A study from New York University projects that 1.4 million low-income families could lose their homes if the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sets a two-year time limit for residents living in government-subsidized housing.
According to AP, the Trump administration submitted a discretionary budget proposal for the 2026 fiscal year that would introduce drastic changes to how HUD has traditionally operated. One of the biggest changes is introducing a two-year time limit for people living in government-subsidized housing. Housing Secretary Scott Turner argued time limits are necessary during a congressional hearing in June, saying they would mitigate fraud and waste, as well as spur low-income families to become self-sufficient.
Turner said HUD is “broken and deviated from its original purpose, which is to temporarily help Americans in need. HUD assistance is not supposed to be permanent.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if the government has billions of dollars to sink into their Tubi Gestappo (ICE, should you need the clarification), they have the money to provide housing for our most vulnerable citizens. They’re not making the hard call, and no one would ever accuse the Trump administration of being the adults in the room. They’re simply being a word I can’t use due to editorial standards (hint: it rhymes with “brass pole”).
Despite Turner saying the move is designed to curb “waste and fraud,” there’s no evidence that imposing time limits would save money. NYU’s study found that “if currently assisted households are subject to a two-year limit, that would lead to enormous disruption and large administrative costs,” and would result in public housing authorities having to “evict all of these households and identify new households to replace them.”
From AP:
The NYU researchers dove deep into HUD’s nationwide data over a 10-year period, analyzing nearly 4.9 million households that have been public housing and Section 8 voucher tenants. Of that, about 2.1 million could be affected by the time limits because they include at least one adult who is not elderly or disabled and about 70% of those households had already been living on those subsidies for two or more years.
HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett pushed back on the NYU study.
“There is plenty of data that strongly supports time limits and shows that long-term government assistance without any incentive disincentivizes able-bodied Americans to work,” Lovett said in a statement.
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
As per usual with the pro-life party, the HUD proposal would wind up hurting children the most, as an estimated 1 million children could become homeless should it go into effect. While the GOP pushes a narrative that the people living in government housing are unemployed freeloaders, the reality is that many of these people living in subsidized housing are working. They’re simply not making enough to keep up with the average cost of living in their area.
There’s been a growing cost-of-living crisis across the nation, with rents, groceries, and gas prices becoming unsustainable for much of the working population beyond just those in subsidized housing. The Trump administration’s erratic tariff policies aren’t helping either, with inflation spiking 2.7 percent last month.
No one wants to be poor, and being poor is not a matter of work ethic or laziness. For example, I was making far more than most of my peers as a TV producer. It was a job I worked incredibly hard at and came after years of busting my tail. Things were great until I found out I got laid off via tweet. That would set off a solid year of unemployment, which led to another year of underemployment. Not because I was lazy, not because I wasn’t applying for jobs, but because wages are really that bad and the job market is a nightmare.
Mind you, this is the experience of someone with a college education, who’s child-free, and spent most of their 20s working jobs that allowed them to be self-sufficient. So, imagine how stressful life already is for the folks who have to live in subsidized housing and don’t have a potentially lucrative skill set to rely on. It took me two and a half years to finally make two-thirds of my previous income, and they’re expecting our most vulnerable groups to be fully self-sufficient in that time frame?
If the Trump administration really wanted to help put these families on track for self-sufficiency, it would improve current skills training programs, not try to kill them. It would expand student loan assistance programs, not gut them completely.
Make no mistake, these proposed moves at HUD are not about promoting self-sufficiency, but are yet another attempt by the Trump administration to punish the poor.
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