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The Department of Housing and Urban Development has finalized a rule requiring every person living in federally funded housing to prove United States citizenship or eligible immigration status, Secretary Scott Turner announced on Tuesday, November 10, 2026. The rule, published in the Federal Register on Thursday, November 12, takes effect on December 14, 2026.
The rule ends the longstanding arrangement under which "mixed-status" households — families in which some members qualify for assistance and others do not — could keep reduced, prorated rent help indefinitely. Under the new rule, prorated assistance becomes only a temporary condition while every member of the household proves eligibility.
Turner said the crackdown follows a joint audit by HUD and the Department of Homeland Security of all HUD-assisted households, which identified nearly 200,000 tenants whose eligibility information was incomplete or unknown. HUD estimates that about 24,000 ineligible people were living in roughly 20,000 mixed-status households. HUD's own analysis estimates that $167 million to $218 million a year in rental assistance would move from mixed-status families to fully eligible households on waiting lists. The department describes that figure as a transfer of assistance, not a saving.
"President Trump warned that the days of illegal aliens and ineligible noncitizens exploiting government-funded welfare programs would be over," Turner said in HUD's announcement. "It's unacceptable that America's homeless veterans, disabled, elderly, and victims of domestic violence languish on waitlists while illegals and ineligibles scam our system. American taxpayers will no longer foot the bill. Promises made, promises kept."
The rule covers public housing, Section 8 programs including Housing Choice Vouchers, certain Section 236 tenants and Housing Development Grant low-income units. Verification will run through the Department of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system. Every family member must now submit evidence of citizenship or eligible immigration status, regardless of age — the rule removes the previous exemption for people aged 62 and older and the option to decline to state a status. Housing agencies and property owners must notify affected tenants within 30 days of December 14, and families in mixed-status households generally must submit the required evidence within 90 days, by March 14, 2027.
The rule follows a proposal HUD announced in February 2026 and builds on President Trump's February 2025 executive order, "Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders." HUD first tried a version of the rule in 2019 and withdrew it in 2021. Since February, the department has also required that FHA-backed loans go only to American citizens and launched a hotline for reporting illegal aliens and criminal activity in HUD-funded housing.
Critics of the rule say its impact will fall heavily on families that include United States citizens. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that nearly 80,000 people would be affected, including about 37,000 children, most of them United States citizens, according to CBS News reporting. Housing advocates have said the rule risks separating families and penalizing eligible people over missing paperwork, and have vowed legal challenges.