Americans are still fighting tooth and nail to be able to afford the most basic necessities to live, such as housing suitable to raise a family in, all the while illegal aliens are living in homes that they are paying for with their hard-earned tax dollars. However, President Donald Trump and his administration are righting this egregious wrong.
A recent investigation conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Homeland Security revealed that there are currently major eligibility errors within HUD housing programs. HUD discovered 6,000 confirmed ineligible tenants, along with another 200,000 more tenants who have not been put through eligibility verification.
HUD also identified 25,000 dead tenants still living in taxpayer-funded housing units. Sort of hard to be a living tenant when you’re dead, so this means someone, likely illegal aliens, have purchased the identities of these folks in order to take advantage of the compassion of the United States. What is known for sure is that these are not likely to be unoccupied units.
According to a report from The Foundation of Government Accountability, (FGA) shared that Section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act places limits on HUD housing assistance to all U.S. citizens and eligible non-citizens. Along with that, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 prohibits public welfare benefits from being given to illegal migrants.
It also requires HUD housing programs to verify an individual’s immigration status during the application process, which is almost completely instantaneous thanks to the SAVE program. For some reason, likely political, HUD rules have been dipping and dodging the application of this verification until now. Rather than using the SAVE program, HUD developed two workarounds.
The first one that was developed is the “do not contend” provision, which allows a tenant to declare they do not contend their non-citizen status and receives prorated assistance anyway. This is a clear violation of federal law. The second is an age exemption that was created a decade and a half ago while former President Barack Obama was in office.
The current exemption allows anyone who is 62 or older to bypass verification. Again, this has no basis in federal law. In other words, the federal government has been incentivizing individuals to enter the U.S. illegally by providing them with taxpayer-subsidized housing and other welfare benefits while not requiring them to go through the verification process.
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A report from RealClear Politics stated that hundreds of thousands of tenants, including those who are able-bodied and can work, have spent decades now in federally subsidized units that still need to be verified. Not only does this negatively impact taxpayers, but also low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled, who have all been on lengthy waiting lists to receive help that illegal aliens are getting.
However, President Donald Trump is taking action to bring this practice to an end. In February 2026, HUD published a proposed rule to fully implement the SAVE eligibility verification system by tossing out the “do not contend” option and changing the prorated assistance program from a permanent status to a temporary one with a defined deadline.
This removes the age exemption and requires verification for every applicant and tenant. Thanks to the work of President Trump and HUD Secretary Scott Turner, every housing authority in the U.S. must now verify a person’s eligibility as the law always intended. For the very first time, the system Congress created and mandated will now be put to use, ensuring that only those qualified receive help from tax dollars.