Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing data showed that of 345 adults and families placed through the Large Vehicle Refuge Permit Program between November 2025 and September 2026, 115, one third, were housed outside San Francisco city limits. About 80 percent of placements used federally funded rapid-rehousing vouchers that taper off over two years, and the share of all such voucher holders housed outside the city rose from 22 percent in 2021 to 58 percent this year. About 500 vehicles housed people when Mayor Daniel Lurie announced the two-hour parking limit in July 2025; the department said placements are generally within about 50 miles.
The two-hour limit on vehicles over 7 feet tall or 22 feet long has been enforced since November 2025, with six-month temporary permits offered to RV residents who agreed to give up their vehicles.
HUD's Office of Inspector General announced two audits projecting more than $2.7 billion in improper payments annually across HUD's two largest rental assistance programs. The OIG attributed $1.291 billion to the Multifamily Project-Based Rental Assistance program, citing incorrect rent calculations, missing eligibility documentation, and inadequate oversight by performance-based contract administrators, and $1.430 billion to the Public and Indian Housing Tenant-Based Rental Assistance program (Housing Choice Vouchers), citing inaccurate income calculations, outdated documentation, improper utility allowance determinations, and insufficient HUD monitoring of public housing agencies.
The OIG said both programs have gone nine consecutive years without HUD producing the improper payment estimates required under the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019.
Wichita's housing department delivered letters Wednesday telling residents of the encampment north of Chapin Park, known as "Narnia" or "Tent City," that they lose access to their campsites after October 12, with clearing to begin October 13. City spokesperson Tyler Schiffelbein said more than 80 people lived there per August data, 20 to 25 remain, 18 residents have been housed since January and 16 of those remaining hold housing vouchers while waiting for a rental unit. KSN reported Councilman Joseph Shepard said he did not believe the city's resources could meet demand at the site.
United Way of the Plains put the camp's population at about 100 in KSN's September 25 report, and KSN reported city data showing police responded to the area 69 times in three years.
A presentation to Oceanside's City Council detailed how the city's Housing and Neighborhood Services department spent its $42.6 million 2025-26 budget, with $35 million — 82% — going to federally funded Section 8 rental assistance. Of 190 people served at the 75-bed Oceanside Navigation Center last fiscal year, 10% exited to permanent housing and a little more than 12% to temporary housing; a city spokesperson said that figure "doesn't reflect the full range of positive outcomes." The city's 2026 point-in-time count found 569 people experiencing homelessness, with the unsheltered count up nearly 14% from last year.
Measure X, a half-cent sales tax Oceanside voters passed in 2024, provides $1.5 million to the Navigation Center and $330,000 to the city's safe parking program.
The DHS public-charge rule took effect Friday, September 18, with no publicly reported court order blocking it as of publication. Immigration officers may now weigh applicants' use of means-tested benefits — including federal housing assistance, SNAP, WIC and Medicaid — in green-card adjudications for applications filed on or after that date. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, sued in federal court in Manhattan on September 14 to block the rule.
The states' complaint says that for benefits received before September 18, 2026, officers will only consider public cash assistance for income maintenance.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and Los Angeles mayoral challenger Nithya Raman presented homelessness platforms at a forum hosted by the nonprofit Hope the Mission and KTLA5. Raman cited a Los Angeles Times report that 40% of Inside Safe participants returned to the streets and proposed short-term rental vouchers she said have a 75% effectiveness rate at moving people to permanent housing or self-sustainability; Hilton called California's homelessness situation a "scandal."
The 2026 Greater L.A. Homeless Count estimated 45,000 unhoused people in the city of Los Angeles, a 3.4% increase after two years of decreases.
Stateline · on public-charge rules counting housing assistance against immigration applicants
Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia, and separately a coalition of six cities and counties including New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, King County, and Santa Clara County, filed lawsuits September 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against DHS and USCIS over rules letting immigration officers count enrollment in public benefits, including housing assistance, as a "public charge" ground for inadmissibility. The rules rescind a 2022 policy that excluded non-cash benefits and take effect Friday, September 18. The city coalition's suit argues roughly 1.3 million people, including 600,000 children, could lose care and coverage in those jurisdictions.
Under the 2022 policy now rescinded, non-cash benefits such as housing assistance were excluded from public-charge consideration.
