HUD is proposing a new rule that would bar families with any undocumented members from living in agency-supported housing and also require local housing authorities to report ineligible tenants to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The change to HUD’s Section 214 implementing regulations prevents the secretary of HUD from providing financial assistance to anyone other than U.S. citizens or certain eligible noncitizens. It would lead to the eviction of tens of thousands of families with mixed immigration status from HUD housing and put many other federally assisted tenants at risk, according to the nonprofit National Housing Law Project.
“The result would be over 100,000 people evicted, including more than 37,000 children, many of them citizens,” NHLP Executive Director Shamus Roller said in a Thursday statement. “HUD also seeks to enlist housing authorities and owners into immigration enforcement and away from its core mission–providing affordable housing in the midst of a national housing crisis.”
A December analysis by the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities similarly calculates nearly 80,000 people would face eviction under such a policy, nearly 37,000 of them children who are U.S. citizens.
Under HUD’s current regulations, members of a mixed-status family are allowed to live together, but they must pay for the rent cost of any ineligible members. The proposed rule would only allow such prorated assistance briefly while eligibility verification for family members is pending.
The rule is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Friday and will be open to comments for 60 days.
Rule change impact
The agency said the changes would bring HUD’s regulations into “greater alignment with the wording and purpose of Section 214” and with the Trump administration’s priorities. In a Thursday news release, HUD claims 24,000 otherwise ineligible people are living in about 20,000 mixed-status households in agency-supported housing.
“HUD’s proposed rule will guarantee that all residents in HUD-funded housing are eligible tenants. We have zero tolerance for pushing aside hardworking U.S. citizens while enabling others to exploit decades-old loopholes,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in the release.
In its proposal, HUD acknowledged that the new rule “would adversely affect some tenants and applicants for Section 214 covered programs, especially mixed families and ineligible aliens, as well as responsible entities. The most significant effect of this rulemaking would be to transfer assistance from mixed status families to fully eligible households.”
According to HUD, the impact on responsible housing entities would be low. For mixed-status families, however, the impact will be substantial, NHLP’s Roller said in a release.
“Trump’s proposal runs contrary to federal law and is designed to instill fear and hardship on immigrant families. His administration deflects blame for the housing crisis onto immigrants so they can continue dismantling HUD’s hallmark and lifesaving housing programs,” Roller said.
HUD proposed a similar rule change during Trump's first term, but it was not finalized before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The Biden administration later rescinded it.
Ongoing immigration crackdown
Yesterday, Turner said in a Washington Post opinion article that HUD’s proposed rule “is part of our broader campaign to crack down on illegal and ineligible aliens siphoning public assistance from the American people.”
In presenting the changes, HUD’s proposal cited Trump’s Feb. 19, 2025, executive order Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders, which directs heads of federal agencies to “enhance eligibility verification systems, to the maximum extent possible, to ensure that taxpayer-funded benefits exclude any ineligible alien.”
In November 2025, the agency launched a hotline for reporting “illegal aliens” and criminal activity in HUD-funded housing.
Last month, HUD ordered the citizenship verification of 200,000 tenants in HUD-supported housing within 30 days. The agency claims its audit with the Department of Homeland Security of HUD-funded housing nationwide identified tenants requiring eligibility verification, as well as nearly 25,000 deceased tenants and nearly 6,000 “ineligible non-American tenants.”
Previously, Turner and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signed the American Housing Programs for American Citizens memorandum of understanding in March 2025 to “end the wasteful misappropriation of taxpayer dollars to benefit illegal aliens,” and the agencies compared data to identify discrepancies or cases requiring additional verification.
The resulting report compared citizenship and immigration status reported by public housing agencies on the HUD-50058 with immigration status information returned by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system. However, public housing agencies were already required to verify citizenship or eligible immigration status prior to admission and to maintain supporting documentation.
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