Families, kids most at risk of losing HUD housing with Trump’s proposed time limits

WOODINVILLE Wash AP More than million low-income households most of of them working families with children who depend on the nation s general housing and Section voucher programs could be at hazard of losing their government-subsidized homes under the Trump administration s proposal to impose a two-year time limit on rental assistance That s according to new research from New York University obtained exclusively by The Associated Press which suggests the time restriction could affect as countless as million households helped by the U S Department of Housing and Urban Expansion The NYU review also raises concerns about the largely untested approach as preponderance of the limited number of local housing administration that have voluntarily tried the idea eventually abandoned the pilots If at the moment assisted households are subject to a two-year limit that would lead to enormous disruption and large administrative costs for residents housing personnel the account noted adding that once the limit was up housing officials would have to evict all of these households and identify new households to replace them Defining temporary assistance 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 At a June congressional budget hearing HUD Secretary Scott Turner argued reforms like time limits will fix waste and fraud in residents housing and Section voucher programs while motivating low-income families to work toward self-sufficiency It s broken and deviated from its original purpose which is to temporarily help Americans in need Turner stated HUD assistance is not supposed to be permanent Elderly and disabled people would be exempted but there s little guidance from the agency 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 The NYU researchers dove deep into HUD s nationwide evidence over a -year period analyzing nearly million households that have been citizens housing and Section voucher tenants Of that about million could be affected by the time limits because they include at least one adult who is not elderly or disabled and about of those households had already been living on those subsidies for two or more years HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett pushed back on the NYU analysis There is plenty of evidence that strongly supports time limits and shows that long-term governing body assistance without any incentive disincentivizes able-bodied Americans to work Lovett announced in a comment Working families greater part at danger The time limits could displace more than a million children as it would largely punish families who are working but still earning far below their area s median income Housing assistance is especially impactful for children commented Claudia Aiken the director of new research partnerships for the Housing Solutions Lab at NYU s Furman Center who co-authored the review with Ellie Lochhead Their robustness instruction employment and earnings expected can change in really meaningful approaches if they have stable housing Aiken declared Havalah Hopkins a -year-old single mom has been living in a populace housing unit outside of Seattle since but now fears a two-year time limit would leave her and her teenage son homeless The -year-old boy has autism but is considered high-functioning so how HUD defines disabled and able-bodied for the time limit could determine if their family will be affected by the restriction Hopkins who does catering work for a local chain restaurant pays a month in rent of her household income for their two-bedroom apartment in Woodinville Washington Required what she likes bulk about her home Hopkins declared I like that I can afford it Sparse flourishing examples Of the housing administration that tried time limits discontinued the trial None tried two-year limits the the bulk common initiative was a five-year limit with the option for an extra two and the limits usually applied to specific programs or referrals Although there are over housing officials in the country only of them have ever been granted flexibility to consider testing a time limit while using federal funds for programs such as job training and financial counseling Any conversation about time limits ends up being this really nuanced hyper-local focus on what works for specific communities rather than this broad national-level implementation declared Jim Crawford director of the Moving to Work Collaborative which oversees that group of housing government Even with those supports several housing functionaries announced rent was still too high and well-paying jobs were scarce according to the examination Others stated they didn t have enough limit to provide enough supportive services to help households afford rent Shawnt Spears of the Housing Authority of the County of San Mateo in California disclosed the agency s five-year time limits have given folks motivation to meet their goals in tandem with self-sufficiency programs funded by dollars Trump wants to cut Time limits also give more households the chance to use vouchers she mentioned But with the Bay Area s high rents several tenants still have to spend more than half of their income on rent once their time is up or end up back on waitlists I believe the effort is very helpful in getting folks prepared but there lies this really really vital rent burden here in our county disclosed Spears When folks do leave our time-limited activity they are facing an uphill battle Kramon disclosed from Atlanta Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press Account for America Statehouse News Initiative Assessment for America is a nonprofit national system campaign that places journalists in local newsrooms to document on undercovered issues Source