DTR - COVID-19 Accommodations

Housing Preservation & Development


Section 8 / Rental Subsidy Programs

COVID-19 Accommodations


COVID-19 Accommodations

HPD has taken the following measures to prioritize the health and safety of our Participants, Owners, and Staff while ensuring that our rental subsidies continue uninterrupted. As HPD continues to assess the situation, updates will be posted on this webpage.

Upon expiration of HUD’s COVID-19 waivers, HPD sent owners and participants a notice informing them of this fact and of subsequent policy changes. A copy of these notices can be found at the links below:

Owner COVID waiver expiration notice (English)

Owner COVID waiver expiration notice (Spanish)

Participant COVID waiver expiration notice (English)

Participant COVID waiver expiration notice (Spanish)

If you have any questions or concerns, please call 311 and continue to monitor this webpage for updates.

For more information about evictions and tenants rights during the COVID-19 crisis, visit HPD's COVID-19 Updates webpage or the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants' Information and Resources for NYC Tenants Impacted by COVID-19 webpage.

For more information about COVID-19, visit nyc.gov/coronavirus.

Participant Accommodations

Expand AllCollapse All

Click a topic, or press the enter key on a topic, to reveal its answer.

Virtual Operations

Starting on September 13, 2021, HPD’s Division of Tenant Resources’ Client Services office at 100 Gold Street is open by appointment only. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, appointments will be scheduled only when business may not be handled in other ways.

Email is the fastest way to reach HPD employees.
Our staff will respond as soon as possible. View a list of HPD staff email addresses.

All emails will be encrypted to protect your privacy.
Encryption means that when you communicate with HPD by email, your information is kept safe and private. When requesting documents, HPD will send you an introduction email with instructions on how to view or send encrypted emails.

You can also contact Client Services at 917-286-4300.
HPD program participants, owners, and applicants can call Client Services. If you are prompted to leave a message, please do, and an HPD employee will return your call.

Did you receive a call from an unfamiliar number?
We are calling our participants to confirm their contact information. Our staff may call you from an unfamiliar phone number. If you do not answer, our staff will leave a voicemail with a number for you to call back.

You can now submit documents online.
HPD now has a portal (the DTR Portal) where you can securely upload your documents. If you have questions, please review the portal instructions before calling Client Services for support.

HPD now accepts digital signatures.
It may be difficult for you to print and scan documents at this time. As an accommodation, we will accept your digital signature on HPD documents (except program applications). This means that you may:

Print the document

Sign it with a pen

Take a photo of the complete document or scan it to your computer

Email the signed document to HPD

OR

Use the "Fill & Sign' option to electronically add your signature to a form that you receive from us. View instructions on how to use the "Fill & Sign" option.

Can't afford rent?

If your household experienced a loss of income, please notify us as soon as possible so we can adjust your tenant share of rent.

Your tenant share will change only after we processes your request and issues your new Rent Breakdown Letter.

Until you receive your new tenant share, the property owner may hold you responsible for your old tenant share of rent.

If complete documentation is provided within 90 days: your tenant share of rent will be processed retroactive to the first of the month after complete documentation is provided.

If complete documentation is not provided within 90 days: your tenant share of rent will be processed to the first of the month after complete documentation is provided.

Report your income loss by completing a Decreased Income Form (Formulario para informar una disminución de ingresos) and uploading it to the Portal.

Note: Many HPD households have received a $1,200 stimulus payment and a $600 stimulus payment from the federal government, and/or a weekly enhancement to their unemployment benefit. HPD will NOT consider these payments as part of your income, for the purpose of determining your eligibility or your tenant share of rent. You must continue to report this and all income at your next annual recertification. *The weekly enhancement to unemployment benefits does not count toward income, but the weekly unemployment benefit does count toward income. All income must be reported at your annual recertification.

Enforcement Actions, Document Submission, HQS, Conferences and Appeals

Effective January 1st, 2022, HPD will begin taking prospective enforcement action for all reasons outlined in Chapter 15 of the Administrative Plan.

