Families, kids most at risk of losing HUD housing with Trump’s proposed time limits

WOODINVILLE, Wash. (AP) — More than 1 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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

Kramon reported from Atlanta.

Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Havalah Hopkins, a single mother who lives in government-subsidized housing with her teenage son, poses for a portrait outside her apartment Thursday, July 10, 2025, in Woodinville, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

A notice from King County Housing Authority is clipped to the fridge at the apartment of Havalah Hopkins, a single mother who lives in government-subsidized housing with her teenage son, Thursday, July 10, 2025, in Woodinville, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Havalah Hopkins, a single mother who lives in government-subsidized housing with her teenage son, pets her dog, Benny, in her bedroom Monday, July 14, 2025, in Woodinville, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Havalah Hopkins, a single mother who lives in government-subsidized housing with her teenage son, talks with a cashier as she buys some balloons for her son's birthday at a Dollar Tree, Thursday, July 10, 2025, in Woodinville, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Havalah Hopkins, a single mother who lives in government-subsidized housing with her teenage son, talks with her son as she blows up balloon displays for his birthday, Thursday, July 10, 2025, at their apartment in Woodinville, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting Thursday to discuss Iran's deadly protests at the request of the United States, even as President Donald Trump left unclear what actions he would take against the Islamic state.

Tehran appeared to make conciliatory statements in an effort to defuse the situation after Trump threatened to take action to stop further killing of protesters, including the execution of anyone detained in Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests.

Iran’s crackdown on the demonstrations has killed at least 2,615, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported. The death toll exceeds any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iran closed its airspace to commercial flights for hours without explanation early Thursday and some personnel at a key U.S. military base in Qatar were advised to evacuate. The U.S. Embassy in Kuwait also ordered its personnel to “temporary halt” travel to the multiple military bases in the small Gulf Arab country.

Iran previously closed its airspace during the 12-day war against Israel in June.

Here is the latest:

“We are against military intervention in Iran,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told journalists in Istanbul on Thursday. “Iran must address its own internal problems… They must address their problems with the region and in global terms through diplomacy so that certain structural problems that cause economic problems can be addressed.”

Ankara and Tehran enjoy warm relations despite often holding divergent interests in the region.

Fidan said the unrest in Iran was rooted in economic conditions caused by sanctions, rather than ideological opposition to the government.

Iranians have been largely absent from an annual pilgrimage to Baghdad, Iraq, to commemorate the death of Imam Musa al-Kadhim, one of the twelve Shiite imams.

Many Iranian pilgrims typically make the journey every year for the annual religious rituals.

Streets across Baghdad were crowded with pilgrims Thursday. Most had arrived on foot from central and southern provinces of Iraq, heading toward the shrine of Imam al-Kadhim in the Kadhimiya district in northern Baghdad,

Adel Zaidan, who owns a hotel near the shrine, said the number of Iranian visitors this year compared to previous years was very small. Other residents agreed.

“This visit is different from previous ones. It lacks the large numbers of Iranian pilgrims, especially in terms of providing food and accommodation,” said Haider Al-Obaidi.

Europe’s largest airline group said Thursday it would halt night flights to and from Tel Aviv and Jordan's capital Amman for five days, citing security concerns as fears grow that unrest in Iran could spiral into wider regional violence.

Lufthansa — which operates Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings — said flights would run only during daytime hours from Thursday through Monday “due to the current situation in the Middle East.” It said the change would ensure its staff — which includes unionized cabin crews and pilots -- would not be required to stay overnight in the region.

The airline group also said its planes would bypass Iranian and Iraqi airspace, key corridors for air travel between the Middle East and Asia.

Iran closed its airspace to commercial flights for several hours early Thursday without explanation.

A spokesperson for Israel’s Airport Authority, which oversees Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, said the airport was operating as usual.

Iranian state media has denied claims that a young man arrested during Iran’s recent protests was condemned to death. The statement from Iran’s judicial authorities on Thursday contradicted what it said were “opposition media abroad” which claimed the young man had been quickly sentenced to death during a violent crackdown on anti-government protests in the country.

State television didn’t immediately give any details beyond his name, Erfan Soltani. Iranian judicial authorities said Soltani was being held in a detention facility outside of the capital. Alongside other protesters, he has been accused of “propaganda activities against the regime,” state media said.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Thursday that his government was “appalled by the escalation of violence and repression” in Iran.

“We condemn the brutal crackdown being carried out by Iran’s security forces, including the killing of protesters,” Peters posted on X.

“Iranians have the right to peaceful protest, freedom of expression, and access to information – and that right is currently being brutally repressed,” he said.

Peters said his government had expressed serious concerns to the Iranian Embassy in Wellington.

A demonstrator lights a cigarette with a burning poster depicting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a rally in support of Iran's anti-government protests, in Holon, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Protesters participate in a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Protesters participate in a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)