NHLP Celebrates Bill Passing State Senate: Protect California Tenants and Housing Providers from HUD Housing Assistance Cuts

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—The National Housing Law Project (NHLP) today celebrated the California Senate’s passage of a bill aimed at protecting federally-assisted tenants from changes to federal housing policy that could end critical assistance for thousands of families. 

AB 2128, authored by Assembly Member Matt Haney and sponsored by NHLP, will proactively shield Californians from a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposal to kick families out of their homes if they exceed strict time limits or cannot meet harsh work requirements. 

If adopted, HUD’s proposal would put millions of people at risk of losing their homes, both by allowing PHAs to force “work eligible” adults to work up to 40 hours a week and kicking families out of their homes in as little as two years. 

“The federal government wants to make it easier to kick people out of their homes. California isn’t going to go along with that,” said California Assemblymember Matt Haney (LD-17), the bill’s author. “Work requirements and arbitrary time limits don’t make people more self-sufficient, they make people homeless. AB 2128 protects families, seniors, and people with disabilities from policies that punish them for being poor and put their housing at risk. In the middle of a housing crisis, our job should be to keep people housed, not find new reasons to take their housing away.”

Policies that take away housing can worsen self-sufficiency, employment prospects, and economic mobility, according to the Congressional Research Service and HUD itself. Research uniformly shows that harsh and inflexible work requirements and time limits in public benefits programs lead to economic precarity without a corresponding increase in employment,  causing families to lose access to desperately needed assistance. 

These policies exacerbate disparities by harming tenants who struggle to resolve administrative errors, such as people with disabilities, elderly people, or people whose first language isn’t English. 

Further, by HUD’s own estimates, imposing such policies will require housing providers to spend millions of dollars to implement them. HUD’s proposal includes no additional funding for these implementation costs, in California or otherwise, inherently guaranteeing less resources for housing poor and working people.

“As HUD continues to dismantle our federal housing programs and diminish the few tenant protections we still have, it is urgent we pass this bill for Californians. HUD’s proposal is based on dangerous stereotypes and ignores the fact that most participants in federal housing programs who can work, do in fact work. It punishes people just trying to make ends meet. Our bill will protect California families at risk of losing their homes during a rampant affordability crisis,” said National Housing Law Project Staff Attorney Lila Gitesatani.

Following the Senate vote, the bill is now headed back to the California Assembly for a final vote, and then to Governor Newsom’s desk for signing. 

Read the full text of the bill here.