In yet more good news showing that some spending sanity might finally be coming to the out-of-control American government spending apparatus, it has been revealed that the Trump Administration is making moves to limit the Section 8 program. Under the new rules, able-bodied adults will be kicked off the program after they spend two years on it.
As background, Section 8 housing is a rental assistance program that is run by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the benefit of impoverished members of the public who need help affording rental housing. While Section 8 housing is technically project-based housing, most generally refer to the housing choice voucher when they say “Section 8,” a voucher that helps pay for rental homes.
According to the HUD website, the housing choice voucher program “helps low-income families, elderly persons, veterans and disabled individuals afford housing in the private market.” So, it is not project-based, like the technical Section 8 program, but helps recipients pay for rental homes on the private market.
Continuing, the HUD description notes that the program tends to provide only a partial subsidy for the homes rented, noting, “Program participants can choose any eligible housing unit, including single-family homes, townhouses, and apartments, with rent partially covered by a subsidy paid directly to the landlord.”
The funds and program are administered by Local Public Housing Agencies. And that is a large-scale job. Apparently, the housing choice voucher program is so massive that the housing choice voucher program helps more than 2.3 million households rent private-market housing units.
That is what the Trump Administration is attempting to rein in with funding cuts that are meant to incentivize Americans to pay for their own housing. Accordingly, the proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 requests a massive, 51% cut in gross discretionary funding from HUD.
The cuts would impact both Section 8 and the housing choice voucher program, along with other HUD programs. Instead of the present system, HUD would provide states with block funding of grants meant to help them administer and pay for their own rental assistance programs for the impoverished.
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The president’s fiscal year 2026 budget request proposes a 51% cut in gross discretionary funding from HUD, including eliminating both parts of Section 8 and several other HUD programs. HUD would instead give block grant funding to states to administer their own rental assistance programs, under the president’s plan.
Further, the new “state rental assistance program” budget effects the change that many online are excited about: under the changed program, households, with the exception of the elderly and disabled, are limited to spending two years on rental assistance. The point of that, the budget states, is to “incentivize self-sufficiency.”
HUD Secretary Scott Turner, speaking on the matter during a House budget hearing on June 10, said, “We have been taking inventory of every program and found HUD’s rental assistance to be full of waste, fraud and abuse. It’s broken and deviated from its original purpose, which is to temporarily help Americans in need. HUD assistance is not supposed to be permanent. It should be a trampoline, not a hammock and not a resting place.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video