1. United States
2. N.Y.
3. Letter

As you may have already known, Suffolk county Long Island has a large population at least 1.5 million, out of those 1.5 million, the town of Brookhaven has approximately 492,759 residents. Out of those, only the first 7,000 per annum are able to get access to the choice housing voucher program. (Section 8) That is only 1.4% of your constituents. Getting access to housing or affordable housing. Even though the average Long islander meets the hud requirement for rental or housing assistance. Not many seem to be getting access to it. There's always a waiting list, a lottery, or the town closes it after February and that's it. What are the rest of the residents supposed to do? Especially when most of long Islanders live extremely paycheck to paycheck if not worse. Rent on Long Island is out of control, especially in the Centereach area in the town of Brookhaven. The average rent you can find in Brookhaven for a studio apartment is anywhere between 1725 and $2,000 a month. Now if you compare that to the median individual income for the town of Brookhaven as of 2023, it was $50,961 a year. Since you're recommended to not spend more than 30% of your income on housing, that means that the average long islander in Brookhaven shouldn't be spending more than $1274.02 on their monthly rent. The average hourly wage in the area is only between 15 and $17 an hour, all of these wages are still too much for snap or Medicaid, but not for the HUD requirement. So if people in these income brackets cannot get access to food or affordable healthcare, then at least they deserve to have access to affordable housing. I implore you to find room in the budget for Long Island to reopen the housing choice voucher program year-round or to allow more than 7000 residents per year for Brookhaven. Possibly combining the effort from the towns with a program from the county and/or state to streamline access to all Long Island residents to affordable housing because affordable housing is a human right.