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Time Business News
4 days ago
- Business
- Time Business News
What to Ask Reverse Mortgage Brokers Before Committing
Reverse mortgages are valuable tools that support senior homeowners' financial security and independence. While they offer financial flexibility, their intricacies can be easily misunderstood. This loan allows you to utilize your home equity without selling the property. Still, it also has terms, responsibilities, and long-term implications that can affect your future and your family's inheritance. Therefore, asking the right questions before signing any contract is paramount. The goal isn't simply to get answers; it's to understand what you'll agree to, ensure the broker is acting in your best interest, and make sound financial decisions. To simplify things for you, here's a breakdown of things to clarify and why they matter: Before getting into the loan's intricacies, you must confirm that you're working with a reputable, experienced loan officer. They must be honest and accountable, as they are your point of contact throughout the process. To verify their legitimacy, ask whether they're certified by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) or the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Suppose you want to apply for a home equity conversion mortgage (HECM). It's a federally insured and regulated loan, and working with a HUD-approved lender is essential to ensure compliance with federal standards. You can ask them to present their license as proof of their credibility. Another factor to consider is how long they've worked with reverse mortgages. These loans are more complex than traditional ones, so it helps to know your broker has in-depth knowledge and extensive experience handling different reverse mortgage products. Once you've confirmed that your lender is legitimate and experienced, you can explore the loan's fine print. Instead of rushing through the numbers, you must focus on clarifying the following: How much equity will be accessible Types of fees involved (origination, closing, ongoing, etc.) Applicable interest rates and how they work in the loan Available payout options Any limitations once the loan has been closed Keep in mind that reverse mortgages aren't one-size-fits-all financial tools. Each element affects your long-term financial plans, from how much money you can get to how quickly your equity will be consumed. Inquiring about these details will help you prepare for potential additional costs and unexpected restrictions. All borrowers must keep up with specific responsibilities as homeowners when they sign up for a reverse mortgage. Take this opportunity to clarify what specific home maintenance tasks you must fulfill regularly and who pays property taxes and insurance. Like traditional types, reverse mortgages can default when borrowers fall behind their obligations and payments. It's also advisable to ask what other consequences may occur. Doing so will help you remember what to do once the mortgage closes, budget accordingly, and avoid potential risks. Counseling is mandatory when applying for reverse mortgages since they're more complex than conventional loans. For example, federally insured reverse loans are non-recourse loans, meaning borrowers will not owe more than their property's appraised value at the time of sale. However, the loan balance can sometimes exceed that value, and knowing your options for covering the excess amount can help you manage your finances responsibly. Counseling sessions are the best avenue to clarify such scenarios and any consumer protections involved. A good lender will encourage you to go through with the session and provide the necessary assistance and resources. It isn't merely a paperwork formality; it's your chance to understand the loan's terms and built-in safeguards and confirm whether the loan is right for you. While reverse loans provide financial assistance for senior homeowners to live quality lives, they can also affect your heirs and estate. It's essential to ask about loan repayment after you move out or pass away, what options your heirs have if they keep the house, and whether it has non-recourse protections. There are safeguards for heirs, but the conditions vary depending on their relationship to the borrower and (for spouses) eligibility as co-borrowers. So, don't hesitate to ask your loan officer about the relevant policies, any applicable non-recourse protections, and how they can affect your estate and long-term plans. Reverse loans can offer financial stability and peace of mind in your golden years only if you fully understand how they work, what they involve, and what they require. Take your time asking everything there is to know and anything unclear. By asking reverse mortgage brokers the right questions, you can make informed decisions, maximize your home equity, and protect your future. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
More than one million of the poorest renters risk losing their homes with Trump's proposed policy
