This week the Trump administration moved toward a dramatic change in policy governing public and subsidized housing. The public comment period closed on the rule proposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to reserve housing assistance to American citizens — to “prohibit…making financial assistance available to persons other than United States citizens…in HUD’s public and specified assisted housing programs.”
It could lead to the eviction of an estimated more than 20,000 public and subsidized housing residents who took advantage of a loophole in the law restricting public assistance to citizens. Sparks could fly, à la ICE in Minneapolis, if illegal immigrants and their possessions are thrown into the street.
HUD is not wrong that lax enforcement has opened the apartment door for the undocumented. But cracking down on illegals, given their small number, is far less important than another new HUD initiative that could change the character of “the projects” for citizens who have been trapped there in poverty.
There’s no doubt that a legal loophole has allowed illegal immigrants to enter public housing, notwithstanding long waiting lists. Here’s how it worked: A legal immigrant can advance off a long waiting list to get into public housing and then invite undocumented family members to join him or her in a “mixed household,” so long as they pay rent based on their income — which they must, in theory, report.
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It’s an important change for two reasons. Jumping the line into subsidized housing lets illegals bypass long waiting lists. In New York City alone, there are 227,000 on the wait list for public housing apartments, and 200,000 waiting for vacancies in the city’s 112,000 housing voucher — also known as Section 8 — apartments. In Baltimore, there are 64,000 on the combined waiting lists; in Boston, 42,000; and in Milwaukee, 47,000.
Closing the loophole will also end an incentive for illegal immigration itself, based on the understanding that large extended families will be able to crowd into a cousin’s public housing apartment. Those with green cards — who have not joined the immigration line — should be allowed to stay.
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Perhaps the number of illegals in the projects is bigger than the 20,000 estimated by HUD Secretary Scott Turner. But the crackdown will still pale in importance to another rule proposed by the Trump administration’s suddenly reform-minded HUD: a regulation encouraging the nation’s 3,200 public housing authorities to adopt a work requirement and a time limit on tenancies.
As it stands, only 24% of subsidized households report wages as a major source of income. Most, in other words, are not working. What’s more, 73% have lived in their units for 10 years or more.
HUD’s proposed new rule could, in other words, change the culture of public housing from one of long-term dependency to one of upward mobility: out and up. It’s in keeping with the successful 1996 welfare reform law, which imposed a work requirement and a five-year time limit for cash welfare.
More could be done. As it stands, the lowest-income families get priority for subsidized housing. In effect, that favors single mothers, who comprise the largest group of the non-elderly in the projects. Only 3% of households are two-parent families. Giving them priority would be another big step toward changing the dysfunctional culture of public housing, originally meant for the working class. If it turns out that such a change favors legal immigrants, who tend to work and marry, the Trump administration should view that as a victory.
