The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced on Jan. 23 that all public housing authorities (PHAs) and owners participating in HUD-funded housing have 30 days to verify tenant immigration eligibility, report deceased tenants and take corrective action.

A joint HUD and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) audit into all tenants across HUD-funded housing nationwide discovered around 200,000 tenants requiring eligibility verification, nearly 25,000 deceased tenants and nearly 6,000 ineligible non-American tenants.

“We will leave no stone unturned,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a release. “We are proud to collaborate with DHS to execute on the president’s agenda of rooting out abuse of taxpayer funded resources. … With this new directive and audit, HUD is putting new processes in place to safeguard taxpayer resources and put the American people first.”

“Today’s action to verify the immigration eligibility of all HUD-assisted households is a major step forward to ensure we put American families first and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse,” HUD Assistant Secretary of Public and Indian Housing Ben Hobbs said in a release. “There are hundreds of thousands of American families on housing waitlists across the country. It is essential we prioritize our limited resources to eligible families only.”

This directive is the follow up to a letter HUD sent to PHAs and owners in December 2025 that emphasized their legal obligation under Section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1980 (Section 214) and an executive order, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,” to verify the citizenship and immigration status of all individuals prior to admission to HUD-assisted housing.

Turner and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem signed the “American Housing Programs for American Citizens” Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on March 24, 2025, to end the misappropriation of taxpayer dollars to benefit illegal immigrants. As a result of the MOU, HUD and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services completed, for the first time, an upload of all HUD Section 8 and Section 9 tenant files to Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) for immigration status verification.

Within the next 30 days, PHAs and owners must review their Enterprise Income Verification-SAVE Tenant Match Report, verify that they have accurately reported individuals’ citizenship or immigration status to determine eligibility and initiate corrective actions.