Home prices are squeezing American family budgets. The median home price is up 60% since 2019, now five times the median household income. The country is short more than 4 million homes, and a record 22.6 million renter households are spending more than 30% of their income on rent. Housing costs have risen another 14% in just the last two years.
While Americans are fighting for a place to call home, a recent Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Homeland Security investigation revealed major eligibility errors in HUD housing programs. HUD found nearly 6,000 confirmed ineligible tenants, and another 200,000 more tenants who have gone through zero eligibility verification. In addition, HUD identified 25,000 deceased tenants still living in taxpayer-funded housing units. These aren’t likely empty units. Someone is wrongly receiving this benefit.
Federal law is clear: Section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act limits HUD housing assistance to U.S. citizens and eligible non-citizens. In addition, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 prohibits public welfare benefits from going to illegal aliens and requires HUD housing programs to verify immigration status at the point of application, now a nearly instantaneous process through the SAVE program. Yet HUD rules have systematically avoided this verification until now.
Instead of using the existing Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, HUD created two workarounds. The first is the “do not contend” provision, under which a tenant declares they do not contend their non-citizen status and receives prorated assistance anyway. This is blatantly illegal. The second workaround is an age exemption HUD fabricated 15 years ago under the Obama administration. Current regulations exempt anyone 62 or older from verification, but this has no basis in federal law.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member