Please choose the safest option for returning your completed doucments to HPD:

For all documents: upload your documents through the DTR Portal

For the HCV annual recertification package: email your documents to DRTPRODUNIT@hpd.nyc.gov or fax them to 212-863-5776

For other HCV documents and general questions: email your documents to DTRAI@hpd.nyc.gov or fax them to 212-863-5299

If your rental subsidy program is listed in the top-right-corner of the first page of your recertification package as PBV, CoC-SPC, Mod SRO, Mod Rehab, NYC15/15, SRO, VASH, Mainstream, and FUP Programs: email your documents to PBV@hpd.nyc.gov or fax to 212-863-8828

If you cannot upload, email, or fax documents, and are safely able to mail them, please send your documents to:

HPD Division of Tenant Resources
100 Gold Street, Room 1-M
New York, NY 10038

Note: Recertifications are sent to the below address in New Jersey. Please only send Recertification packages to this address:

PO Box 3132
Union, NJ 07083

Pre-termination and pre-denial conferences will be handled by phone or video conference (Zoom or Webex).
If a phone or video conference is not possible, HPD will schedule in-person conferences when our operations at 100 Gold Street are able to safely resume.

Housing Quality Standards (HQS) inspections have resumed.
HPD has resumed all Section 8 Housing Quality Standard (HQS) inspections. However, there may be delays in the scheduling of HQS inspections.

HPD is reaching out to owners to encourage them to make required repairs. If a unit is in failure, owners must correct the violations and notify HPD that the failure was corrected. Owners may visit the DTR Portal to learn more.

If you live in a unit that has an owner-caused HQS failure, starting January 1st, 2022, if the owner has not completed corrections within the correction period of 30 days, HPD will abate ((i.e., owner payments will be suspended) Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) starting March 1st, 2022. HPD-assisted units that failed an HQS inspection between January 1st, 2020 and December 31st, 2021 that do not have failure conditions corrected must make corrections as soon as possible. Units that continue to have failure conditions by 2/15/2022 will be abated effective March 1, 2022.Starting January 1st, 2022, HPD will begin requiring households to move for reasons outlined in section 14.2 of HPD’s Administrative Plan (owner non-compliance, long-term HAP abatement, overcrowded, over-housed) as well as for absence from the unit for greater than 180 days.

If there is a life-threatening condition in your unit, call 311.

Effective January 1st, 2022, HPD will begin taking prospective enforcement action for all reasons outlined in Chapter 15 of the Administrative Plan.

The HPD Appeals Unit has resumed processing and scheduling appeals.

If you want to appeal an HPD enforcement action, you may submit your request for an informal hearing or informal review to the HPD Appeals Unit at: Appeals@hpd.nyc.gov

Appeals will be processed in the order in which they are received, and there may be some delays in processing appeals due to the COVID related shutdown

Hearings: effective March 1st, 2022, DTR is reinstituting the policy of providing households 30 calendar days from the date of the notice of adverse action, or by the date of termination, whichever is later, to request an informal hearing or review.

As a continued COVID accommodation, HPD will accept requests for an informal hearing or review that were received 15 days after the aforementioned 30 day deadline. Any change to this policy will be addressed by the publication of a new Administrative Plan, published on HPD’s website at https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/about-section-8.page

HPD will be scheduling all appeals from the covered Division of Tenant Resources programs for Video hearings/reviews (“Video Hearings/Reviews”). More information can be found here.

Evictions for Non-payment of Rent

For more information about evictions and tenants’ rights during the COVID-19 crisis, visit HPD's COVID-19 Updates webpage or the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants' Information and Resources for NYC Tenants Impacted by COVID-19 webpage.

Employment and Training Support Opportunity

If you receive Housing Choice Voucher Assistance (Section 8) and you have lost significant portions of your income, or your job entirely, the Family Self-Sufficiency Program (FSS) is available to support your employment and training related goals and help you build substantial savings.

The FSS program provides education, job training, job placement, and financial counseling services to participants. When household income increases from employment earnings, any resulting increase in the tenant share of the rent is matched in a savings account that becomes available to the household upon successful completion of the program.

If you are interested in joining, please send an email expressing interest to FSS@hpd.nyc.gov. You can also visit HPD’s website to learn more about the program and complete an interest form at nyc.gov/hpd/fss.