Detroit officials identified at least 101 properties damaged by the September 3 EF2 tornado, the first tornado to strike the city since 1997, with nine structures potentially requiring emergency demolition. Damage assessments so far cover 55 businesses, 24 single-family homes, 21 multi-family properties and one manufactured home on the city's east side. The city's Department of Human, Homeless and Family Services coordinated emergency Housing Choice Voucher assistance for two households that lost their homes entirely and arranged board-up and stabilization for five households.
Mayor Mary Sheffield signed a local state-of-emergency order September 4, which authorizes discussions with state and federal officials about possible financial assistance.
Mayor Daniel Lurie announced a $30 million package of tenant-protection reforms Thursday, citing a "rent emergency" as Apartment List data showed San Francisco rents up 25.6% in the past year. The package earmarks $3 million to expand full-scope eviction counsel to 400 households and directs $27 million through the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to about 650 extremely low-income households as federal Emergency Housing Vouchers expire. Other elements include a $1 million tenant-education campaign, a 25% increase in Ellis Act relocation payouts, and legislation from Supervisor Jackie Fielder barring nonpayment evictions for tenants less than one month behind.
The federal Emergency Housing Voucher program, which has supported more than 900 people in San Francisco since the pandemic, is set to expire at the end of 2026, four years earlier than originally envisioned.
Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) introduced H.R. 10168, the Veterans Housing Opportunity Act, which would create a five-year HUD-VASH National Pool Pilot Program letting HUD identify public housing agencies with chronically underused HUD-VASH vouchers and reallocate them to communities with greater veteran homelessness needs. The bill was introduced August 27 and referred to the House Financial Services Committee.
HUD-VASH pairs Housing Choice Voucher rental assistance with VA case management; the VA reported more than 95,000 formerly homeless veterans were housed through the program as of March 2026.
Home Forward opened applications September 9 for project-based waitlists at five subsidized affordable properties: Meadowlark Place, Dahlke Manor, Hollywood East, Medallion Apartments, and Gresham Civic Station. The application window runs through 11:59 p.m. September 21, and eligible households must earn less than 50% of area median income. The release did not specify how many units or waitlist slots will be filled.
Home Forward is planning around an estimated $31 million budget shortfall, per Willamette Week's September 2 reporting.
Capital & Main via Times of San Diego · on a California bill barring housing-authority work requirements and time limits
The California Legislature passed and sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom a bill, carried by Assemblymember Matt Haney and sponsored by the National Housing Law Project, that forbids California housing authorities from imposing work requirements or time limits on low-income tenants receiving federal rental assistance; the bill responds to HUD's proposed rule permitting such conditions. Newsom has until September 30 to sign or veto it and has not indicated his position; if he signs, California would become the first state with a law expressly forbidding its housing agencies from imposing the requirements. More than 900,000 Californians rely on federal housing assistance.
Nineteen states plus the District of Columbia wrote to HUD Secretary Scott Turner in May opposing the proposed work-requirements and term-limits rule, whose comment period closed May 1.
Next City reported that an Ithaca, N.Y. landlord argued source-of-income discrimination laws force landlords to consent to government inspections in violation of the Fourth Amendment, that courts have twice agreed, and that the argument has since appeared in a dozen cases across the country. Per University at Buffalo law professor Heather Abraham, 24 states and 150 counties or municipalities have source-of-income discrimination laws, and 60% of voucher holders live in areas covered by them.
Home Forward said it plans to raise the share of monthly income most of its tenants and voucher holders pay toward rent — a tenant now paying 28% of income would pay 31% — to help close an estimated $31 million budget gap, with the change taking effect no earlier than February 1, 2027. Spokesman Rylee Ahnen said about 12,356 households would be affected, including Housing Choice and project-based voucher holders, and the agency expects the increases to reduce the deficit by $6 million. Tenants will get 90 days' notice, and the increases coincide with the end of a one-year rent-increase moratorium Home Forward imposed on landlords who accept Section 8 vouchers.
In July, Home Forward said its budget shortfall was $31 million — double the figure the agency had described earlier in the year, an error interim director Michael Buonocore attributed to previous leadership.
Federal Register · on loosened MTW safe harbors on work requirements, term limits, and spending
HUD published a revised Operations Notice for the Moving to Work expansion, changing the "safe harbor" limits that let expansion agencies adopt policies without prior HUD approval: the maximum work requirement per individual rises to 40 hours per week, the minimum term of assistance under term limits drops to two years, and the safe harbor restricting Local Non-Traditional activity spending to 10% of the Housing Assistance Payment budget is deleted. The revisions apply to MTW expansion agencies, and comments are due November 2.
