After a judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing the city from immediately eliminating an incentive that pays landlords to hold vacant units for CityFHEPs voucher holders, the city decided to put the rule change through the official public review process.

New York County Supreme Court located at 60 Centre St., where the CityFHEPS case is playing out. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Incentives for landlords to hold units for CityFHEPs voucher holders will continue, at least temporarily, after a court appearance Thursday morning where lawyers for the City of New York stated their intention to send the rule change through an official public review process.

The incentive pays one month’s rent for voucher holders moving into housing from shelter while the city processes their applications. As City Limits first reported, the Department of Social Services (DSS) had, in a late May email, announced that it would be ending the payment in an effort to rein in costs.

The Legal Aid Society and a group of voucher holders sued, arguing the decision was made without a good reason and without going through the official process for program rule changes, called the City Administrative Procedure Act (CAPA).

They won a temporary restraining order to preserve the incentive on June 27. Thursday morning, a judge extended a preliminary injunction to halt the changes.

“You’re preliminarily enjoined from making changes until the finalization of such a rule,” said Judge Lyle Frank to the petitioners and respondents in court Thursday morning.

Tenants moving into housing with CityFHEPs vouchers pay 30 percent of their income on rent. The program has grown significantly in recent years, with more than 15,000 households moving into housing with a voucher in fiscal year 2025, a 17 percent increase to a total of 58,723 assisted households.

Landlords, brokers, lawyers, and tenants told City Limits that eliminating the payment would make it harder for landlords to take CityFHEPS, with one real estate group previously describing the program as “cumbersome, lengthy, and convoluted.”

It’s already difficult for CityFHEPs holders to find building owners who will rent to them (though rejecting a tenant because of how they pay their rent, a practice known as source of income discrimination, is illegal under the city’s human rights law).

Advocacy groups supporting homeless New Yorkers celebrated the injunction.

“It seems the Adams administration will go to the ends of the Earth, including through frivolous legal action, to make life even more difficult for New Yorkers in need,” said Christine Quinn, chief operating officer for Women In Need, in a statement.

DSS previously told City Limits that the rule did not have to go through the official CAPA review process because the incentive was not an official rule of the CityFHEPs program when it began, and that the agency can allocate resources as it sees fit.

But after the judge issued an initial temporary restraining order, the city has since decided to send the rule change through the CAPA process, which includes providing the public with a minimum of 60 days to review and comment on the proposal. 

DSS said no changes would be made to the program until after the review is complete.

That process could begin next week, Eric Hiatt, senior counsel at NYC Law Department told Judge Frank, though neither he nor DSS conceded that the rule change should have gone through CAPA in the first place. 

The City Law Department declined to comment further on the case.

DSS, in response to written questions from City Limits, said the decision to pursue CAPA was to take a more proactive approach and respond to concerns raised by advocates and community members.

DSS previously told City Limits that it eliminated the incentive, which had been a feature of the CityFHEPs program since it began in 2017, because it had new data systems that would make processing voucher applications faster. 

Housing advocates at a rally outside City Hall in 2023, to call for expanding CityFHEPS. (Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit)

Eliminating the extra month’s rent payment, DSS claims, was part of a plan to reduce costs as the budget for the CityFHEPs program has grown fivefold since 2021, to $1.25 billion in fiscal year 2025.

DSS previously told City Limits that the average time to process voucher applications was about three weeks. An audit by the state comptroller’s office last year found that it can sometimes take much longer (DSS disputes the findings of the comptroller’s report).

“We’re not buying the 25 days argument. It’s not 25 days. Unless they completely revamp the process to really streamline it and make it under a month, these problems are gonna exist,” said Pavita Krishnaswamy, supervising attorney at Legal Aid who argued the case Thursday morning.

Judge Frank declined to take further action, like ruling if ending the incentive was lawful, before the public review process completed.

“They could decide tomorrow, through the CAPA process, to keep the program…I just think it’s premature,” said Judge Frank.

Legal Aid’s Krishnaswamy maintained that they will fight the rule change regardless, arguing that there are tens of thousands of people in shelters who rely on the incentive.

“It will have the effect—whether you go through CAPA or not—of harming petitioners and this entire class of individuals,” said Pavita.

Legal Aid said that if the rule change goes through CAPA and the city still decides to eliminate the incentive, they will continue to sue on grounds that the move is “arbitrary and capricious”—in other words, it was made without a good reason.

“It makes no sense and [the incentive is] saving the city tons of money,” said Krishnaswamy. “It is in the city’s interest and the petitioner’s interest for people to be moved out of shelters into affordable, permanent housing. The unit incentive, in our experience, is one of the only things that makes it possible for them to move out.”

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Patrick@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post City Backtracks on CityFHEPs Voucher Incentive, Will Subject Rule Change to Public Review appeared first on City Limits.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration can slash hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of research funding in its push to cut federal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, the Supreme Court decided Thursday.

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The high court majority lifted a judge’s order blocking $783 million worth of cuts made by the National Institutes of Health to align with Republican President Donald Trump’s priorities. The high court did keep Trump administration guidance on future funding blocked, however.

The court split 5-4 on the decision. Chief Justice John Roberts was along those who would have kept the cuts blocked, along with the court’s three liberals.

The order marks the latest Supreme Court win for Trump and allows the administration to forge ahead with canceling hundreds of grants while the lawsuit continues to unfold. The plaintiffs, including states and public-health advocacy groups, have argued that the cuts will inflict “incalculable losses in public health and human life.”

The Justice Department, meanwhile, has said funding decisions should not be “subject to judicial second-guessing” and efforts to promote policies referred to as DEI can “conceal insidious racial discrimination.”

