Trump the Landlord Plans to Speed Up Evictions From Public Housing

President Donald Trump is preparing to revoke eviction protections for people living in federal public housing and project-based rental assistance programs — increasing the risk for millions of Americans to fall into homelessness. 

Last week, the Trump administration posted on the Office of Management and Budget’s website that it is reviewing a new rule eliminating a Housing and Urban Development Department requirement that property owners and public housing agencies provide a 30-day eviction notice for people they intend to kick out of certain types of federally subsidized housing for lack of payment.

If the rule change takes effect, public housing tenants could receive as little as 14 days of notice prior to eviction proceedings beginning, and in some jurisdictions, people in project-based rental assistance programs could receive no notice at all before formal eviction procedures begin.

The 30-day notice rule was drafted during the Biden administration to give tenants facing eviction for nonpayment time to pay the amount due to stop the eviction or secure new housing. It requires property owners and public housing authorities to give tenants a month’s notice in writing, and mandates that property managers include a monthly breakdown of overdue rent charges, the deadline for paying overdue rent, and instructions on how the tenant can pay their fees. 

The 30-day notice rule only took effect in January, but housing experts say that it has already made a significant difference for people facing eviction. Experts told The Intercept that should the Trump administration move ahead with the rule change, millions of people could be at risk of losing their housing to benefit Trump’s corporate allies. 

“It would be really a huge step backwards to see this protection be taken away at a time like this when people are really concerned about the ability to make rent and the ability to stay housed,” said Marie Claire Tran-Leung, the Evictions Initiative Project Director and a senior staff attorney at the National Housing Law Project.

Some 2 million people live in project-based rental assistance housing, and an additional 1.6 million in public housing. Some housing assistance programs, such as the Housing Choice Voucher programs, were excluded from the 30-day notice, said Tran-Leung. 

The 30-day notice period significantly decreased evictions, said Tara Raghuveer, founding director of the Tenant Union Federation. “For many households, that notice initiates a process of figuring out how they’re going to make rent, so that the eviction doesn’t happen,” she said. “Many of the households impacted, disproportionately, these households are made up of single parents and children. And this will have devastating consequences.” 

“It’s not an easy thing to find an apartment to rent in just a few weeks.” 

The more notice, the better chance a family has to find alternative housing. “Without the full 30 days, it’s going to make it a lot more challenging,” said Sonya Acosta, a senior policy analyst with the housing and income security team for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Given the rental markets across the country, it’s not an easy thing to find an apartment to rent in just a few weeks.” 

Eviction doesn’t just impact the immediate stability of a family. It has devastating long-term consequences, explained Tran-Leung. 

“Being evicted … can create a record that often leads to barriers down the line when you’re trying to find other housing because of eviction record screening practices that landlords are increasingly using in the private rental market,” said Tran-Leung. 

Health outcomes for children who’ve faced eviction are also poor. “Children suffer a lot after evictions, like increased food insecurity and higher rates of anxiety and depression,” she said. “So it just reverberates throughout the household, through different members, and really impairs housing in the future.”

The Department of Housing and Urban Development declined to respond to a request for comment. 

Because the Trump administration introduced the rule change as an interim final rule rather than as a proposed rule, it could take effect on an accelerated timeline, said Acosta. 

Generally, as part of the federal rulemaking process, an agency issues a proposed rule that goes into the federal register and is open for comment, Acosta said. In the case of HUD, comments are typically open for 60 days to give various stakeholders the opportunity to weigh in. “The interim final rule skips all of that public input stage and just goes straight to ‘This is what we’re going to do,’” she said. 

The rule still has to be reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget, but it could go into effect swiftly post-review.

That means tenants are going to feel the consequences sooner. “This is going to be a lot trickier for everyone on the ground to make sure that people understand what can and cannot happen if they find themselves in that situation of facing eviction,” said Acosta.

Tran-Leung said that this is a part of a larger push from corporate landlords who have lobbied the Trump administration to reduce eviction protections for tenants. “Housing providers right now are looking for ways to speed up the eviction process to make it easier to get tenants out,” she said.

Trump — a landlord who inherited his real estate empire from his father — has repeatedly sided with the interests of corporate landlords and property owners.

Trump and other Republicans ran a platform of making America more affordable, but in practice they’ve spent the months since the election doing the opposite, said Acosta. 

“You have them then pushing policies like this, where it’s giving people less time to just get things together in the event of an eviction, while they’re also pushing for major cuts in all of these different rental assistance programs that make housing more affordable,” said Acosta. “You just have all of these things piling up, particularly on people with low incomes, just completely contradictory to what they are trying to message.” 

The post Trump the Landlord Plans to Speed Up Evictions From Public Housing appeared first on The Intercept.