support last fiscal year compared to 2023, but its average monthly caseload increased by only 11 people, according to the latest Mayor’s Management Report, which tracks agency performance. The social services agency refused to provide the total number of people found eligible in the fiscal year that ended June 30 but said it was less than 20% of applicants. They also said the average monthly caseload includes people who were referred prior to 2023.
The dual spike in referrals and rejections corresponds with a rise in the number of older adults living in the five boroughs, an increase in evictions and a dwindling number of available, affordable apartments. Attorneys for New Yorkers in need say social workers, government agencies and even city marshals are making more referrals to Adult Protective Services because it’s the only way low-income New Yorkers can obtain a rental assistance voucher, known as CityFHEPS, to remain in their homes.
“As the housing crisis gets worse, and as people are aging, you’re going to end up with a lot more vulnerable people in terrible living conditions or in unaffordable living conditions,” said Dinah Luck, a senior staff attorney at the organization Mobilization for Justice. “People who have nowhere else to go are going to end up being referred to APS in the hopes that they can do something to prevent them from ending up homeless.”
The office received nearly 29,500 referrals from a range of sources last fiscal year City stats show they served an average of 5,567 people per month — most of them receiving ongoing support throughout the year — during that span, down from more than 7,400 in 2018. About half of the people who receive services are older than 65.
Although the agency received more referrals for people facing eviction last year, most of those people didn’t meet specific eligibility criteria spelled out by the state, the Adult Protective Services spokesperson said.
Eviction, or a need for ongoing rental assistance, cannot be the only reason Adult Protective Services finds someone eligible for services, according to the agency handbook and emails to attorneys shared with Gothamist. Agency staff must also determine that the person cannot meet their basic medical, food or housing needs, and that they may be at risk of physical or financial risk as a result. Adult Protective Services staff are tasked with visiting people referred to them within three days to make the assessment.
“The criteria is always the same criteria. There has to be a correlation between impairment and risk,” said Adult Protective Services Deputy Commissioner Gili Hershkovich-Kim.
Staff link eligible clients with services like heavy-duty cleaning, transportation, financial management and home health care.
As Gothamist has reported, agency staff can also help New Yorkers find and maintain stable housing, with life-changing effects. But few get that level of support.
Bronx resident Pepe Alfalla is one of the thousands of New Yorkers who were found ineligible for services following an assessment last year.
Attorneys for Alfalla, 81, referred him to Adult Protective Services because he was facing eviction from his room in a squalid boarding house in Mott Haven in the Bronx. He has a range of health problems and uses a walker to navigate the torn-up floors of the small room where he has lived for the past 20 years.
Alfalla uses a shared bathroom located in a back room, where a chunk of ceiling collapsed.
David Brand / Gothamist
Roaches scurried through his apartment during a visit by Gothamist last month. The only functioning bathroom Alfalla can access is located in a backroom with a collapsed ceiling. The front door doesn’t lock, so the landlord wrapped a chain through holes drilled in the wood. Alfalla uses a key to secure the padlock.
But he can’t afford to move anywhere else. A new landlord purchased the property in 2021 and filed to evict Alfalla and three other tenants who were living in individual rooms in the building. They agreed to a settlement in April, court records show.
“I want a studio where I can have my own bathroom, something to cook on,” said Alfalla, gesturing to a hotplate atop a small plastic shelving unit near the foot of his bed. “I couldn’t get a voucher.”
His attorneys from Mobilization For Justice say the landlord — a Queens-based limited liability company tied to investor Dominique Vabre — offered to move Alfalla into another first-floor apartment they own. But Alfalla could not afford the rent without assistance, prompting his lawyers to ask Adult Protective Services to find him eligible for support so that he could get the subsidy.
Adult Protective Services denied the aid. A supervisor noted in a January email shared with Gothamist that the agency won’t provide services unless there was “a reason other than an eviction or City-Fheps.”
The lawyers said Alfalla’s health problems and the decrepit conditions of the apartment building justify accepting him for services and helping him move.
Afalla sits in his bedroom in the Bronx.
David Brand / Gothamist
Vabre and an attorney for the limited liability company listed as building owner did not respond to requests for comment and questions about a new apartment for Alfalla.
A Department of Social Services spokesperson declined to comment on Alfalla’s individual case but said a person is only eligible for services if their mental or physical impairments directly affect their ability to manage money or care for themselves.
The state’s Office of Children and Family Services, which oversees local Adult Protective Services offices, and the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance said they offer training to staff but declined to answer specific questions about how the state is supporting the city’s efforts to assist vulnerable New Yorkers or if they are concerned about the dwindling rate of people found eligible for city services.
The state provides little housing help to adults in New York, offering a limited number of housing vouchers to extremely low-income families with children. Only a fraction of people eligible for Section 8 housing vouchers issued by the federal government actually receive one because Congress limits the number of subsidies nationwide.
That leaves the city as the only viable option for low-income New Yorkers in need of ongoing rental assistance.
The City Council passed a measure last year that would have allowed people facing eviction to qualify for a housing voucher without first becoming homeless. But Mayor Eric Adams refused to implement the law, arguing that it would cost too much and that the Council didn’t have the authority to set eligibility rules for the CityFHEPS program. A judge sided with Adams, prompting the Council and a group of affected New Yorkers to appeal the decision last month.
A recent report from the state comptroller’s office flagged a number of bureaucratic obstacles and inefficiencies in the program.
Luck and other lawyers who refer people with mental illness or disabilities to Adult Protective Services say noting that the person needs housing assistance could be a “red flag” leading to rejection because overwhelmed staff may think it’s the only reason the person was referred.
“The high rate of denial has always been a problem,” said Daniel Barkley, director of elder law at Legal Services NYC. “But there’s been a peeling back of the services.”
Hershkovich-Kim, the Adult Protective Services deputy commissioner, denied that agency staff do less thorough assessments for people referred for housing assistance.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
But the office may have a capacity problem. The number of staffers working in the adult services division at Human Resources Administration, which includes Adult Protective Services, has plummeted in recent years — from a five-year peak of 1,925 case workers, eligibility specialists and supervisors in October 2019 to 1,403 in June 2024, according to staffing data provided by the state comptroller’s office.
The number of employees specifically assigned to Adult Protective Services dropped by from 469 at the end of the 2019 fiscal year to 352 at the end of 2023 — a roughly 25% plunge — according to additional data shared by the Independent Budget Office. The office had 427 staff members at the end of June.
One Adult Protective Services caseworker who spoke to Gothamist said they were surprised to learn the rate of rejections had increased so dramatically because their caseloads have grown compared to past years.
“We have been swamped with cases,” said the worker, who asked not to be named in a story because they were not permitted to speak to the media. “We are getting volumes and volumes every day.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