Havalah Hopkins rarely says no to the chain restaurant catering gigs that send her out to Seattle-area events — from church potlucks to office lunches and graduation parties. The delivery fees and tips she earns on top of $18 an hour mean it's better than minimum-wage shift work, even though it's not consistent. It helps her afford the government-subsidized apartment she and her 14-year-old autistic son have lived in for three years, though it's still tough to make ends meet. 'It's a cycle of feeling defeated and depleted, no matter how much energy and effort and tenacity you have towards surviving,' Hopkins said. Still, the 33-year-old single mother is grateful she has stable housing — experts estimate just 1 in 4 low-income households eligible for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rental assistance get the benefits. And now Hopkins is at risk of losing her home, as federal officials move to restrict HUD policy. Amid a worsening national affordable housing and homelessness crisis, President Donald Trump's administration is determined to reshape HUD's expansive role providing stable housing for low-income people, which has been at the heart of its mission for generations. The proposed changes include a two-year limit on the federal government's signature rental assistance programs. At a June congressional budget hearing, HUD Secretary Scott Turner argued policies like time limits will fix waste and fraud in public housing and Section 8 voucher programs. 'It's broken and deviated from its original purpose, which is to temporarily help Americans in need,' Turner said. 'HUD assistance is not supposed to be permanent.' But the move to restrict such key subsidies would mark a significant retreat from the scope of HUD's work. Millions of tenants moved in with the promise of subsidized housing for as long as they were poor enough to remain qualified, so time limits would be a seismic shift that could destabilize the most vulnerable households, many unlikely to ever afford today's record-high rents. New research from New York University, obtained exclusively by The Associated Press and published Thursday, found that if families were cut off after two years, 1.4 million households could lose their vouchers and public housing subsidies — largely working families with children. This would lead housing authorities to evict many families, the report said. A broad time limit would cause 'substantial disruption and dislocation,' it said, noting the policy is largely untested and most of the few housing authorities to voluntarily try it eventually abandoned the pilots. A break from HUD's long-held purpose of helping house the poor could also jeopardize its contracts with private landlords, who say they're already feeling the uncertainty as public housing authorities from Seattle to Atlanta announce they're scaling back in anticipation of federal funding cuts. Critics fear the restriction could derail those working towards self-sufficiency — defeating the goal time-limit supporters hope to achieve. HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett pushed back on the NYU study. 'There is plenty of data that strongly supports time limits and shows that long-term government assistance without any incentive disincentivizes able-bodied Americans to work,' Lovett said in a statement. She primarily cited statistics suggesting low employment among HUD-subsidized tenants. Hopkins said the policy would likely leave her and her son homeless in an economy that often feels indifferent to working poor people like her. 'A two-year time limit is ridiculous,' she said. 'It's so disrespectful. I think it's dehumanizing — the whole system.' Researchers from the Housing Solutions Lab at New York University's Furman Center analyzed HUD's data over a 10-year period and found about 70% of households who could be affected by a two-year limit had already been living on those subsidies for two or more years. That's based on 2024 estimates and doesn't include elderly and disabled people who wouldn't be subject to time limits. Exempted households make up about half of the roughly 4.9 million households getting rental assistance. In the first study to examine the proposed policy's possible impacts, the NYU researchers found time limits would largely punish families who are working but earning far below their area's median income, which would ultimately shift federal rental assistance away from households with kids. 'Housing assistance is especially impactful for children,' said Claudia Aiken, the study co-author and director of new research partnerships for the Housing Solutions Lab. Their health, education, employment and earnings potential can 'change in really meaningful ways if they have stable housing,' she said. It would affect people like Hopkins, whose family was on a years-long waitlist in the expensive region where she grew up. In July 2022, she and her son moved into a two-bedroom public housing unit in Woodinville, Washington. She pays $450 a month in rent — 30% of her household income. A market-rate apartment in the area costs at least $2,000 more, according to the King County Housing Authority, which in June announced it would pause issuing some new vouchers. Hopkins knows she could never afford to live in her home state without rental assistance. It was a relief they could stay as long as they needed. She had been struggling to scrape together hundreds of dollars more a month for her previous trailer home. 'There's no words to put on feeling like your housing is secure,' Hopkins said. 'I feel like I was gasping for air and I'm finally able to breathe.' She credits the housing subsidy for her ability to finally leave an abusive marriage, and still dreams of more — perhaps her own catering business or working as a party decorator. 