Updated September 2026. The portal is NYC Housing Connect 2, and the working address is housingconnect.nyc.gov/PublicWeb/. Its rulebook is HPD and HDC’s Marketing Handbook, now in its April 2026 revision. Every income band on every listing is a share of one number, the 2026 Area Median Income, $152,700 for a three-person family. One change landed September 1, 2026: the floor on advertising fell to 21 calendar days. It bites on small lotteries, not big ones. Modified marketing, up to 19 units, can now run as short as 21 days, while standard marketing of 20 or more units keeps its 60-calendar-day advertising period. Own the building rather than want the apartment? Marketing agent services is the piece MGNY runs.

Two different people search for Housing Connect. One wants an apartment and needs to know what a log number means and why nothing has happened. The other owns a building with income-restricted units and has to run a lottery before anyone moves in. This page is the portal from both ends. The draw itself, the preferences and the odds sit in how the NYC housing lottery works.

What is NYC Housing Connect, and who runs it?

It is, in HPD’s words, “New Yorkers’ portal to find and apply for affordable rental and homeownership opportunities across the five boroughs of New York City.” A website, not an agency and not a landlord. The homes on it are financed by two City bodies, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Housing Development Corporation, and its rentals “are regulated so the rent can’t go up too much over time.”

That financing creates the restriction. A developer took City money, a tax exemption or a zoning bonus, and a fixed number of apartments came back with capped rents and income ceilings. The programs behind them have their own explainers: mandatory inclusionary housing, the low-income housing tax credit, and rent stabilization in NYC. Two things sit outside the portal: Mitchell-Lama, which runs on NYC Mitchell-Lama Connect, and State-supervised affordable housing, which HPD points at New York State Homes and Community Renewal for.

What is Housing Connect 2, and how do you create an account and log in?

Housing Connect 2 is simply the current site (searchers also write Housing Connect 2.0), and its page title still carries the name. HPD rebuilt the portal and announced that “starting in July 2020, all new affordable housing opportunities will be posted on the new NYC Housing Connect website.” The rebuild added homeownership and re-rental listings, filters by borough, income and household size, electronic documents with deadline alerts, and a design that works on a phone.

The address matters more than it should. The short form, nyc.gov/housingconnect, is the one HPD’s own guide prints, and it redirects to HPD’s Housing Connect page. The application lives at housingconnect.nyc.gov/PublicWeb/. Type the bare host and the server hands back a maintenance stub that forwards you to that same path, so the full address is the one worth bookmarking.

Registration comes first. HPD: “Once you register, you’ll provide information about everyone in your household, including income, assets and disability status.” The profile is the application. It holds everyone who will live in the apartment, what each earns, savings and investments, any mobility, vision or hearing disability, and whether there is a voucher. HPD’s instruction on it is blunt: “remember to keep it up to date!” Eligibility is not tested at the deadline. The handbook is explicit: applicants “are evaluated based on the information in their profile when their log number appears on a batch, at which time a ‘snapshot’ of their profile is taken and used as the application for that lottery,” and “once a snapshot is taken, information cannot be changed.” That can be many months after the deadline, which is why HPD tells you to keep the profile current the whole time you are waiting, not just up to the closing date.

How does a Housing Connect application work, from listing to log number?

Listings sit on the Open Lotteries page, and each shows “how many homes are available, occupancy limits, qualifying income range and the application deadline.” You filter, open a listing, press Apply Now, and the profile goes in. Paper still works, “either online or by mail,” and “your chances are the same, whether you apply by paper or online.” Sending both is what sinks you, because doing so “will disqualify you.”

Apply once per lottery. A “multiple application,” one person on two applications for the same project with different household members, is fatal to all of them: “all applications for that applicant must be found ineligible.” Identical duplicates survive, but only “the application with the highest log number (lowest chance of being selected)” counts.

Nothing is judged during the application window. Every application filed on time “will be assigned a unique log number,” and eligibility is tested afterward. The draw is automatic once the deadline passes: “Housing Connect randomizes both online and paper applications, thereby generating the lottery log.” That is all a log number is, a random position in a queue handed out by software after the fact.

The log does not then run straight down. Set-aside and preference batches come first, in a fixed order: households including a person with a disability (five percent of units for mobility, two percent for hearing or vision, or one unit, whichever is greater), then residents of the building’s Community District, then New York City municipal employees, at five percent of units or one unit. City residents go before non-residents inside every batch, and that residency preference ends after the initial lease-up. Only then does the agent work the log “in numbered order.”

Who qualifies, and what are the 2026 income and household size limits?

Three tests decide it: age, income and assets. An applicant must be 18. Income has to land inside the band the listing advertises, and HPD counts housing as affordable when “it costs about one-third or less of household income.” Every band is a percentage of Area Median Income, set each year by HUD, and “the 2026 AMI for the New York City region is $152,700 for a three-person family (100% AMI).”

