On October 19, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reopened the report used in the agency’s tenant information system to reverify the immigration status of certain tenants.

HUD first directed Multifamily Housing providers in May to reverify tenant status using the new report through the EIV system, which the agency used to match sensitive tenant data with data from the Department of Homeland Security. However, the report published by HUD inadvertently revealed tenant information to housing staff from outside organizations, resulting in a breach of privacy that led HUD to temporarily pull down the report.

Report Available Again

As of October 19, the report is available for use again, and HUD has directed housing providers to submit the data within 60 days. HUD Section 202 PRAC properties are not required to take any action, but Section 202/8s are directed to follow HUD instructions for the reverification of tenants flagged for discrepancies. If no tenants at a property are flagged for discrepancies, no action is needed.

If a tenant is flagged, the housing provider should follow the regular steps for immigration eligibility verification, despite the usual HUD policy that eligibility based on immigration status should not be reverified, and tenants were not notified of the use of EIV for this purpose.

The data match, which has come under legal scrutiny due to the confidential nature of HUD-assisted tenant information shared outside of HUD without explicit tenant consent, identified discrepancies in the data between HUD tenants and DHS’s records of immigration status.

Data Discrepancies

However, housing providers have reported to LeadingAge that the discrepancies seem to be a result of data input errors or differences rather than related to actual immigration status; in fact, many of the tenants that LeadingAge members report were flagged in EIV-SAVE data were citizens. Instructions and additional information are available from HUD’s Multifamily Housing office.

LeadingAge will continue to work with our membership to support them in following HUD’s directive while also ensuring proper tenant data protections and housing access.