New rule would allow housing authorities and owners to evict federally subsidized tenants after two years
An official with the U.S. Housing and Urban Development agency told New Mexico state lawmakers Tuesday the federal housing department is encouraging local housing officials to participate in a new program creating work requirements for tenants in government-subsidized housing.
HUD is currently finalizing a rule that would enable the more than two dozen local and tribal housing authorities in New Mexico, as well as owners who participate in federal housing voucher programs, to require non-elderly, non-disabled adults to work up to 40 hours a week to maintain their housing. It would also allow the authorities and property owners to evict tenants once they’ve stayed in subsidizing housing for two years.
HUD’s presentation to the interim Federal Funding Stabilization & Affordability Subcommittee did not specify whether any New Mexico-based authorities or owners had agreed to opt in to the program, which is optional, once it is finalized. But Ashlea Quinonez, HUD’s administrator for the region that includes New Mexico, said the agency is encouraging them to participate.
“We’re having those conversations and soliciting support from the public housing authorities, certainly, across your state,” Quinonez told lawmakers.
According to HUD, more than 100 hundred public housing authorities, tribes, property owners and community groups have joined its Work & Dignity Coalition, which HUD convened in February to build support for the rule change.
Quinonez told lawmakers Tuesday that the opt-in program seeks to restore HUD to Secretary Scott Turner’s vision of the agency’s original purpose, which is to “come alongside our able-bodied, able-minded residents within our public housing authorities to support them on a path to self-sufficiency.”
Quinonez noted that most public housing authorities in New Mexico, as well as the four other nearby states in the region she oversees, have long wait lists of tenants seeking stable housing.
Meanwhile, she said, “You have this stagnation of the same individuals that are residing in those public housing units. What we’ve seen too is two or three or sometimes four generations of individuals that are living in public housing. And so the goal here is to work with our public housing authorities, work with our community stakeholders, to truly come around and build out a self-sufficiency plan.”
But Winter Torres, who runs the New Mexico Eviction and Diversion Program, told Source NM on Tuesday that she fears the rule change will ultimately mean more single mothers of color will end up evicted and unhoused. In her experience, that’s the demographic most frequently evicted in New Mexico and, as she watched the HUD presentation Tuesday, she said she grew worried about them, in particular.
“I think it would exacerbate the No. 1 type of household in New Mexico that’s already suffering,” she said of the rule change.
The National Housing Law Project, a nonprofit that advocates for more low-income housing, provided a list of 58 entities to Stateline that had signed up for the Work & Dignity Coalition, including public housing authorities in Fort Worth, Jacksonville, Orlando, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Tampa.
The nonprofit estimates that the HUD rule will result in as many as 3 million people being forced to leave HUD-assisted housing, including many who do work but don’t make enough to afford rising rental costs.