'We all can't be lawyers and doctors — and two years isn't enough to even become that,' Hopkins said. Since learning of Trump's proposal, Hopkins said she's been haunted by thoughts of shoving her possessions into a van with her son, upending the stability she built for him. The average household in HUD-subsidized housing stays about six years, studies show. HUD funds local public housing projects where nearly 1 million households live and the Section 8 vouchers that about 4 million households use to offset their private rentals. There's been little guidance from HUD on how time-limited housing assistance would be implemented — how it would be enforced, when the clock starts and how the exemptions would be defined. Both Democrats and Republicans have acknowledged the potential for time limits to help curb HUD's notorious waitlists. Hard-liners contend the threat of housing loss will push people to reach self-sufficiency; others see limits, when coupled with support and workforce incentives, as a means to motivate tenants to improve their lives. Yet there are strikingly few successful examples. NYU researchers identified just 17 public housing authorities that have tested time limits. None of the programs were designed for only two years and 11 abandoned the restriction — despite being able to use federal dollars for services to help people achieve self-sufficiency. Several agencies that dropped the limits said tenants still struggled to afford housing after their time was up. 'These policies are complex and difficult to monitor, enforce, and do well,' NYU's Aiken said. The city of Keene, New Hampshire, tried five-year time limits starting in 2001, but terminated the policy before fully enforcing it to avoid kicking out households that would still be 'rent burdened, or potentially homeless,' said Josh Meehan, executive director of Keene Housing. In California, Shawnté Spears of the Housing Authority of San Mateo County said the agency has kept its five-year time limit in tandem with educational programs she says have 'given folks motivation' to meet their goals. It also gives more people the chance to use vouchers, she said. NYU's Aiken acknowledged HUD's long waitlists make the current system 'a bit of a lottery,' adding: 'You could say that time limits are a way of increasing people's odds in that lottery.' HUD's Section 8 programs have long depended on hundreds of thousands of for-profit and nonprofit small business owners and property managers to accept tenant vouchers. Now, landlords fear a two-year limit could put their contracts for HUD-subsidized housing in limbo. Amid the uncertainty, Denise Muha, executive director of the National Leased Housing Association, said multiple landlord groups have voiced their concerns about HUD's next budget in a letter to congressional leaders. She said landlords generally agree two years is simply not enough time for most low-income tenants to change their fortunes. 'As a practical matter, you're going to increase your turnover, which is a cost,' Muha said. 'Nobody wants to throw out their tenants without cause.' It's always been a significant lift for private landlords to work with HUD subsidies, which involve burdensome paperwork, heavy oversight and maintenance inspections. But the trade-off is a near guarantee of dependable longer-term renters and rental income. If that's compromised, some landlords say they'd pull back from the federal subsidy programs. Brad Suster, who owns 86 Chicago-area units funded by HUD, said accepting subsidies could become risky. 'Would we have the same reliability that we know has traditionally come for countless years from the federal government?' Suster said. 'That's something landlords and owners want to know is there.' The diminishing housing stock available to low-income tenants has been a brewing problem for HUD. Between 2010 and 2020, some 50,000 housing providers left the voucher program, the agency has reported. It's up for debate whether lawmakers will buy into Trump's vision for HUD. This week the U.S. House appropriations committee is taking up HUD's 2026 budget, which so far makes no mention of time limits. HUD's Lovett noted the Senate's budget plans for the agency have not yet been released, and said the administration remains focused on future implementation of time limits. 'HUD will continue to engage with colleagues on the hill to ensure a seamless transition and enforcement of any new time limit,' Lovett said in a statement. Noëlle Porter, the director of government affairs at the National Housing Law Project, said Trump's fight for time limits is far from over, noting that legislative and rule changes could make them a reality. 'It is clearly a stated goal of the administration to impose work requirements and time limits on rental assistance, even though it would be wildly unpopular,' Porter said. Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina says there's no evidence time limits would save HUD money. 'This doesn't help families who already are working multiple jobs to become self-sufficient,' Clyburn said at a June hearing. 'Instead, it creates chaos, financial uncertainty and pushes these families into more severe trade-offs.' Time limits could imperil Aaliyah Barnes' longtime dream of graduating college and becoming a nurse, finding a job and a home she can afford. The 28-year-old single mom in Louisville, Kentucky, this year joined Family Scholar House, which provides counseling and support for people pursuing an education — and, to Barnes' relief, housing. Her apartment is paid for by a Section 8 voucher. In March, Barnes moved in and her 3-year-old son, Aarmoni, finally got his own room, where she set up a learning wall. Previously, she had struggled to afford housing on her wages at a call center — and living with her mom, two sisters and their kids in a cramped house was an environment ridden with arguments. The stable future she's building could disappear, though, if she's forced out in two years when her schooling is expected to take three years. 'I'd be so close, but so far away,' Barnes said. Ho and Kramon write for the Associated Press.
