You should not have to become a housing expert before you can ask for help. Start with the kind of problem you are facing. Affordable Forever will narrow the field; if you want every option, the full directory stays available underneath.
Choose the closest match. This does not diagnose your legal rights or eligibility. It simply brings the most relevant kinds of help to the top so you are not dropped into a wall of links.
Do not wait for a preservation analysis before using existing legal-help systems. These are broad current entry points; eligibility, intake and representation still depend on the facts and provider capacity.
For tenants facing eviction and certain other housing matters. If you already have an eviction case, attend the court date and ask about free counsel.
Current NYC legal-services information →Housing Court procedure, code-enforcement information, legal referrals and community referrals.
Housing Court Answers →A citywide volunteer tenant-rights hotline for brief information, options and referrals when you need another place to start.
Met Council hotline →This is the deeper layer. It includes legal providers, tenant unions, organizing groups, court-navigation services, records tools, benefits pathways and preservation specialists. Use it when the first referral is unavailable or when you want to compare options yourself.
Language filter is intentionally conservative. A resource appears under a language only when current source material explicitly supports that service capability. Translated webpages alone are not treated as proof that live intake is available in that language.
The future building-specific experience will show only the clearest first steps and credible backups. This page stays comprehensive because real-world intake can fail and tenants sometimes need a second, third or fourth route. Start with your building →
Prototype status: This first registry is a verified seed, not a complete census of every NYC tenant resource. Organizations are source-checked for the fields shown, but intake capacity changes. “Potential first route” means the organization may rank highly when issue, geography, language and audience fit — it is not an endorsement guarantee. Last seed verification: .