LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Republican budget bill adds work requirements to Medicaid. Now the Trump administration wants to do something similar for housing subsidies. NPR has learned it plans to propose work requirements for rental assistance, along with a time limit on how long people can get it. Critics say that's a bad idea in the middle of a housing crisis, but a handful of places around the country already impose a cutoff date for federal help with rent. NPR's Jennifer Ludden visited one to see how it works.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: In Bridgeville, Delaware, Becca Morris (ph) welcomes me into her compact two-bedroom house.
BECCA MORRIS: Come on in. How are you?
LUDDEN: In the living room, blue lights dance on the ceiling from two large aquariums. There are photos of her 13-year-old son on the fridge and plants everywhere.
MORRIS: I'm a little plant crazy. I live in, like, a jungle.
LUDDEN: We settle on the couch next to her cat, and Morris explains she became a single mom at 19. Her son's father was in and out of rehab and prison.
MORRIS: And I was jumping from, like, house to house, friends' houses, family's houses.
LUDDEN: When she applied for a housing subsidy, she was not fazed that it came with a major condition. That money would end after seven years, max.
MORRIS: I feel like this was, like, a good pressure in a way, you know, to, like, push me to do better, to, like, you know, go back to school to do what I need to do.
LUDDEN: That good pressure included a requirement to work, plus regular meetings to make sure she was on track financially. But also - and this is key - the Delaware State Housing Authority helped Morris save money. For most people with subsidies, if their income goes up, so does their rent, but not with the Delaware program. The extra money people like Morris would have paid toward rent goes into an interest-bearing savings account for when they leave. Morris says she never could have done that on her own.
MORRIS: I would have been paying like 1,000 or more in rent all this time. I would have been literally paycheck to paycheck this entire time. How would I have saved any money without having to work, like, seven days a week, 24 hours?
LUDDEN: And that seven-year cutoff? Morris actually got extra time during the COVID pandemic and got a break on rent during more than a year of nursing school. Now, after nine years living here, she and her son are getting ready to move out.
MORRIS: Yes. The stars aligned, the grace of God, because honestly, everything was, like, perfect. Timing, everything worked out perfectly.
LUDDEN: So if this sort of program can work for people like Morris, why isn't it everywhere? Well, in big part, because most public housing authorities don't even have the power to impose time limits or work requirements. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is writing a rule to expand that power, perhaps as soon as this fall, according to an internal document seen by NPR. When asked about this, HUD had no comment. Howard Husock with the conservative American Enterprise Institute thinks time limits are a good move.
HOWARD HUSOCK: Once you get a housing subsidy, it's for life. So as a result of that, there are extremely long waiting lists.
LUDDEN: Yearslong waits. And only a quarter of people who qualify for subsidized housing are able to get it. Once they do, Husock says, more than half stay put for over a decade.
HUSOCK: The system is kind of all backed up, and so that's the logic of a time limit - not to punish people but to encourage turnover, encourage open mobility and to make way for people who are in need who are not being served.
LUDDEN: But time limits have not worked out well everywhere. In Washington state, the Tacoma Housing Authority imposed a five-year maximum back in 2013. Like in Delaware, they exempted those elderly or disabled. But for working-age people, even with decent jobs, skyrocketing rents were too much.
APRIL BLACK: People are working. They're working really hard. They're just not able to get ahead because housing is so expensive compared to what they're being paid.
LUDDEN: That's April Black, head of Tacoma's Housing Authority. She says it was impossible for people to save money. And as the five-year deadlines came due, there was so much heartburn about cutting people off, they decided to end the program in 2022.
BLACK: We're a housing authority. We're here to house people, and there was no way that we were going to exit people from a program knowing that they would become homeless.
LUDDEN: At Delaware State Housing Authority, director Matthew Heckles agrees the severe lack of affordable housing complicates the case for time limits. But given the success he's seen, he still thinks it makes sense to try and scale them nationally.
MATTHEW HECKLES: I think it comes with a big caveat, though. The reason that people are successful is not because there's a time limit.
LUDDEN: Sure, it adds urgency, but he says what really makes the difference are the savings accounts - people save about $7,000 on average - and all the other extra support, like help with budgeting, finding childcare or health insurance. And once, when a lot of tenants worked at the same place...
HUSOCK: We ran a bus, essentially, from point A to point B so people could get to work.
LUDDEN: He says, after moving on, many still need other kinds of low-income housing, but others do make it in the private market. And some have even been able to buy their own place, like Becca Morris, the single mom who became a nurse.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRAIN HORN SOUNDING)
LUDDEN: Not far from the train tracks in a nearby town, she's parked in the muddy backyard of a two-story house under construction.
MORRIS: Well, here we are, my new home. Isn't this so exciting? So, so much bigger of a house going on.
LUDDEN: Morris looked for two years, thinking older homes would be cheaper, but kept getting outbid. Then she found this place. We walk by wood stud walls as she points out the rooms.
MORRIS: I cannot wait to do laundry in my own house, and that sounds crazy, but I'm super thrilled about that.
LUDDEN: She says it all feels overwhelming.
MORRIS: Come moving in is when it'll really, like, hit me. Like, wow. I did this. This is me and my son. Like, I - we're here, like, finally.
LUDDEN: Morris knows it will be tight. She'll have to work more to pay the mortgage, but it will be theirs.
Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Harrington, Delaware.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