New York Post
5 days ago
- Business
- New York Post
These families are most at risk of losing HUD housing due to Trump's proposed time limits
More than one million low-income households — most of them working families with children — who depend on the nation's public housing and Section 8 voucher programs could be at risk of losing their government-subsidized homes under the Trump administration's proposal to impose a two-year time limit on rental assistance. That's according to new research from New York University, obtained exclusively by The Associated Press, which suggests the time restriction could affect as many as 1.4 million households helped by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The NYU report, which was published Thursday, also raises concerns about the largely untested policy, as most of the limited number of local housing authorities that have voluntarily tried the idea eventually abandoned the pilots. Advertisement 7 The time restriction could affect as many as 1.4 million households helped by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. AP 'If currently assisted households are subject to a two-year limit, that would lead to enormous disruption and large administrative costs,' for public housing authorities, the report said, adding that once the limit was up, housing authorities 'would have to evict all of these households and identify new households to replace them.' Defining temporary assistance 7 Map of U.S. public housing agencies with time-limited programs. Local Housing Solutions Advertisement Amid a worsening national affordable housing and homelessness crisis, President Donald Trump's administration is determined to reshape HUD's expansive role providing stable housing for low-income people, which has been at the heart of its mission for generations. At a June congressional budget hearing, HUD Secretary Scott Turner argued reforms like time limits will fix waste and fraud in public housing and Section 8 voucher programs while motivating low-income families to work toward self-sufficiency. 'It's broken and deviated from its original purpose, which is to temporarily help Americans in need,' Turner said. 'HUD assistance is not supposed to be permanent.' Elderly and disabled people would be exempted, but there's little guidance from the agency on how time-limited housing assistance would be implemented — how it would be enforced, when the clock starts and how the exemptions would be defined. Advertisement 7 'It's broken and deviated from its original purpose, which is to temporarily help Americans in need,' Turner said. 'HUD assistance is not supposed to be permanent.' AP The NYU researchers dove deep into HUD's nationwide data over a 10-year period, analyzing nearly 4.9 million households that have been public housing and Section 8 voucher tenants. Of that, about 2.1 million could be affected by the time limits because they include at least one adult who is not elderly or disabled and about 70% of those households had already been living on those subsidies for two or more years. HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett pushed back on the NYU study. 'There is plenty of data that strongly supports time limits and shows that long-term government assistance without any incentive disincentivizes able-bodied Americans to work,' Lovett said in a statement. Working families most at risk Advertisement 7 About 2.1 million could be affected by the time limits because they include at least one adult who is not elderly or disabled. AP The time limits could displace more than a million children, as it would largely punish families who are working but still earning far below their area's median income. 'Housing assistance is especially impactful for children,' said Claudia Aiken, the director of new research partnerships for the Housing Solutions Lab at NYU's Furman Center who co-authored the study with Ellie Lochhead. Their health, education, employment and earnings potential can 'change in really meaningful ways if they have stable housing,' Aiken said. 7 The time limits could displace more than a million children, as it would largely punish families who are working but still earning far below their area's median income. AP Havalah Hopkins, a 33-year-old single mom, has been living in a public housing unit outside of Seattle since 2022, but now fears a two-year time limit would leave her and her teenage son homeless. The 14-year-old boy has autism but is considered high-functioning, so how HUD defines disabled and 'able-bodied' for the time limit could determine if their family will be affected by the restriction. Hopkins, who does catering work for a local chain restaurant, pays $450 a month in rent — 30% of her household income — for their two-bedroom apartment in Woodinville, Washington. Asked what she likes most about her home, Hopkins said: 'I like that I can afford it.' Few successful examples 7 'Housing assistance is especially impactful for children,' said Claudia Aiken, the director of new research partnerships for the Housing Solutions Lab. AP Advertisement Of the 17 housing authorities that tried time limits, 11 discontinued the trial. None tried two-year limits — the most common policy was a five-year limit with the option for an extra two and the limits usually applied to specific programs or referrals. Although there are over 3,000 housing authorities in the country, only 139 of them have ever been granted flexibility to consider testing a time limit while using federal funds for programs such as job training and financial counseling. 'Any conversation about time limits ends up being this really nuanced, hyper-local focus on what works for specific communities rather than this broad national-level implementation,' said Jim Crawford, director of the Moving to Work Collaborative which oversees that group of housing authorities. 7 Of the 17 housing authorities that tried time limits, 11 discontinued the trial. AP Advertisement Even with those supports, several housing authorities said rent was still too high and well-paying jobs were scarce, according to the study. Others said they didn't have enough capacity to provide enough supportive services to help households afford rent. Shawnté Spears of the Housing Authority of the County of San Mateo in California said the agency's five-year time limits have 'given folks motivation' to meet their goals in tandem with self-sufficiency programs funded by dollars Trump wants to cut. Time limits also give more households the chance to use vouchers, she said. But with the Bay Area's high rents, some tenants still have to spend more than half of their income on rent once their time is up or end up back on waitlists. 'I believe the program is very helpful in getting folks prepared but there lies this really, really significant rent burden here in our county,' said Spears. 'When folks do leave our time-limited program, they are facing an uphill battle.'
