1.4M of the nation’s poorest renters risk losing their homes with Trump’s proposed HUD time limit

WOODINVILLE Wash AP Havalah Hopkins rarely says no to the chain restaurant catering gigs that send her out to Seattle-area events from church potlucks to office lunches and graduation parties The delivery fees and tips she earns on top of an hour mean it s better than minimum-wage shift work even though it s not consistent It helps her afford the government-subsidized apartment she and her -year-old autistic son have lived in for three years though it s still tough to make ends meet It s a cycle of feeling defeated and depleted no matter how much power and effort and tenacity you have towards surviving Hopkins commented Still the -year-old single mother is grateful she has stable housing experts estimate just in low-income households eligible for U S Department of Housing and Urban Expansion rental assistance get the benefits And now Hopkins is at danger of losing her home as federal bureaucrats move to restrict HUD guidelines Amid a worsening national affordable housing and homelessness predicament President Donald Trump s administration is determined to reshape HUD s expansive role providing stable housing for low-income people which has been at the heart of its mission for generations The proposed changes include a two-year limit on the federal administration s signature rental assistance programs At a June congressional budget hearing HUD Secretary Scott Turner argued policies like time limits will fix waste and fraud in populace housing and Section voucher programs It s broken and deviated from its original purpose which is to temporarily help Americans in need Turner noted HUD assistance is not supposed to be permanent But the move to restrict such key subsidies would mark a critical retreat from the scope of HUD s work Millions of tenants moved in with the promise of subsidized housing for as long as they were poor enough to remain qualified so time limits would be a seismic shift that could destabilize the the greater part vulnerable households countless unlikely to ever afford the present day s record-high rents New research from New York University obtained exclusively by The Associated Press and published Thursday revealed that if families were cut off after two years million households could lose their vouchers and inhabitants housing subsidies largely working families with children This would lead housing personnel to evict a large number of families the account announced A broad time limit would cause substantial disruption and dislocation it declared noting the agenda is largely untested and majority of the meager housing leadership to voluntarily try it eventually abandoned the pilots A break from HUD s long-held purpose of helping house the poor could also jeopardize its contracts with private landlords who say they re already feeling the uncertainty as constituents housing officers from Seattle to Atlanta announce they re scaling back in anticipation of federal funding cuts Critics fear the restriction could derail those working towards self-sufficiency defeating the goal time-limit supporters hope to achieve HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett pushed back on the NYU assessment There is plenty of figures that strongly supports time limits and shows that long-term regime assistance without any incentive disincentivizes able-bodied Americans to work Lovett announced in a message She primarily cited statistics suggesting low employment among HUD-subsidized tenants Hopkins explained the program would likely leave her and her son homeless in an market system that often feels indifferent to working poor people like her A two-year time limit is ridiculous she commented It s so disrespectful I think it s dehumanizing the whole system Working families are greater part at menace Researchers from the Housing Solutions Lab at New York University s Furman Center analyzed HUD s facts over a -year period and identified about of households who could be affected by a two-year limit had already been living on those subsidies for two or more years That s based on estimates and doesn t include elderly and disabled people who wouldn t be subject to time limits Exempted households make up about half of the roughly million households getting rental assistance In the first investigation to examine the proposed procedures s realizable impacts the NYU researchers detected time limits would largely punish families who are working but earning far below their area s median income which would ultimately shift federal rental assistance away from households with kids Housing assistance is especially impactful for children noted Claudia Aiken the evaluation co-author and director of new research partnerships for the Housing Solutions Lab Their wellness schooling employment and earnings possible can change in really meaningful solutions if they have stable housing she revealed It would affect people like Hopkins whose family was on a years-long waitlist in the expensive region where she grew up In July she and her son moved into a two-bedroom citizens housing unit in Woodinville Washington She pays a month in rent of her household income A market-rate apartment in the area costs at least more according to the King County Housing Authority which in June stated it would pause issuing a few new vouchers Hopkins knows she could never afford to live in her home state without rental assistance It was a relief they could stay as long as they needed She had been struggling to scrape together hundreds of dollars more a month for her previous trailer home There s no words to put on feeling like your housing is secure Hopkins explained I feel like I was gasping for air and I m absolutely able to breathe She credits the housing subsidy for her ability to at last leave an abusive marriage and still dreams of more perhaps her own catering business or working as a party decorator We all can t be lawyers and doctors and two years isn t enough to even become that Hopkins reported Since learning of Trump s proposal Hopkins announced she s been haunted by thoughts of shoving her