The Department of Housing and Urban Development is telling landlords receiving federal aid to prove the citizenship and eligibility of nearly 200,000 tenants.
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HUD has notified landlords and public housing authorities that, in addition to the 200,000 tenants requiring additional eligibility verification, it had also identified nearly 25,000 deceased renters and 6,000 “ineligible non-American tenants” receiving federal aid, the agency announced Friday. It has given housing authorities and landlords 30 days to take corrective action or face sanctions.
The findings followed an audit of all tenants in HUD-funded housing conducted by the agency in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security.
“We will leave no stone unturned,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a statement. “We are proud to collaborate with DHS to execute on the President’s agenda of rooting out abuse of taxpayer funded resources. Ineligible non-citizens have no place to receive welfare benefits.”
In August, HUD demanded public housing authorities provide detailed information about tenants whose immigration status was in question. The agency also sent a letter in April announcing a review of the processes it had in place to verify the immigration status of housing assistance recipients.
Renee Willis, the CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition advocacy group, said in an email that many of the reporting discrepancies could be explained by life events.
A death in the family may not be immediately reported to HUD, and rules already exist for situations where the eligibility status of a household is mixed, she said.
“Under the Trump administration, HUD has adopted a rhetorical strategy of conflating federal data quality issues with evidence of fraud, waste, and abuse in local communities,” she said. “It is unfair to keep piling red tape on resourced-strained housing providers only to make up for data lag and inconsistency in the government’s own systems.”
The directives are part of President Donald Trump’s broader crackdown on unauthorized immigrants. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to lead the largest deportation campaign in history and alleged that immigrants were sapping taxpayer resources.
Since taking office, he has deployed immigration enforcement into U.S. cities to arrest more than 300,000 people and signed executive orders promising to stop the flow of benefits to immigrants lacking permanent legal status.
“Today’s action to verify the immigration eligibility of all HUD-assisted households is a major step forward to ensure we put American families first and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse,” HUD Assistant Secretary Ben Hobbs said in the statement. “There are hundreds of thousands of American families on housing waitlists across the country. It is essential we prioritize our limited resources to eligible families only.”
Impacted owners have 30 days to update records on an internal compliance report called the EIV-SAVE Tenant Match Report to show the individuals flagged by HUD are eligible for housing assistance and to initiate corrective actions.
“HUD will recapture funding for payments made on behalf of ineligible and deceased tenants,” the agency’s release says.
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