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The Trump administration has stanched the flow of illegal immigrants by reversing Biden-era asylum policy and dispatching ICE agents to sanctuary cities. But the White House has yet to roll back one notable Biden rule that drew little attention: permitting undocumented migrants and other noncitizens to live for an unlimited period in public housing.
Across the US, there are long — extremely long — waiting lists for public housing apartments and the housing vouchers that pay for rent in privately owned apartments.
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 (a .k. a Section 8) apartments.
The city is hardly an exception: in Baltimore, there are 64,000 on the combined waiting lists; in Boston, 42,000; in Milwaukee, 47,000.
This is why many on those lists might be surprised to learn that, under rules set by the Biden administration, they are competing for homes not only with their fellow low-income citizens — but with noncitizens and even undocumented migrants.
As the rules stand, only one resident in a household must have legal status for a family to qualify for low-rent housing. In other words, a 3-bedroom public housing unit or subsidized apartment housing three couples could be home to just one green card holder and five undocumented migrants — and all would be legally qualified to live there.
No housing authority, including New York City’s, by far the nation’s largest, is violating federal law in permitting illegal aliens to live in its developments, even as thousands of citizens languish on waiting lists.
That might seem inconsistent with 1980 legislation limiting housing aid to American citizens. Over time, however, exceptions were added, first for “non-citizens with eligible immigration status.” During, the Biden administration, that exception was broadened — authorizing aid to “mixed families” composed of both legal and illegal immigrants, in order to avoid “division of the family.”
The level of assistance for mixed families is, technically, supposed to be a lower, “pro-rated” amount for a unit’s overall rent. But that just means paying a larger portion of rents that are very low: The average gross rent in New York City public housing is just $542 — and that includes utilities. Citywide, that figure, per the Census Bureau, is $1779.
There’s another kicker: “All household members must report all income to ensure accurate rent calculation.” In other words, housing authorities must rely on illegal immigrants to report their legal earnings, even if that means their rent will go up. That’s neither logical — nor likely.
“Everyone deserves a place to live,” NYCHA tenant leader Daniel Barber told me this week, “but with the waiting list so long it isn’t fair for migrants to go to the top of the list just because they have a family member who’s here legally.”
That’s the situation that, in 2019, the Trump administration sought to address, by revising Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations and forcing all public housing residents to verify their citizenship.
An executive order entitled Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility from HUD was meant to “adopt policies to ensure that only eligible persons receive benefits and enforce all relevant laws providing that aliens who are not otherwise qualified and eligible may not receive benefits.”
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If they moved in, they could stay only “for such time that it takes to verify eligible status.” What’s more, the Trump rule required that the head of a household have legal status — not just a single member.
The rule had not been finalized by the time Trump left office and was reversed by the Biden administration in 2021. Now the undocumented may remain for an indefinite period.
Housing authorities are not required to report the number of non-citizens among the 9 million residents of public and subsidized housing. It’s hard to contemplate, moreover, simply evicting those who are not citizens — and who were party to legal leases signed with public agencies. ICE agents have enough to do without raiding the projects.
But at a time when affordable housing is in such short supply for anyone of low income, it makes sense to change the policy for potential new tenants — both to be fair to those on waiting lists and to limit a financial incentive for illegal immigration.
It was the economist Milton Friedman, himself an immigration advocate, who observed that it’s hard to reconcile the safety net of the welfare state with open borders. It’s an insight that has never applied more than to public housing.
Howard Husock is a senior fellow in domestic policy at the American Enterprise Institute.