The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed a rule that would limit public housing mostly to citizens, and remove non-citizens, which advocates fear could lead to tens of thousands of people being evicted.
The rule, published in the Federal Register, calls for limiting funding for those in public housing and other HUD-related housing to citizens and eligible noncitizens. The rule would require every resident in HUD-funded housing to show proof of citizenship or eligible status, including those 62 years and older who previously only had to show proof of age.
The measure would effectively bar mixed status families —- where some household members are eligible for help — from housing and is part of the government’s immigration crackdown. A similar rule was proposed but never finalized during the first Trump administration and is mentioned as a policy priority in the conservative blueprint Project 2025.
“Our country can ensure that every one of us, no matter where we come from or what language we speak, has a safe home,” Shamus Roller, the executive director of the National Housing Law Project said in a statement. “Instead, Trump is trying to evict immigrant families, citizen and non-citizen, from HUD housing.”
According to a HUD analysis in 2019, more than 108,000 people receiving housing benefits were in a household with at least one undocumented immigrant. Because many of those immigrants have children who are U.S. citizens or legal residents, HUD estimated at the time that as many as 55,000 children who were in the country legally would have been displaced from public housing under the policy.