Newsweek
5 days ago
- Health
- Newsweek
Map Shows States With Higher Rates of Homelessness
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. America's homelessness crisis continues to grow despite the billions of dollars spent by federal and state authorities in recent years to address the problem, suggesting, experts say, that its root causes are not being addressed. According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a record 771,480 people experienced homelessness on a single night in the United States in 2024—18 percent more than a year earlier. It was the highest number ever recorded by the federal agency. The surge happened all across the American population, involving families with children, unaccompanied youth and adults living on their own, people with a history of homelessness and those without. Veterans were the only ones to experience an overall decline in homelessness last year. However, when researchers at the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) Housing Center examined the HUD figures, they discovered that homelessness rates were higher in states reporting the most acute housing shortages. America's Homelessness Hotspots Since 2020, the U.S. homeless population has increased by 33 percent at the country level. At the state level, the number of people experiencing homelessness has surged in 46 states since the pandemic, with Washington, D.C., Maryland, Wyoming, Mississippi, and Iowa being the only exceptions. "While homelessness has worsened almost everywhere since the pandemic, there are clear hotspots, particularly in the West, the Northeast, and Illinois," Sissi Li, senior Data and Analytics manager at the AEI Housing Center, told Newsweek. "When we look at homelessness per capita, the rates are the highest in Washington, DC, Hawaii, and New York, and lowest in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia." There is a difference between homelessness rates per capita and the actual numbers of people experiencing homelessness in any one state. Looking at the rate, New York and Hawaii are the states doing the worst in the entire nation, with a displacement rate of 8.1 percent each, indicating the point-in-time homeless count per 1,000 people. The lowest rates in the country, on the other hand, were reported in Mississippi (0.4 percent), Louisiana (0.8 percent), and Virginia (0.8 percent). But when looking at the sheer numbers of people experiencing homelessness in each state, California dominates the list with a total of 187,084, at a rate of 4.8 percent. New York followed with 158,019 residents experiencing homelessness on any one night in the state last year. Not Enough Homes The main factor driving up homelessness across the U.S. in recent years, Li said, is a lack of supply in the country's housing market. This is most acute in states experiencing higher rates of people without a roof over their heads, like California, New York, and Washington. "Our research tested 54 different variables—from unemployment to climate—and found one single indicator with the most explanatory power: the median home price to median income ratio," Li said. "As the median price-to-income ratio exceeds 5.0, the homelessness rate increases exponentially. Consider California and Texas, with median price-to-income ratios of 7.7 and 4.0 respectively. Yet California's rate of homelessness is over five times higher." The solution to ease America's homelessness crisis, Li said, is to release housing pressure by building more homes. "For decades, restrictive zoning and land use laws have created an artificial scarcity of homes. Across the country, we estimate a shortage of about 6 million homes. But this is fixable," Li said. "Our case study comparing Los Angeles and Houston found that Houston, with lower minimum lot sizes, less onerous regulations, and more effective policies addressing homelessness, resulted in a more abundant housing supply, which in turn led to a homelessness rate of 0.5 compared to 7.8 for Los Angeles—15 times lower."
