Affordable N.Y.C. Homes Stay Empty for Months. That May Soon Change.

New York City received more than seven million applications last year for about 10,000 affordable apartments. But despite the extraordinary demand, the units often remain empty for months as potential tenants are selected by a plodding government bureaucracy.

One by one, the apartments are awarded to a lucky few who win a lottery, fill out a raft of paperwork and submit to extensive vetting. The painstaking process typically takes almost seven months, according to city data.

On Wednesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration announced a host of changes designed to significantly speed up the leasing process, reducing the median amount of time these apartments remain empty to less than three months.

“We know that in this city, the most expensive city in the United States of America, time is money,” Mr. Mamdani said during the announcement, which was held at a high school in the Bronx. “It is now our job to cut that time down, to make it easier for New Yorkers to not just find new housing but to move into it as well.”

City housing officials say some of the changes can be made by the end of the year, including shortening the period during which applications are accepted from 60 days to 21; simplifying the number and types of documents needed to verify prospective tenants’ incomes; and reducing the number of apartment inspections required by different government programs, such as the city housing voucher program.

The city is also making longer-term improvements to the process, expected to be put in place within the next two years. They include verifying prospective tenants’ incomes even before they apply for apartments; allowing applicants to prioritize neighborhoods they wish to live in; and using federal household data to speed up the vetting process.

None of the proposals require changes to city or state law, said Dina Levy, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

“It is unequivocally taking too long to lease up the buildings,” she said, adding: “It’s insane. You’ve got people really hungry for housing; you’ve got owners carrying interest on the loans they took to build these buildings.”

The changes announced on Wednesday in a broader report focused on ways to promote the development of affordable housing in the city.

Mr. Mamdani created the task force behind the report on his first day in office, as part of a push to find ways to reduce red tape.

The announcement comes as a housing crisis continues to squeeze the city. An extreme shortage of available apartments is pushing rents up, contributing to an exodus of working-class people and threatening the city’s economy.

The Mamdani administration has made housing a centerpiece of its agenda. The mayor said on Tuesday, as he announced his executive budget, that he planned to invest an additional $4 billion in capital funding for the housing department over five years.

The administration is finalizing a broader housing plan, which could be released as soon as this month and is likely to show how Mr. Mamdani plans to encourage development and address issues that affect tenants.

And earlier this month, a panel that regulates rents for nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments signaled that it would be open to freezing them, moving closer to delivering on one of Mr. Mamdani’s key campaign promises.

Many housing experts and advocates have long criticized the way New York City doles out the limited number of affordable units that are available.

Every year, about 6,500 of these apartments, which are restricted to people of low or moderate incomes and are subsidized by the city, are added to the housing stock, according to an April analysis by the Furman Center at New York University, which focuses on urban policy.

Sifting through all of the applications for each unit can be immensely complicated. Officials must verify household incomes to make sure applicants qualify, which can require a cumbersome amount of paperwork.

The Furman Center found that many applicants do not respond to verification questions. Some do respond, but their applications stall because of delays in communication or errors during the review process. And a large share of people who are approved for apartments never sign a lease, possibly because of faulty paperwork or other issues.

The longer the process takes, the more likely it is that an applicant’s household circumstances change, possibly making that person or family ineligible for the unit, the Furman Center report said.

Carlina Rivera, the president and chief executive of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing, a lobbying group for the affordable housing industry, said the changes were encouraging.

Ms. Rivera, who appeared with Mr. Mamdani in the Bronx, said there was too much “overregulation,” noting requirements for redundant inspections and a lack of coordination between government agencies.

In one case, she said, a developer who is a member of her group had to wait for more than a year to fill an apartment that had been completed for someone living in a shelter, because of multiple inspections and more.

“This administration knows this is not acceptable,” she said.