Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

15. Department of Housing and Urban Development · Minor

Restrict HUD program eligibility to protect life, health, and self-sufficiency

Partially done

509 15. Department of Housing and Urban Development

“The Office of the Secretary should execute regulatory and subregulatory guidance actions, across HUD programs and applicable to all relevant stakeholders, that would restrict program eligibility when admission would threaten the protection of the life and health of individuals and fail to encourage upward mobility and economic advancement through household self-sufficiency.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The self-sufficiency half is only proposed. HUD's notice of proposed rulemaking "Establishing Flexibility for Implementation of Work Requirements and Term Limits" would amend 24 CFR parts 5, 960, 982 and 983 to let public housing agencies and certain multifamily owners impose work requirements and term limits on non-elderly, non-disabled families in public housing, HCV, PBV and PBRA, expressly to "promote self-sufficiency for residents". Comments closed 2026-05-01 and no final rule had issued by this pass, so nobody's eligibility has changed under it.

  2. Partially done

    HUD narrowed eligibility itself, by notice: its interpretation of "Federal public benefit" under PRWORA reads the statutory definition on its plain terms and "supersedes any prior interpretation in any notice or other document issued by any HUD program or office", so HUD assistance within the definition is closed to aliens who are not qualified aliens. OLC confirmed the reading for HUD's section 214 programs on 2026-02-18.

  3. Partially done

    The life-and-health half moved by subregulatory action, which is the instrument the Quote names. HUD's Office of General Counsel withdrew, effective 2025-09-25, its 2023 memorandum "Limiting PHA and Owner Discretion in Admitting and Evicting Tenants in Federally Assisted Housing" together with the 2016 "Application of Fair Housing Act Standards to Use of Criminal Records"; FHEO had already withdrawn its 2022 memorandum implementing the criminal-records guidance, effective 2025-09-17. The effect is to restore the discretion public housing agencies and owners have to refuse admission on safety grounds, which is the restriction the Quote asks for, applied across HUD programs and to all relevant stakeholders.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • This is the omnibus phrasing of a passage whose specific asks are tracked separately: work requirements as #1418, term limits as #1419, the marriage penalty as #1417 (not started), Housing First as #1420, and noncitizen eligibility as #455 and #1415. It is leveled on its own words — “regulatory and subregulatory guidance actions, across HUD programs” — which is why the guidance withdrawals rather than the proposed rule carry the first event.
  • Done would need the sweep across HUD programs to be complete; the self-sufficiency half is a proposal and the life-and-health half rests on withdrawing guidance rather than on new eligibility standards, so partial is the honest reading.
  • Found and deliberately not used: HUD’s “Revocation of the 30-Day Notification Requirement Prior To Termination of Lease for Nonpayment of Rent” (2026-02-26, FR 2026-03921) never took effect — HUD indefinitely delayed its effective date on 2026-03-13 (FR 2026-04990) — so it is not a step here.
Action
restrict
Object
HUD program eligibility rules
ID
1416