possessions into a van with her son upending the stability she built for him Tough to do well The average household in HUD-subsidized housing stays about six years studies show HUD funds local populace housing projects where nearly million households live and the Section vouchers that about million households use to offset their private rentals There s been little guidance from HUD on how time-limited housing assistance would be implemented how it would be enforced when the clock starts and how the exemptions would be defined Both Democrats and Republicans have acknowledged the possible for time limits to help curb HUD s notorious waitlists Hard-liners contend the threat of housing loss will push people to reach self-sufficiency others see limits when coupled with endorsement and workforce incentives as a means to motivate tenants to improve their lives Yet there are strikingly sparse thriving examples NYU researchers identified just society housing leadership that have tested time limits None of the programs were designed for only two years and abandoned the restriction despite being able to use federal dollars for services to help people achieve self-sufficiency Several agencies that dropped the limits revealed tenants still struggled to afford housing after their time was up These policies are complex and formidable to monitor enforce and do well NYU s Aiken explained The city of Keene New Hampshire tried five-year time limits starting in but terminated the strategy before fully enforcing it to avoid kicking out households that would still be rent burdened or potentially homeless revealed Josh Meehan executive director of Keene Housing In California Shawnt Spears of the Housing Authority of San Mateo County revealed the agency has kept its five-year time limit in tandem with educational programs she says have given folks motivation to meet their goals It also gives more people the chance to use vouchers she revealed NYU s Aiken acknowledged HUD s long waitlists make the current system a bit of a lottery adding You could say that time limits are a way of increasing people s odds in that lottery The landlord s dilemma HUD s Section programs have long depended on hundreds of thousands of for-profit and nonprofit small business owners and property managers to accept tenant vouchers Now landlords fear a two-year limit could put their contracts for HUD-subsidized housing in limbo Amid the uncertainty Denise Muha executive director of the National Leased Housing Association declared multiple landlord groups have voiced their concerns about HUD s next budget in a letter to congressional leaders She reported landlords generally agree two years is completely not enough time for most of low-income tenants to change their fortunes As a practical matter you re going to increase your turnover which is a cost Muha declared Nobody wants to throw out their tenants without cause It s inevitably been a considerable lift for private landlords to work with HUD subsidies which involve burdensome paperwork heavy oversight and maintenance inspections But the trade-off is a near guarantee of dependable longer-term renters and rental income If that s compromised selected landlords say they d pull back from the federal subsidy programs Brad Suster who owns Chicago-area units funded by HUD commented accepting subsidies could become risky Would we have the same reliability that we know has traditionally come for countless years from the federal governing body Suster noted That s something landlords and owners want to know is there The diminishing housing stock available to low-income tenants has been a brewing challenge for HUD Between and several housing providers left the voucher scheme the agency has announced Chaos and trade-offs critics say It s up for debate whether lawmakers will buy into Trump s vision for HUD This week the U S House appropriations committee is taking up HUD s budget which so far makes no mention of time limits HUD s Lovett noted the Senate s budget plans for the agency have not yet been circulated and revealed the administration remains focused on future implementation of time limits HUD will continue to engage with colleagues on the hill to ensure a seamless transition and enforcement of any new time limit Lovett announced in a declaration No lle Porter the director of ruling body affairs at the National Housing Law Project stated Trump s fight for time limits is far from over noting that legislative and rule changes could make them a reality It is clearly a stated goal of the administration to impose work requirements and time limits on rental assistance even though it would be wildly unpopular Porter announced Democratic Rep James Clyburn of South Carolina says there s no evidence time limits would save HUD money This doesn t help families who already are working multiple jobs to become self-sufficient Clyburn disclosed at a June hearing Instead it creates chaos financial uncertainty and pushes these families into more severe trade-offs Time limits could imperil Aaliyah Barnes longtime dream of graduating college and becoming a nurse finding a job and a home she can afford The -year-old single mom in Louisville Kentucky this year joined Family Scholar House which provides counseling and advocacy for people pursuing an development and to Barnes relief housing Her apartment is paid for by a Section voucher In March Barnes moved in and her -year-old son Aarmoni completely got his own room where she set up a learning wall Previously she had struggled to afford housing on her wages at a call center and living with her mom two sisters and their kids in a cramped house was an setting ridden with arguments The stable future she s building could disappear though if she s forced out in two years when her schooling is expected to take three years I d be so close but so far away Barnes reported Kramon published from Atlanta Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press Review for America Statehouse News Initiative Description for America is a nonprofit national arrangement effort that places journalists in local newsrooms to analysis on undercovered issues Source