The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD or “the Department”) is proposing to amend its regulations under Section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act, a 1980 law concerning federal housing assistance for families of mixed immigration status. If adopted, this rule would endanger tens of thousands of people, most of them U.S. citizen children, while simultaneously increasing costs for housing providers, local governments, and HUD itself. It also threatens to displace families from public housing across the country, leading to housing instability, family separation, homelessness, and negative public health outcomes.
What the Rule Would Do
“Mixed-status” families are households in which some members are eligible for federal housing assistance (based on U.S. citizenship or eligible immigration status) while others are not. Under current law, only eligible members receive housing benefits. If a household includes an ineligible member, the assistance is prorated: for example, if one person in a four-person family is ineligible, the family’s subsidy will be reduced by one-quarter. The federal government, therefore, is not currently subsidizing any ineligible residents—contrary to HUD’s claims.
HUD’s proposal includes two major changes. First, it would make entire mixed-status households ineligible for any assistance, regardless of how many family members qualify. Such families will therefore have two options: split apart so that only eligible recipients are living in the household or forego public housing assistance altogether. Second, the rule would require public housing administrators to collect citizenship documentation from every resident regardless of nationality or age. The existing option for natural-born citizens to declare citizenship under penalty of perjury would be eliminated, as would the longstanding exemption for residents over age 62.
Who Gets Hurt?
This rule could displace tens of thousands of people, primarily children, from their homes. There are an estimated 80,000 public housing residents in mixed-status families, including over 55,000 residents eligible to receive assistance. Notably, 65% of assistance-eligible family members in mixed-status households are children. The typical mixed-status household in a HUD program falls below the federal poverty line of $33,000 for a family of four. Housing subsidies are extremely important tools for preventing homelessness, so losing those subsidies will likely leave many of these families without a home. And because it’s cheaper for HUD to support mixed-status families than the families that will replace them, the rule will lead to fewer eligible people getting housing subsidies. This is not a policy solution—it is a harmful outcome HUD is choosing to impose.
The documentation requirement creates a separate and substantial problem for all residents, even those who are not in mixed families. In its own impact analysis, HUD acknowledges that certain groups (including poor people, older adults, and racial minorities) are less likely to possess documentation such as birth certificates, passports, or naturalization papers. In fact, HUD cites a 2024 report estimating over 9% of voting-age American citizens do not have easy access to such documentation. Furthermore, these documents are estimated to cost $73-$296 per person to obtain. Per HUD, “this verification requirement could potentially result in denial, termination, or delay of housing assistance because some tenants and applicants cannot produce the required documents.” With nearly 9 million residents receiving housing assistance, this new requirement could result in a staggering number of eligible recipients struggling to maintain their housing benefits.
This proposal is bad for public housing providers/owners.
Implementation of this rule by PHAs would come with a hefty price tag: up to $3.2 million, per HUD’s conservative estimates. Housing authorities would be on the hook for collecting and verifying citizenship status of every single resident. This sweeping burden is difficult to justify considering the majority of housing authorities are believed to house few or no mixed-status families. Conversely, PHAs that do have a significant number of mixed-status families would bear this same administrative cost and lose income from the mixed-status households who, under the current rule, are not receiving any government subsidies for ineligible family members and are therefore paying higher rent.
PHAs would also bear the cost of evicting many mixed-status families as well as all other tenants who were unable to provide proof of citizenship. HUD estimates that the legal fees and administrative costs associated with evictions can amount to up to $4,000 per household. Post-eviction unit maintenance and repairs would incur additional costs, and PHAs would lose rental income for the duration of each vacancy. The Department fails to offer any meaningful solutions to this financial burden, instead recommending workarounds at the expense of tenants such as delaying or offering fewer housing vouchers; leaving some available units vacant to reduce operating costs; cutting spending on housing maintenance; and, ceasing to give waitlist priority to families with lower incomes to lower the risk of missed rent payments.
Public Housing Authorities aren’t the only providers who would be impacted. Private owners who participate in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program (also referred to as “Section 8”)—which covers the majority of HUD-supported housing—would be hit hard by this rule, even though approximately 97% of HCV owners have tenant portfolios comprised of 5% or less of mixed-status families. The added burden of requiring all tenants’ citizenship status to be verified and the threat of potentially losing tenants over failure to produce sufficient documentation may be enough to deter private owners from continuing to participate in this vital program. Ending subsidies for mixed-status families would leave these owners with a sudden loss of rental income, disrupting their business and inflicting many of the same costs that PHAs will have to pay for publicly owned housing. At a time when experts recommend lowering barriers to landlords’ acceptance of HCVs, this rule would do just the opposite. The unfortunate result of such deterrence would be a decrease in affordable housing amidst an ongoing housing crisis.
This proposal runs counter to HUD’s mission.
Per HUD Secretary Scott Turner, the Department’s mission is “to foster strong communities by supporting access to quality, affordable housing, expanding the housing supply, and unlocking homeownership opportunities for the American people.” However, according to HUD’s own projections, implementation of this rule would result in a reduction in the quality and quantity of affordable housing, with fewer households receiving assistance. This is, in part, because mixed-status families are cheaper to subsidize since they receive prorated assistance. If all mixed-status family subsidies were to be reallocated to fully eligible households, this pot of funding would drop from covering 79,300 people to 24,100 people. The Department anticipates that the cost increase to replace mixed-status families with fully eligible households would result in fewer supported families, fewer occupied housing units, and increased costs to the government.
Additionally, this proposal would amount to poor stewardship of federal tax dollars. By HUD’s own admission, this rule would be expensive to implement, and it would reduce the efficacy and efficiency of federal spending—all to cut off indirect benefits to ineligible members of mixed-status families, who comprise just 0.3% of public housing residents.
What You Can Do
Comment! This rule is not yet in effect. Notably, a version of this rule was proposed during the first Trump administration, and an overwhelming influx of public comments (approx. 30,000) are largely credited with the rule not being adopted. The public comment period for this proposed rulemaking is open until April 21, 2026, at 11:59pm EDT. Those who will be personally affected by this rule—mixed-status families, housing providers, health professionals, and community members—are especially encouraged to comment. Directly affected residents may also consider gathering citizenship documentation now in case the rule is adopted. However, as this rule is not currently in effect, mixed-status families are not required to change their living arrangements.
The Keep Families Together coalition has published more information on commenting on the rule here.