5 days ago
- Business
Trump's proposed HUD time limit puts 1.4M of the nation's poorest renters risk
WOODINVILLE, Wash. -- Havalah Hopkins rarely says no to the chain restaurant catering gigs that send her out to Seattle-area events — from church potlucks to office lunches and graduation parties. The delivery fees and tips she earns on top of $18 an hour mean it's better than minimum-wage shift work, even though it's not consistent. It helps her afford the government-subsidized apartment she and her 14-year-old autistic son have lived in for three years, though it's still tough to make ends meet. 'It's a cycle of feeling defeated and depleted, no matter how much energy and effort and tenacity you have towards surviving,' Hopkins said. Still, the 33-year-old single mother is grateful she has stable housing — experts estimate just 1 in 4 low-income households eligible for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rental assistance get the benefits. And now Hopkins is at risk of losing her home, as federal officials move to restrict HUD policy. Amid a worsening national affordable housing and homelessness crisis, President Donald Trump's administration is determined to reshape HUD's expansive role providing stable housing for low-income people, which has been at the heart of its mission for generations. The proposed changes include a two-year limit on the federal government's signature rental assistance programs. At a June congressional budget hearing, HUD Secretary Scott Turner argued policies like time limits will fix waste and fraud in public housing and Section 8 voucher programs. 'It's broken and deviated from its original purpose, which is to temporarily help Americans in need,' Turner said. 'HUD assistance is not supposed to be permanent.' But the move to restrict such key subsidies would mark a significant retreat from the scope of HUD's work. Millions of tenants moved in with the promise of subsidized housing for as long as they were poor enough to remain qualified, so time limits would be a seismic shift that could destabilize the most vulnerable households, many unlikely to ever afford today's record-high rents. New research from New York University, obtained exclusively by The Associated Press, found that if families were cut off after two years, 1.4 million households could lose their vouchers and public housing subsidies — largely working families with children. This would lead housing authorities to evict many families, the report said. A broad time limit would cause 'substantial disruption and dislocation,' the it said, noting the policy is largely untested and most of the few housing authorities to voluntarily try it eventually abandoned the pilots. A break from HUD's long-held purpose of helping house the poor could also jeopardize its contracts with private landlords, who say they're already feeling the uncertainty as public housing authorities from Seattle to Atlanta announce they're scaling back in anticipation of federal funding cuts. Critics fear the restriction could derail those working towards self-sufficiency — defeating the goal time-limit supporters hope to achieve. HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett pushed back on the NYU study. 'There is plenty of data that strongly supports time limits and shows that long-term government assistance without any incentive disincentivizes able-bodied Americans to work,' Lovett said in a statement. She primarily cited statistics suggesting low employment among HUD-subsidized tenants. Hopkins said the policy would likely leave her and her son homeless in an economy that often feels indifferent to working poor people like her. 'A two-year time limit is ridiculous,' she said. 'It's so disrespectful. I think it's dehumanizing — the whole system.' Researchers from the Housing Solutions Lab at New York University's Furman Center analyzed HUD's data over a 10-year period and found about 70% of households who could be affected by a two-year limit had already been living on those subsidies for two or more years. That's based on 2024 estimates and doesn't include elderly and disabled people who wouldn't be subject to time limits. Exempted households make up about half of the roughly 4.9 million households getting rental assistance. In the first study to examine the proposed policy's possible impacts, the NYU researchers found time limits would largely punish families who are working but earning far below their area's median income, which would ultimately shift federal rental assistance away from households with kids. 'Housing assistance is especially impactful for children,' said Claudia Aiken, the study co-author and director of new research partnerships for the Housing Solutions Lab. Their health, education, employment and earnings potential can "change in really meaningful ways if they have stable housing,' she said. It would affect people like Hopkins, whose family was on a years-long waitlist in the expensive region where she grew up. In July 2022, she and her son moved into a two-bedroom public housing unit in Woodinville, Washington. She pays $450 a month in rent — 30% of her household income. A market-rate apartment in the area costs at least $2,000 more, according to the King County Housing Authority, which in June announced it would pause issuing some new vouchers. Hopkins knows she could never afford to live in her home state without rental assistance. It was a relief they could stay as long as they needed. She had been struggling to scrape together hundreds of dollars more a month for her previous trailer home. 'There's no words to put on feeling like your housing is secure,' Hopkins said. 'I feel like I was gasping for air and I'm finally able to breathe.' She credits the housing subsidy for her ability to finally leave an abusive marriage, and still dreams of more — perhaps her own catering business or working as a party decorator. 