Oppose HUD’s Work Requirements and Time Limits Proposed Rule; Comments Due TODAY!

Today, May 1, is the last day to submit comments to oppose HUD’s proposal allowing public housing agencies (PHAs) and HUD-assisted owners to impose work requirements and time limits on assisted families. Comments are due at 11:59 PM ET.

A new Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis estimates that the Proposed Rule would jeopardize housing assistance for up to 3.7 million people, including 1.9 million children. This includes 2.1 million people in households where at least one person is working.

Background

HUD’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), “Establishing Flexibility for Implementation of Work Requirements and Term Limits,” would allow “well-performing” PHAs and PBRA owners to adopt work requirements for “work-eligible” adults of up to 40 hours per week. “Work-eligible” adults are defined in the NPRM as individuals ages 18 to 61 who are not people with disabilities, pregnant, or enrolled in higher education. The “work-eligible” definition also excludes primary caretakers for: a person with a disability, a child under six, or a person who is temporarily incapacitated. However, the exemptions are limited. For example, a caretaker for an older school-age child would not be exempted from the work requirement under the Proposed Rule’s baseline policies.

The Proposed Rule would also allow for time limits on assistance after two years for “non-elderly, non-disabled families.” The definitions of “elderly family” and “disabled family” in current HUD regulations are written in a way that, under HUD’s proposal, individual household members who are elderly or who have disabilities could be impacted by a time limit if the household itself is considered “non-elderly” and “non-disabled.”

The Proposed Rule would apply to the following programs: public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers (HCV), Project-Based Vouchers (PBV), and Project-Based Rental Assistance.

Take action on the Work Requirements and Time Limits Proposed Rule by:

• Submitting your own comment, urging HUD to withdraw the proposed rule. The comment deadline is TODAY, Friday, May 1 at 11:59 pm ET. 
  • Use NLIHC’s comment template to draft a comment that reflects your perspective.
• Learning more about the harms of time limits and work requirements:
  • NHLP—jointly with NLIHC, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), Justice in Aging, and Southern Poverty Law Center—published a resource titled, “Work Requirements and Time Limits in Rental Assistance Programs Will Worsen Housing Instability.” This document outlines the ways in which imposing work requirements and time limits in HUD programs is counterproductive. 
  • NLIHC, NHLP and CLASP have also synthesized CBPP data and NLIHC data to create fact sheets for each state and the District of Columbia. These fact sheets are posted online as a single, searchable PDF. Consider using this information to inform your comments.
  • NHLP has released a legal analysis of the proposed rule. This analysis includes “a summary of HUD’s lack of legal authority to promulgate the rule, and the substantive drafting errors that appear in the rule (such as where there are discrepancies between the policies stated in the preamble and the proposed regulatory text).” NHLP’s analysis also includes a detailed comparison chart outlining how the proposal would apply across programs covered by the NPRM. 
  • Justice in Aging has published “HUD’s Proposal on Work Requirements and Time Limits Would Take Away Housing Assistance From Older Adults.”
  • CLASP has posted a compilation of resources, including template letters.
  • NLIHC’s Preventing Benefit Cuts page can be found here.