The latest ‘Show me your papers’ bully move from the Trump administration seems to want immigrants out of any supportive housing that receives federal funding, and they're demanding citizenship checks of Section 8 residents.  

With the Trump administration, there’s always the old rule of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) that softens the blow of his worst threats. But there’s a new threat that seems very real, and very scary for San Francisco’s working class immigrant community, as the Chronicle reports that the Trump administration is now demanding citizenship checks for anyone living in low-income public housing.

The order came down quickly and with an unforgiving, tight deadline. Per the Chron, one housing nonprofit “confirmed that some of the organization’s tenants were contacted last week and told they had to turn over certain documents within 15 days.” But they’re also squeezing the government agencies, as the Chron adds that the San Francisco Housing Authority was given a list of tenants and a demand that the agency report back on their citizenship status within 15 days.

The Chron also confirmed that the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development said that their agency “and others across the country received similar letters from HUD [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] last month.” So this is not just a San Francisco thing, and local affordable housing administrators are absolutely frightened.

“All of us have thousands of tenants — families, seniors, formerly homeless individuals that we are responsible for sheltering, and all of us are terrified,” affordable housing nonprofit Mission Housing’s executive director Sam Moss told the Chronicle. “It’s hard not to be worried that the nonprofit affordable housing industry will be given an impossible mandate in an effort to further hurt our low-income immigrant communities.”

SF Government officials are sounding a less alarming tone, whether that’s justified or not.

“This list reflects a small percentage of total Section 8 households in San Francisco,” Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development spokesperson Anne Stanley said to the Chron, without delving into specific numbers.

And this could all be a scare tactic. The Chronicle notes that HUD declined to answer any specific questions on how all of this would work.

Or it could be a prelude to something larger and more horrible, affecting even non-immigant residents of public housing. The Trump administration could be using this as a tactic to defund federally supported Section 8 housing completely, a move that would likely create millions of new homeless Americans practically overnight.

Related: Faith Leaders Arrested After Dozens Chain Themselves Outside SF Immigration Court [SFist]

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