Facing budget cuts and rising costs, the city’s public housing agency is expected to announce it is cutting 500 full-time jobs today.

The cuts will be achieved through layoffs and attrition, a spokesman for the New York City Housing Authority, Howard Marder, said.

The agency has seen funding from the federal government decline annually, with its capital budget falling more than $500 million since 2001, according to its Draft Annual Plan, released last week.

“With every dollar received from Washington and Albany, we can reduce this impact,” Mr. Marder wrote in an e-mail statement.

While the 500 jobs represent only a small fraction of the agency’s about 13,000 employees, the move is indicative of the broader strains the housing authority faces. To deal with rising costs and shrinking resources in recent years, the agency has tried to shy away from layoffs, instead cutting back on jobs through attrition and hiring freezes.

A tenant at a public housing project on the Upper West Side who is a member of the low-income-advocacy group Community Voices Heard, Anne Washington, said the cuts would come on top of already declining maintenance efforts.

“I’ve seen my building fall apart in so many ways,” Ms. Washington said. “This will just make it worse off — we have to pay more rent and services are getting cut.”

A union representing workers at many of the city’s housing projects, which house more than 400,000 people, was quick to denounce the cuts as well, calling for additional funding.

“In times of surplus this is the least we can do,” the president of Teamsters 237, Gregory Floyd, said in a statement.