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By Averel Meden
May 19, 2026
Thousands of Illegal Aliens Live in Taxpayer-Funded Housing. Trump Is Ending it.
AP

Home prices are squeezing American family budgets. The median home price is up 60% since 2019, now five times the median household income. The country is short more than 4 million homes, and a record 22.6 million renter households are spending more than 30% of their income on rent. Housing costs have risen another 14% in just the last two years.

While Americans are fighting for a place to call home, a recent Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Homeland Security investigation revealed major eligibility errors in HUD housing programs. HUD found nearly 6,000 confirmed ineligible tenants, and another 200,000 more tenants who have gone through zero eligibility verification. In addition, HUD identified 25,000 deceased tenants still living in taxpayer-funded housing units. These aren’t likely empty units. Someone is wrongly receiving this benefit.

Federal law is clear: Section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act limits HUD housing assistance to U.S. citizens and eligible non-citizens. In addition, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 prohibits public welfare benefits from going to illegal aliens and requires HUD housing programs to verify immigration status at the point of application, now a nearly instantaneous process through the SAVE program. Yet HUD rules have systematically avoided this verification until now.

Instead of using the existing Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, HUD created two workarounds. The first is the “do not contend” provision, under which a tenant declares they do not contend their non-citizen status and receives prorated assistance anyway. This is blatantly illegal. The second workaround is an age exemption HUD fabricated 15 years ago under the Obama administration. Current regulations exempt anyone 62 or older from verification, but this has no basis in federal law.

It turns out, in contrast to federal law, the federal government has been incentivizing illegal immigration by offering taxpayer-subsidized housing along with other welfare programs by not using any verification to ensure benefits are going to only eligible individuals. Hundreds of thousands of tenants, including able-bodied adults, have spent years, even decades, in federally subsidized units still needing eligibility checks. This is exactly what has been prohibited for 30 years, and it’s part of what’s driving up housing prices today.

The cost of those two failures lands not only on taxpayers whose money is being directed towards illegal aliens, but on lower-income American families, the elderly, and the disabled, who have been waiting for help. HUD’s worst-case housing needs remain near record highs. Across the country, the wait for a Housing Choice Voucher is years long, with millions of eligible low-income Americans on waitlists stretching a decade or more. Every unit held by an ineligible tenant crowds out an eligible truly needy person or family. Crowding out elderly and disabled American citizens should be enough to make a taxpayer’s blood boil.

President Trump is finally putting an end to this practice. In February, HUD published a proposed rule to implement SAVE eligibility verification by eliminating the “do not contend” option and converting prorated assistance from a permanent status into a temporary one with a defined deadline, as the law intends. It removes the arbitrary age exemption and requires uniform verification for every applicant and tenant. After three decades of noncompliance, the new HUD rule finally follows the law’s reporting obligations and extends them to owners and public housing authorities.

Thanks to President Trump and HUD Secretary Scott Turner, every housing authority in the country must finally verify eligibility. This is a strong step towards restoring public trust in HUD housing. For the first time, the system Congress mandated will be employed.

At a moment when Americans are competing for every available unit and homelessness hit a record high of 770,000 under Joe Biden in 2024, this new rule by HUD Secretary Turner finally upholds federal law, frees up units for lawful citizens, and ensures that public housing is there for those it is intended to serve: the disabled, elderly and low-income American families who need help. Americans on the waiting lists, waiting for relief from the inflated rental market, and those looking to buy a home, can be thankful that President Trump is working to ensure more of America’s housing stock is going to American citizens.

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