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If you’ve ever tried applying for New York City’s affordable housing lottery and ended up rage-scrolling rental listings instead, you’re not alone. A few months ago, Wout Stienaers decided to give the Housing Connect portal a try.
“I figured it’d take, what, 30 minutes?” Stienaers wrote on LinkedIn while chronicling his experience. “Instead, I ended up drowning in forms, wondering whether it's even worth it to try finishing the application process.”
That frustration led to Homey, a new mobile app that cuts through the red tape and actually helps New Yorkers apply for the affordable housing units they qualify for. Think of it like TurboTax, but for the housing lottery—and about 90% less painful.
Unlike Housing Connect, which was designed for desktop (despite nearly a quarter of NYC households lacking one), Homey is mobile-first. It takes about seven minutes to set up a profile, skipping the redundant and privacy-invading questions that bog down the official site. Instead of listing every financial account in your household, you just confirm that your total assets fall under the limit, with a built-in safety buffer to protect your eligibility.
But the best part? Homey automatically applies to all the lotteries you qualify for—no need to check back constantly, sift through fine print or risk missing deadlines. The app inputs your information into the Housing Connect system and tracks your application status in one place.
And yes, it’s already helping.
“One of our earliest users now sends me affordable housing news every week, hoping we’ll add more features,” Stienaers revealed on LinkedIn.
Even better: the app arrives just as the city is rolling out first-come, first-served re-rentals for affordable units, which are now popping up on HPD’s site and even StreetEasy. For the first time in years, getting into affordable housing in NYC might actually be... doable?