2026 New York City income limits, HPD. Bands: 0-30% extremely low, 31-50% very low, 51-80% low, 81-120% moderate, 121-165% middle.

There is a floor as well as a ceiling. Minimum income is “based on 35 percent of the gross annual rent for the unit,” so a household can be turned away for earning too little as readily as too much, though the floor does not apply to tenant-based Section 8 and other qualifying subsidies. Assets are capped at the maximum income limit for a four-person household at the unit’s own AMI band, which on HPD’s sheet effective April 1, 2025 runs from $48,600 at 30 percent of AMI to $267,300 at 165 percent and $283,500 at 175 percent. Owning residential property “within one hundred (100) miles of New York City limits” disqualifies a rental applicant outright. Household size then has to fit the apartment.

HPD and HDC occupancy guidelines, April 2026. A household qualifying for two sizes picks, because “the family chooses the unit size.”

What happens after you apply, and how do you appeal a rejection?

Most applicants hear nothing for a long time, and the silence is arithmetic rather than rejection. HPD is candid: “if you have a high log number, you are less likely to hear back.” The handbook gives the reason, that “lease-up or sales may be completed before all applicants on the log have been processed or contacted.” Watch your own dashboard, which HPD tells applicants to keep checking “to see the status of all applications you’ve submitted.” Nobody is working your file until your number comes up.

Reach the front of the queue and the pace changes. A document request arrives with a deadline “not less than ten weekdays from the date of the notice,” and a follow-up adds at least five weekdays. HPD names what gets asked for, “documents like personal ID and paystubs,” plus a credit check or proof of rental history. The current handbook trimmed that pile under federal HOTMA rules: one month of paystubs and no tax return for employed applicants, no bank statements below $50,000 in assets, no notarized affidavits on most forms.

A rejection is not the end. The notice “will also explain how you can appeal,” and the appeal, written and sent to the marketing agent, carries two protections: your “place on the log is maintained while the appeal is under review,” and a supervisor who “may not be the same person as the initial reviewer” has to read it. Lose that and one door stays open for five business days, in which a complaint goes to HPD or HDC.

What are re-rentals, and how do homeownership listings work?

Re-rentals are the quiet half of the portal, opted into rather than searched for. The switch sits in the profile, under “Housing Choices,” and “you can’t search for re-rental opportunities like other lotteries.” Re-rentals are the quiet half of the portal, and right now most of them are not in the portal at all. The handbook’s Mini-Lottery, “a non-advertised lottery process” that batches applicants “whose household information and housing choices match the requirements of the available unit,” is Section 4-4(A), and HPD and HDC have waived that section from May 1, 2025 through an anticipated end date of April 30, 2027. Under the waiver, marketing agents publicize re-rentals and resales on commercial platforms and on HPD’s own re-rentals page, applicants contact the property directly, and files are worked “in first-come, first-served order and/or according to the Marketing Agent’s written procedures regarding waitlists.” First come, not random draw. For a building with four or more vacancies, the agencies recommend a Waiting List lottery instead, which runs like an advertised lottery but stays open for ongoing turnover; it is a recommendation, not a requirement, and the choice sits with the project. So still say yes under “Housing Choices” in your profile, because the waiver ends and the opt-in costs nothing, but do not wait on a draw: go to HPD’s re-rentals page, which lists the property managers to contact about vacancies “outside Housing Connect,” MGNY among them, pointing at our own current listings.

Homeownership sits on the same portal. Co-ops, condos and small homes are advertised alongside rentals, and since September 1, 2026 their advertising runs at least 21 calendar days, 30 for one to six homes and 60 for seven or more. Eligibility differs twice over: the asset cap is a flat $283,500, and no household member may ever have owned “any interest in residential real property.”

How do you reach Housing Connect and HPD?

There is one number for applicants, the Affordable Housing Lottery Helpline at 212-863-7990, with [email protected] for email. Expect voicemail rather than a live person, since HPD says it is “temporarily unable to answer calls in real time.” Accessibility questions about applying go to their own line, 212-863-6486, or [email protected]. HPD is headquartered at 100 Gold Street, New York, NY 10038. Recorded information about applying runs on eight language lines.

Housing Ambassadors, the community-based providers HPD partners with who help applicants prepare and apply mostly on a volunteer basis, cost nothing either, though they “cannot guarantee that an applicant will receive an affordable unit through the lottery.” You find one through the borough and language filters on HPD’s Housing Ambassadors page and contact that organization directly. 311 handles general City questions, but anything about one lottery, one document request or one log number belongs with the marketing agent named on that listing, because that is who holds the file.