'We all can't be lawyers and doctors — and two years isn't enough to even become that,' Hopkins said. Since learning of Trump's proposal, Hopkins said she's been haunted by thoughts of shoving her possessions into a van with her son, upending the stability she built for him. The average household in HUD-subsidized housing stays about six years, studies show. HUD funds local public housing projects where nearly 1 million households live and the Section 8 vouchers that about 4 million households use to offset their private rentals. There's been little guidance from HUD on how time-limited housing assistance would be implemented — how it would be enforced, when the clock starts and how the exemptions would be defined. Both Democrats and Republicans have acknowledged the potential for time limits to help curb HUD's notorious waitlists. Hard-liners contend the threat of housing loss will push people to reach self-sufficiency; others see limits, when coupled with support and workforce incentives, as a means to motivate tenants to improve their lives. Yet there are strikingly few successful examples. NYU researchers identified just 17 public housing authorities that have tested time limits. None of the programs were designed for only two years and 11 abandoned the restriction — despite being able to use federal dollars for services to help people achieve self-sufficiency. Several agencies that dropped the limits said tenants still struggled to afford housing after their time was up. 'These policies are complex and difficult to monitor, enforce, and do well,' NYU's Aiken said. The city of Keene, New Hampshire, tried five-year time limits starting in 2001, but terminated the policy before fully enforcing it to avoid kicking out households that would still be 'rent burdened, or potentially homeless,' said Josh Meehan, executive director of Keene Housing. In California, Shawnté Spears of the Housing Authority of San Mateo County said the agency has kept its five-year time limit in tandem with educational programs she says have 'given folks motivation' to meet their goals. It also gives more people the chance to use vouchers, she said. NYU's Aiken acknowledged HUD's long waitlists make the current system 'a bit of a lottery," adding: "You could say that time limits are a way of increasing people's odds in that lottery.' HUD's Section 8 programs have long depended on hundreds of thousands of for-profit and nonprofit small business owners and property managers to accept tenant vouchers. Now, landlords fear a two-year limit could put their contracts for HUD-subsidized housing in limbo. Amid the uncertainty, Denise Muha, executive director of the National Leased Housing Association, said multiple landlord groups have voiced their concerns about HUD's next budget in a letter to congressional leaders. She said landlords generally agree two years is simply not enough time for most low-income tenants to change their fortunes. 'As a practical matter, you're going to increase your turnover, which is a cost," Muha said. 'Nobody wants to throw out their tenants without cause.' It's always been a significant lift for private landlords to work with HUD subsidies, which involve burdensome paperwork, heavy oversight and maintenance inspections. But the trade-off is a near guarantee of dependable longer-term renters and rental income. If that's compromised, some landlords say they'd pull back from the federal subsidy programs. Brad Suster, who owns 86 Chicago-area units funded by HUD, said accepting subsidies could become risky. 'Would we have the same reliability that we know has traditionally come for countless years from the federal government?' Suster said. 'That's something landlords and owners want to know is there." The diminishing housing stock available to low-income tenants has been a brewing problem for HUD. Between 2010 and 2020, some 50,000 housing providers left the voucher program, the agency has reported. It's up for debate whether lawmakers will buy into Trump's vision for HUD. This week the U.S. House appropriations committee is taking up HUD's 2026 budget, which so far makes no mention of time limits. HUD's Lovett noted the Senate's budget plans for the agency have not yet been released, and said the administration remains focused on future implementation of time limits. 'HUD will continue to engage with colleagues on the hill to ensure a seamless transition and enforcement of any new time limit,' Lovett said in a statement. Noëlle Porter, the director of government affairs at the National Housing Law Project, said Trump's fight for time limits is far from over, noting that legislative and rule changes could make them a reality. 'It is clearly a stated goal of the administration to impose work requirements and time limits on rental assistance, even though it would be wildly unpopular,' Porter said. Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina says there's no evidence time limits would save HUD money. 'This doesn't help families who already are working multiple jobs to become self-sufficient,' Clyburn said at a June hearing. 'Instead, it creates chaos, financial uncertainty and pushes these families into more severe trade-offs.' Time limits could imperil Aaliyah Barnes' longtime dream of graduating college and becoming a nurse, finding a job and a home she can afford. The 28-year-old single mom in Louisville, Kentucky, this year joined Family Scholar House, which provides counseling and support for people pursuing an education — and, to Barnes' relief, housing. Her apartment is paid for by a Section 8 voucher. In March, Barnes moved in and her 3-year-old son, Aarmoni, finally got his own room, where she set up a learning wall. Previously, she had struggled to afford housing on her wages at a call center — and living with her mom, two sisters and their kids in a cramped house was an environment ridden with arguments. The stable future she's building could disappear, though, if she's forced out in two years when her schooling is expected to take three years. 'I'd be so close, but so far away,' Barnes said. ___ Kramon reported from Atlanta.
