America's Talking - EXCLUSIVE: HUD terminates Biden-era guidance, claiming it unfairly favors Afghans

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

(The Center Square) – Amid a national housing crisis, the Biden administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development produced guidelines encouraging property owners to forgo some fair housing practices to favor Afghan refugees, the Trump administration argues in a new directive terminating previous guidelines. The Center Square obtained a HUD directive from the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity rescinding the guidance document, “Operation Allies Welcome: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Fair Housing Issues” and withdrawing from a FHEO guidance document “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Renting to Refugees and Eligible Newcomers,” which the agency claims violates the Fair Housing Act. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxRead more:  https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_c816c337-c3b2-4d34-b5f2-a12566d305a6.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McCaleb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. The Trump administration is changing Biden-era policies that provide American taxpayer-funded benefits to Afghani nationals who came to the U.S. after the deadly withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021. The Center Square broke the news about the policy shifts, which come as an Afghani refugee stance accused of shooting two National Guard troops near the White House just before Thanksgiving. Joining me to discuss this is the journalist who broke the story this week, the Center Square's White House correspondent, Sarah Roderick Fitch.

Sarah, the Biden White House took heavy criticism over the deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops for Afghanistan, and then after an Inspector General's report showed that many of the approximately 200,000 Afghani refugees allowed in the country were unvetted. Let's start with a policy shift she wrote about this week. What are they? This one comes from HUD, and actually this one is involving a few. different sort of benefits that were given to the people who came over under a lot of people came under Operations Allies Welcome, which was one of the programs that was put in place after the pullout of American forces in 2021. And it was basically focusing, so I was focusing on housing. And among those, they were, there was a, there was a, there was a, sort of a fact

sheet a guidance that was released from the Biden administration under HUD that basically was geared towards property managers and landlords and such or property owners that just encourage them to say, hey, you can forego credit checks for these individuals, sort of helping them, giving them a little bit of a leg up on renting places, because as you know, that's that's very customary to do when renting a place. And one of the reasons is is because there was basically going to be funding there

for them to get housing assistance. So that was in there. And then also, one of the other things that was rescinded was an high occupancy guidance.

Now, there isn't actually set high occupancy guidance. It's generally, they say the HUDs is like two people per one bedroom, essentially. And that's more of a local guidance.

However, that is sort of like the model that's like the standard model so what they did was say hey you can get rid of this um for uh sort of family reasons so just ignore this um now it didn't specify in they're saying hey these have to be children it could have been um adults they didn't really have to prove obviously that these are family um so essentially you could have like you know 10 people to uh two bedrooms um it was sort of allowing them to sort of do that it was skirt that uh the third thing that was rescinded was sort of targeting advertisement to targeting these populations of Afghani nationals. But it was also there to other immigrant populations to other refugees. As well,

they highlighted Smalley's as one of the other groups to target them if they need to, for language purposes, to sort of put that out there because they were considered that they would be most likely not to apply for housing or to get these housing, despite the fact that there were several programs in place through the Office of Refugees resettlement that would assist in that sort of thing. So it was really in these communities where there was large populations of the evacuees or parolees or whatever refugees that came in here. And a lot of these people, interestingly, were resettled in some of the most expensive housing markets in the country. And so

lives people are still able to qualify for Section 8 housing vouchers as well, which I have reached out to the administration about. And so they're reviewing that at this time. But, and you know, looking at the immigration status and whatnot. So going along with it. But it's, there's, there's, this is I think probably the tip of the iceberg as the Trump administration is kind of overlooked. They're starting to look more deeply into this program,

especially the ones who came over the nearly 200,000 during that time period. Do we, at this point, do we have any idea how much in U.S. taxpayer money went to these programs, prioritizing Afghani refugees over American citizens? Is that known? Is that something that we can find out? Well, there's several different programs that they applied. They were able to qualify for. Snap, medical benefits, education benefits,

it's Pell Grant, foreign, you know, I mean, federal aid, all these sort of things. In some cases, even child care for job stuff. There's a slew of it, like I said, housing stuff. At this point, what I can, what I'm finding out from some of my sources, it's well into the billions of dollars, costing American taxpayers, even continuing sort of this day. A lot of them are still, you know, qualified in receiving these benefits. So it's not just, like I said, it's not just housing. It's a large, it's over a dozen this point benefits at the expense of American taxpayers.

So what does this new guidance from the Trump administration need? These programs that Biden put in place to prioritize the Afghan refugees, they completely go away or they phase it out. Do we know? It looks like there's a directive that was released. It was basically, say, terminated now. the only thing is is that at this point, because this was done, I mean, I'm not sure, you know, at this point, how impactful that might be because this, you know, these people have been here in the country for years. Now, it could be that they are, if they're looking for new places to live, that would maybe impact them, especially now that they've been here, the credit report thing, the high occupancy thing. So if they're still sort of, you know, getting that and they came in under that program, if they are looking to move or do something like that, that, it possibly could impact them. However, a lot of this stuff has kind of already been done because this has been over four years now that this program was in place. So it does change things,

I think, for moving forward. As I said, if there are people are looking to move out into new places or whatnot, that they might have fallen to that. I think the largest of the two would be the no credit check and then also the occupancy, you know, is, alleviating that as well. That might sort of, you know, hinder some of them, especially if there's like, although the president now has paused since migration and looking at some of these applications, but that's crucial too with chain migration as well, because a lot of these people were allowed, hey, family members to come over as part of this. They were initially here, paroled into the country, and then they had other people who joined them. So that definitely does

impact that. For sure. Sarah, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.