The lawsuit addresses only part of the estimated $12 billion of NIH research projects that have been cut, but in its emergency appeal, the Trump administration also took aim at nearly two dozen other times judges have stood in the way of its funding cuts.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer said judges shouldn’t be considering those cases under an earlier Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for teacher-training program cuts. He says they should go to federal claims court instead.

But the plaintiffs, 16 Democratic state attorneys general and public-health advocacy groups, argued that research grants are fundamentally different from the teacher-training contracts and couldn’t be sent to claims court. Halting studies midway can also ruin the data already collected and ultimately harm the country’s potential for scientific breakthroughs by disrupting scientists’ work in the middle of their careers, they argued.

U.S. District Judge William Young judge in Massachusetts agreed, finding the abrupt cancellations were arbitrary and discriminatory. “I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, said at a hearing in June. He later added: “Have we no shame.”

An appeals court left Young’s ruling in place.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE

PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. (AP) — Vice President JD Vance pitched President Donald Trump’s sweeping new law as a “working families’ tax cut” during a visit Thursday to a refrigeration facility in swing-state Georgia, a preview of the midterm message that Republicans are expected to campaign on next year.

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In his third trip to promote Trump’s tax cuts and spending bill, Vance cited its tax cut extensions as well as tax breaks on overtime and tips that he said “rewards you instead of punishes you for working hard.”

“If you’re working hard, the government ought to leave you alone,” Vance said in his visit to Alta Refrigeration, an industrial refrigeration manufacturing facility in Peachtree City, in metro Atlanta.

Less than 20 miles to the northeast, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff was also talking about the tax law but noting provisions that cut Medicaid and food stamps by $1.2 trillion. He pointed to reports this week from Evans Memorial Hospital, a rural hospital in Claxton, Georgia, where the facility’s CEO is blaming the law for a $3.3 million hole in the hospital’s budget. Bill Lee, the president and CEO of the hospital, told reporters that it might need to cut its intensive care unit.

“To be very blunt, I think it is embarrassing for the vice president to be coming to Georgia to sell a policy that is already resulting in harm,” Ossoff said in Jonesboro at the Clayton County Chamber of Commerce.

The visits encapsulate how both Republicans and Democrats are seeking to capitalize on the president’s signature law before the 2026 elections, where U.S. House, Senate and governor’s seats are up for grabs. The races will give voters nationwide one of their first chances to weigh in on the second Trump presidency.

Vice President JD Vance speaks during a visit to ALTA Refrigeration Inc., Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, in Peachtree City, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

In Peachtree City, Vance described the cuts to Medicaid as ensuring that people who are in the United States illegally are not receiving benefits meant for low-income people.

“It’s not about kicking people off of health care,” Vance said. “It’s about kicking illegal aliens the hell out of this country, so that we can preserve health care for American families.”

Vance was joined by two members of Congress, Buddy Carter and Mike Collins, and former college football coach Derek Dooley, all of whom who are running in the GOP race to challenge Ossoff next year.

At the Alta Refrigeration facility, Vance stood in a warehouse in front of a large American flag and two banners that said, “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!”

As he spoke to several hundred people, the vice president also said he was proud to have gone out in the District of Columbia with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday to visit National Guard troops that Trump has deployed in the city as part of a law enforcement crackdown.

“We’ve got to take America’s streets back for the American people,” Vance said.

He was asked if the administration expected to deploy troops in Atlanta, too. Vance did not directly answer but said the Republican administration has focused on the situation in the nation’s capital.

“We hope the people see what we’re doing in Washington, D.C., and follow our example all across the country,” he said.

Last month, Vance also promoted the new law in visits to areas in Ohio and Pennsylvania that are expected to have competitive U.S. House races next year.

While Georgia will host a competitive U.S. Senate race in 2026, the congressional district where Vance stopped on Thursday is heavily Republican.

It’s represented in Congress by Republican Brian Jack, a former Trump aide who served in the president’s first term as his political director.

Before his stop in Peachtree City, Vance appeared at a closed-door meeting of Republican National Committee members in Atlanta. Vance is the finance co-chair of the RNC and has been leading fundraising efforts for the party.

NEW YORK (AP) — A pair of federal lawsuits filed in San Francisco and New York this week accuse Delta Air Lines and United Airlines of misleading passengers by charging premium fees for window seats next to blank walls.

A New York law firm brought the cases as proposed class actions on behalf of any passengers who say they wouldn’t have selected or paid more for their reserved places if they had known the seats did not include a window.

“We have received a flood of interest from passengers who feel they have been harmed by this practice and who wish to join the lawsuits,” the Greenbaum Olbrantz firm said in a statement. “It makes sense that people are upset. The majority of Americans fly on one of these airlines at some point and a large proportion of them want or need a window, and they pay good money for the privilege.”

Both Delta and United declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

The lawsuit against Delta Air Lines states that when New York resident Nicholas Meyer arrived at row No. 23 for a flight to California earlier this month, he discovered the seat he bought was next to a blank wall.

At no point during the seat selection process did Delta warn him that 23F was a windowless window seat, according to Meyer, one of the lead plaintiffs.

Alaska Airlines and American Airlines also sell such seats but disclose the information when customers choose their seats, the lawsuits assert.

The lawsuits allege that United and Delta long have been aware of consumer complaints posted on social media about the windowless seats yet continued charging extra for window seats without windows.

The Delta lawsuit includes screenshots of some of those complaints.

“Your seat map should not consider this premium, nor should it call it a window seat … There is actually LESS leg room and no perks,” one Delta customer said in a post on Reddit.

The proposed class actions are seeking millions of dollars in damages from each carrier.