By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Glenn Thrush
WASHINGTON — Thousands of legal residents and citizens, including 55,000 children who are in the country legally, could be displaced under a proposed rule intended to prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving federal housing assistance, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The proposal, published on Friday, would prohibit families in which at least one member is undocumented from obtaining subsidized housing, according to an analysis by HUD career officials. The administration is pushing the changes to ensure that the benefits are awarded only to verified citizens — a move that was made without the knowledge of many longtime housing officials at the department.
Current rules bar undocumented immigrants from receiving federal housing subsidies, but allow families of mixed immigration status to live in subsidized housing as long as one household member is a legal resident. The subsidies are prorated based on the number of eligible members of the family. According to the HUD analysis, more than 108,000 people receiving benefits are in a household with at least one undocumented immigrant.
Under the proposed rule, families of mixed status would no longer be permitted to live in public housing. Members who are in the country legally would be allowed to stay in their home, but the analysis found that they would be unlikely to do so: The fear of a family separation alone — and displacing one or both of a child’s parents or guardians — would have the effect of driving the entire family, including children, to vacate.
“HUD assumes that most mixed households will leave HUD’s assisted housing as a result of this rule,” the analysis said, adding that the agency “expects that fear of the family being separated would lead to prompt evacuation by most mixed households, whether that fear is justified.”
The rules are currently in a public comment stage and are not yet in effect.
In proposing the change, administration officials pointed to the long waiting lists for public housing, underlining that the rule would open the door to citizens struggling to obtain affordable housing.
“We are putting America’s most vulnerable first,” Ben Carson, the secretary of HUD, said in a statement last month. “Our nation faces affordable housing challenges, and hundreds of thousands of citizens are waiting for many years on wait lists to get housing assistance.”
But experts said that most of the residents now likely to be displaced are citizens or legally permitted to live in the United States.
“It reverses a very sensible policy that’s been in place for more than two decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations,” said Douglas Rice, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank. “It does nothing to address the affordable housing crisis that exists. In fact, the rule will take assistance away from one set of eligible U.S. citizens and immigrants and give it to another. So there’s really no net gain.”
For months, Stephen Miller, one of President Trump’s top advisers, has pushed the administration to institute regulations that would penalize legal immigrants who rely on public benefits as part of a larger effort to limit the number of immigrants living in the country. One such regulation would declare an immigrant who uses welfare benefits to be a “public charge,” making him or her ineligible for permanent status.
Mr. Miller, along with White House aides, sent the new regulations to HUD officials this year; Mr. Carson was not pleased with the changes, and he questioned how they would be enforced but did not object, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The regulations were closely held among officials at the department’s legal division for weeks, without being shared with those in the public housing division, who were alarmed by a policy many believed to be both immoral and unenforceable, according to a senior official at the department with direct knowledge of their complaints.
Career department officials pushed hard for a provision that would allow for a renewable six-month extension for tenants facing eviction. They have also argued that the new policy could cost the already-struggling agency millions in rent because undocumented immigrants — who do not want the scrutiny that missing payments would invite — are often among the most reliable tenants, the senior official said.
A spokesman for HUD did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.
Replacing households of mixed immigration status with households of only eligible residents would require the agency to provide full subsidies for each resident, costing HUD at least $193 million, the analysis found, and legal experts said the proposal would only exacerbate homelessness.
Rather than Congress allocating the funds, it is more likely that HUD would redirect resources to pay for the subsidies, the analysis found. Doing so could affect the number of households on the waiting list who receive public housing or the quality of housing.
“With part of the budget being redirected to cover the increase in subsidy, there could be fewer households served under the housing choice vouchers program; while for public housing, this would have an impact on the quality of service,” according to the analysis, “e.g., maintenance of the units and possibly deterioration of the units that could lead to vacancy.”
The proposed rules would also require those eligible for the subsidies under the age of 62 to provide proof of their legal status. It would also prevent undocumented immigrants from serving as leaseholders.
“This is part of a longstanding pattern with this administration of instituting anti-immigrant policies,” said Kristen Clarke, the president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “This one is particularly callous because it will no doubt result in children being rendered homeless.”
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