Hargrave House is located at 111 West 71st Street (Google Maps)
A decision made far from the Upper West Side is about to upend the life of a longtime neighbor, and she’s not the only one on her block facing it.
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Olga Garcia, 72, has lived in her one-bedroom for four and a half years in an affordable building on West 71st Street operated by the housing nonprofit Project FIND — what appears to be Hargrave House, at 111 West 71st Street near the corner of Columbus Avenue. In one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city, that affordable status is what makes the place possible for tenants like her. Even so, Garcia still depends on a federal subsidy through the Emergency Housing Voucher program to stay, according to PIX11, which first reported her story.The EHV program, created to help people at risk of homelessness find and hold onto stable housing, has now been cut by the Trump administration. In New York City, NYCHA administered the federal dollars, and with that funding gone, the effects are landing on residents directly.
For Garcia, the voucher covered roughly two-thirds of her $1,500 monthly rent. That subsidy has now ended, about four years before it was originally scheduled to wind down. NYCHA has instructed her to leave her West 71st Street apartment by the end of this week and transfer to a building nearly four miles north, at 145th Street — a move of 74 blocks.
“How am I going to leave my home?” Garcia asked in an interview from her living room, adding that the move itself would cost her around $3,000. “This is my community where I feel safe.”
Garcia had been living in a shelter before she found the Project FIND apartment. The organization called her a model tenant and said that pushing residents like her out makes the whole community worse off. “To move people around like stray cats and stray dogs in a shelter,” said executive director Mark Jennings, “it’s not housing stability, which is what the housing vouchers are supposed to be all about.”
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NYCHA, for its part, said the federal government announced last year that it would end the EHV program early, with funding running out by the close of 2026. The authority said it is working to identify alternative subsidized housing for affected participants, who must complete a public housing application to receive an offer. NYCHA began matching participants to other options this spring and will keep accepting applications on a rolling basis through the summer, with the stated goal of offering each affected household an affordable alternative.Garcia said she has already had to warn some of her neighbors, also in the EHV program, that their subsidies are running out too. For now, she said, she’s staying put as long as she can — so the upheaval doesn’t take a toll on her emotionally, financially or physically.
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