A new federal rule announced Thursday could push many people out of federally subsidized housing, including tens of thousands of U.S. citizen children, NPR's Jennifer Ludden reported. The Trump administration is moving to ban families with mixed immigration status from that housing, part of a wider immigration crackdown.
Millions of families in the United States are mixed-status, a blend of American citizens and immigrants — some in the country illegally, some not. Undocumented immigrants do not get federal rental aid, but since the 1990s, Congress has let them live with family members who do. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, announcing the rule on the Fox Business Network, said the administration is "closing this decades-old loophole" and that it is not fair to let people without legal status live in public housing. "Because American taxpayers work hard and this is not for illegals. And the president made a promise that he would stop the subsidization of open borders," Turner said.
Federal rental aid is deeply underfunded, Ludden noted, and only a quarter of those eligible ever get it, which can mean yearslong waitlists. Turner pointed to elderly people, veterans who are homeless and people escaping domestic violence, arguing that "public housing, American housing is for people that are here legally."
What critics say the rule would actually do
Marie Claire Tran-Leung of the National Housing Law Project, an advocacy group for poor people that opposes the rule, told NPR: "It really looks more like they are trying to deploy HUD for immigration enforcement purposes." She said the rule requires all members of a household to verify their citizenship status with a federal data system known as SAVE. The Trump administration revamped SAVE to check state voter rolls, Ludden reported, prompting a legal challenge after the system mistakenly flagged some eligible voters as potential noncitizens.
Tran-Leung also accused HUD of promoting fear with its rhetoric and of trying to get mixed-status families to "self-evict." As HUD notes in the rule itself, pushing those families out will actually cost the government more. Tran-Leung said that is because mixed-status households get a smaller subsidy than households in which every member is eligible. "If these families are forced to leave, there will be less funding available for HUD-assisted housing, which reduces the housing supply and worsens the housing crisis for everyone," she said.
HUD's rule takes effect in 30 days and allows a few months for local housing authorities to figure out which residents must go. Tran-Leung said a legal challenge is likely. The "tens of thousands" figure is the way NPR and critics described the potential impact on U.S. citizen children; the report did not publish a precise official count of children who would have to leave.