For at least the second time since President Donald Trump took office, rumors are swirling on social media about changes to a rental assistance program often referred to as Section 8.
Several videos on TikTok and other platforms posted the week of Aug. 18 say the program that helps low-income families with rent is changing and could include a two-year cap moving forward. While Trump’s presidential budget for the 2026 fiscal year proposes overhauling the federal agency that administers Section 8, it has not yet been enacted by Congress.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) spends much of its budget on helping low-income renters. Like other federal agencies, its spending has been on the chopping block as Trump aims to drastically scale back the size of the federal government.
As of now, however, no changes to Section 8 housing vouchers are set to go into effect. Here is what to know:
More: HUD cuts, layoffs will ‘devastate’ communities, worsen housing crisis, observers say
85437420007
What is Section 8?
Section 8 includes two rental assistance programs under HUD: project-based section 8 and the housing choice voucher. Among the public, people talking about Section 8 are usually talking about the housing choice voucher program.
The program “helps low-income families, elderly persons, veterans and disabled individuals afford housing in the private market. 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,” according to the HUD website. Local Public Housing Agencies help administer the program with funding from HUD.
The housing choice voucher program helps more than 2.3 million households rent private-market housing units, according to the Urban Institute.
What is Donald Trump proposing for Section 8?
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.
The “state rental assistance program” budget idea does propose a two-year limit on assistance for households, with the exception of the elderly and people with disabilities, to “incentivize self-sufficiency.”
“We have been taking inventory of every program and found HUD’s rental assistance to be full of waste, fraud and abuse,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said at a House budget hearing on June 10. “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.”
The details in the budget are recommendations from the president, but Congress ultimately decides how funding is allocated.
Is Section 8 likely to be eliminated or capped at two years?
Not this year.
Cutting off rental assistance after two years would put more than 3 million people, half of whom are children, at risk of eviction and homelessness, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
A July report from the center states that Congress does not appear to be considering the “state rental assistance program” this year.
Yonah Freemark a researcher at the Urban Institute, also believes the Trump administration’s proposal as it is laid out in the budget is unlikely to happen.
“One thing that’s worth emphasizing is that what is proposed is undermining the local agencies,” Freemark said in an interview. “Because right now HUD works directly with local housing authorities, but what the Trump administration would be proposing is that the states essentially control what the local housing authorities can spend money on.”
The National Low Income Housing Coalition also said appropriations bill drafts for Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) that have come from the House and the Senate have not included some of the most drastic proposals from the president’s budget. However, the coalition pointed out that the House budget includes a proposal that could allow local authorities to enact time limits. It also said the bills would not provide enough funding to keep up with raising rents and renew all vouchers.
The Center on Budget and Policy priorities estimates 411,000 fewer people would be served by the program under the House commitee bill and the Senate version would serve 243,300 fewer people.
Congress is on summer break until Sept. 2 and has until the Sept. 30 government funding deadline to finalize and pass a funding bill.
Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@gannett.com. Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @kinseycrowley.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump’s Section 8 proposal: How he wants to change housing vouchers