This is HUD's fifth issuance affecting public housing or Moving to Work agencies in six business days, following PIH notices 2026-21, 2026-22, and 2026-23 and the August 28 admission-and-occupancy collection notice.
Federal Register · on the FY 2027 Fair Market Rents
HUD published the FY 2027 Fair Market Rents, which set voucher payment-standard baselines and take effect October 1; comments are due the same day. The notice implements a methodology change replacing the discontinued CPI housing fuels and utilities index with a weighted composite of four utility components — electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, and water/sewer/trash — in the gross-rent inflation factors. The notice does not state a national average percentage change.
PHAs requesting reevaluation of their area's FY 2027 FMRs must supply supporting data to HUD by January 8, 2027.
Mississippi Clarion Ledger · on the Homeward JXN rental assistance program in Jackson, Mississippi
The Jackson City Council voted 5-1 on August 25 to approve a two-year, $220,000 agreement naming the Mississippi Housing Partnership as third-party administrator of a tenant-based rental assistance program, the final administrative step before the city's Homeward JXN initiative launches in September. Council documents show about $2.04 million of Jackson's $2.2 million HOME-ARP allocation will cover rent and utility deposits for an estimated 200 people for up to 12 months, with monthly rent projected to average $850. Planning and Development Director Angela Brown said the program is about closing encampments and moving people into stable housing.
The city will hold a community event September 1 to provide an update on Homeward JXN.
NAHRO · on PIH Notice 2026-22 on Housing Choice Voucher reserve offsets
HUD published Notice PIH 2026-22, which describes the implementation of an offset of funding for the original Moving to Work agencies, the process by which those agencies may appeal, and the criteria HUD will use in evaluating appeals. Under the notice, HUD may offset Housing Choice Voucher reserves until an initial MTW agency holds a reserve balance equal to four months of operating expenses; offset appeals are due by 5 p.m. ET on October 19, 2026.
HUD rescinded payment standard flexibilities for the Emergency Housing Voucher and Stability Voucher programs the prior week, per an August 19 NLIHC report.
The Los Angeles Times examined the time-limited rental subsidy program Councilmember Nithya Raman has championed in the mayor's race: a city consultant set a goal of 600 households moved into leases by July 1, but housing officials reported only three households had moved in by that date, rising to 54 by August 13. Raman has called for the vouchers, at a city-estimated cost of $30,000, as an alternative to Mayor Karen Bass's Inside Safe program, which costs about $82,000 per person per year according to city reports. LAHSA reported last month that the city's unsheltered population rose 7.9% after two consecutive years of decreases.
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson split the Housing and Homelessness Committee in two this month and removed Raman as chair effective September 1.
HUD's Office of Public and Indian Housing issued Notice PIH 2026-20 on August 10, removing language that had allowed public housing agencies to set Emergency Housing Voucher and Stability Voucher payment standards up to 120% of Fair Market Rent without HUD approval. Agencies must now follow the standard 90-110% range, with anything above 110% requiring formal HUD approval, and must comply within 60 days for new Stability Voucher admissions and for current EHV and SV families moving to a new unit.
The Emergency Housing Voucher program's $5 billion appropriation is projected to be depleted by the end of 2026, with almost 42,000 households still relying on it.
San Diego County opened applications for a shallow rental subsidy program that will give 195 qualifying adults $500 a month for 18 months, first come, first served. Applicants must be at least 60, head of household, extremely low income, spending at least half their income on rent, and unable to access other rental assistance.
Seniors make up about one third of the county's unsheltered population, according to the January point-in-time count.
Landlords in two New York voucher-discrimination cases are arguing that New York City's source-of-income law should be struck down, extending a March ruling by an upstate state Supreme Court justice that held requiring apartment inspections for Section 8 vouchers constituted an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment. The defenses seek to extend that ruling to the city-funded CityFHEPS program, and Housing Works attorney Armen Merjian said similar challenges are underway in California, Virginia and Missouri.
New York's Court of Appeals is scheduled to review the upstate ruling, People v. Commons West, in October.
The Bipartisan Policy Center published an analysis of the comment record on HUD's proposed rule letting public housing agencies and assisted-housing owners opt into work requirements and time limits, reporting that the public submitted nearly 2,000 comments. The brief said the rule could affect a share of the more than 4.3 million households served by HUD's Housing Choice Voucher, public housing, and PBRA programs, and that an estimated 20 Moving to Work agencies have already established some form of work requirement.
The proposed rule published March 2, 2026, closed comments May 1, and HUD has said it plans a final rule this fall.