What does Housing Connect never charge you for?

The only fee anyone here may collect is tightly boxed in, and it comes at the end rather than the start. HPD sets the limits: “credit and background check fees may not exceed $20; security deposits may not be more than one month’s rent; fees to superintendents or doormen, commonly called ‘key money,’ are illegal.” The handbook narrows it further. A credit check fee “may only be collected when (a) an applicant appears to be otherwise eligible and (b) it is clear that a unit will be available,” and if you produce a credit report run within the past 30 calendar days, the agent “may not run a credit check or charge a credit check fee.”

Read that against how a scam works. A demand for money to enter a lottery, to improve a log number or to hold an apartment has no place in these rules. Nothing lets anyone sell access to a Housing Connect unit, and agents may not hand applicant information, “including but not limited to Lottery logs,” to a third party without written agency approval. Falsifying an application cuts the other way: it “is grounds for rejection and may also lead to further investigation and, potentially, criminal prosecution.”

What does a marketing agent do on Housing Connect?

Owners see a different portal. Nobody markets these units on a whim, because since September 12, 2022 “any entity intending to market or remarket units through HPD/HDC must first appear on the Agency’s Prequalified List of Marketing Agents.” An owner who wants to run its own lease-up has to get itself onto that list first; most hire a firm already on it. Read in September 2026, that list names 86 firms, MGNY Consulting Corp. among them.

The work starts long before an advertisement. A Notice of Intent goes to the agency through Housing Connect roughly seven months before anticipated occupancy, naming the proposed agent; a marketing meeting follows; a marketing plan is approved before a single ad appears. HPD weighs an agent on its record, listing “proper management of the lottery log,” “timely and complete processing of applications and appeals,” and the certified rent roll on full lease-up. Then comes the portal work: advertising, supervised entry of paper applications, batching, document review, tours, lease signing and the rent roll. Units that do not fill through the lottery go to households living in shelter, up to 15 percent of the project.

Owners hire this out because lease-up is the last gate in front of the tax benefit the deal was built around, and a mishandled log is expensive to unwind. MGNY works as an approved HPD marketing agent on buildings including 5Pointz LIC, JDS’s Brooklyn Tower and Brookfield’s Bankside; runs HPD lottery management on software carrying “log reviews, document verification, applicant communication, file submission, tours management and lease signing” in one portal; stays on as an HPD-approved marketing monitor, re-marketing vacancies and filing quarterly rent rolls; and handles the leases that follow through lease management.

Housing Connect questions, answered

Where do you log in to Housing Connect?

At housingconnect.nyc.gov/PublicWeb/. The short address nyc.gov/housingconnect redirects to HPD’s page, which links the same application. The bare housingconnect.nyc.gov host forwards to /PublicWeb/ as well. Bookmark the full path.

What is the Housing Connect phone number?

212-863-7990, the Affordable Housing Lottery Helpline, with [email protected] for email. HPD asks callers to leave a voicemail. Accessibility questions go to 212-863-6486 or [email protected].

What does a Housing Connect log number mean?

It is your random position in that lottery’s queue, assigned after the deadline when Housing Connect “randomizes both online and paper applications.” A low number is good news, a high one usually means silence.

How do you check a Housing Connect application status?

On the dashboard inside your account, which HPD tells applicants to keep checking “to see the status of all applications you’ve submitted.” No news is normal for months after a deadline.

What are Housing Connect re-rentals?

Apartments that come free after the original lottery. You opt in under “Housing Choices” in your profile and can then be drawn at random in a Mini-Lottery as units turn over. They cannot be searched for.

Does Housing Connect cost anything to use?

The only money these rules contemplate is a credit or background check fee, capped at $20 and collectible only once an applicant appears eligible and a unit is available. Housing Ambassadors “do not charge fees.”

What does it cost to ask MGNY?

Nothing. A real person answers at (212) 343-1111, right away, and the consultation is free. You engage us only if you want the work handled for you. MGNY has worked NYC property tax since 2008, with $50M+ in tax refunds secured for owners, 900+ developments with tax abatements secured and $30B+ represented in appeals.

Sources: HPD’s NYC Housing Connect page and FAQ; the Application Guides, with the NYC Housing Connect Guide and Fact Sheet; HPD’s re-rentals, Do You Qualify, Housing Ambassadors, apartment hunting tips and contact pages; the Area Median Income page for 2026 income limits; HPD and HDC’s Marketing Handbook, April 2026 revision, with its Asset and Property Limits sheet effective April 1, 2025 and the Section 4-2 addendum effective September 1, 2026; and the Marketing Agent Pre-Qualified List. All read September 4, 2026. MGNY Consulting is a private consulting firm and is not affiliated with the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the NYC Housing Development Corporation or NYC Housing Connect.

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