Tewanna Jones (aka Pink Diamond) walks in front of the entrance to a public housing community in Jacksonville on Tuesday, June 23, 2026. | Elizabeth Caldwell, Jacksonville Today
Published on June 25, 2026 at 11:38 am
Free local news and info, in your inbox at 6 a.m. M-F. Sign up for the Jacksonville Today newsletter.
The Jacksonville Housing Authority could become one of the first in the nation to adopt a regulation that includes a two-year limit on assistance and mandates that tenants work.
The Housing Authority is notifying residents about the requirement now, even though it falls under a voluntary federal policy that hasn’t taken effect yet and could face challenges in court.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
Housing Authority CEO Cheron Corbett says the change is a start down the path to “self-sufficiency” for the city’s most vulnerable. But critics say it’s another example of the federal government’s continued assault on poor people.
Corbett, who came to the city in 2025 after serving in leadership at Chicago-area housing agencies, declined to speak with Jacksonville Today. But she said in a meeting this month that “most housing authorities” in the country have 40-hour-per-week work requirements.
She may be mistaken. The Trump administration says fewer than 1% of housing authorities have any work requirements, let alone full-time stipulations. But the new federal rule could change that.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
The housing rule
The rule, publicized in February, allows housing authorities to impose a work requirement of up to 40 hours per week and a benefit limit of two years. Currently, Jacksonville requires eight hours of community service for nonexempt residents of its approximately 2,300 housing units. Assistance continues indefinitely for 7,000 voucher holders.
JHA’s new policy stops short of requiring 40 hours. It says all aid recipients between 18 and 61 who don’t meet exemptions around age, disability, or caretaking for someone with a disability must work at least 30 hours per week. Fifty-four percent of able welfare recipients already report wage income.
The mandate wouldn’t just be for public housing residents, but for voucher recipients, too. Voucher recipients rent private homes from landlords and a subsidy covers part of their rent.
The new rule would amount to a change for 90% of people who draw public assistance, according to Erik Gartland, research analyst at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute. Researchers estimate that about 150,000 people in Florida could be at risk of homelessness.
But Gartland emphasized that the changes are uncertain because the rule isn’t in effect yet following the closing of a required comment period in May. The timeline for finalizing the rule is unclear, but the initiative could face legal challenges because Congress has rejected work requirements in the past.
“This is the first I’ve heard of preemptive compliance with a rule that hasn’t even been finalized,” Gartland said. “We suspected that would happen in areas they already wanted to implement these restrictions but didn’t have the authority to do so.”
A tenant’s questions
Jacksonville is informing residents of the tentative changes through public meetings at multiple properties. But details are shifting. In an email obtained by Jacksonville Today, JHA reminds The Oaks at Durkeeville residents of a community engagement meeting June 12 where a “proposed 2-year HUD subsidy term limit” will be discussed.
It was this prospective term cap that drove one person attending the meeting to reach out to JHA to ask whether working tenants could appeal. The person asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal.
The attendee said a JHA representative explained that the authority’s actual policy is either full-time work or a two-year term limit. But the agency’s published policy doesn’t expressly mention term limits.
The confusion, it turns out, is optional: HUD’s rule is voluntary. None or all of the restrictions can be implemented by public housing authorities and landlords who work with those agencies, which are known as PHAs.
“In all cases, PHAs and Owners could establish either or both work requirements and term limits. PHAs and Owners may also implement neither requirement,” the rule reads.
The debate about work rules
Advocates say requirements around work and occupancy are broadly beneficial and will help more people, pointing to the crush of applicants looking for aid. Jacksonville’s own Section 8 waiting list closed in 2023 due to demand.
Some housing agencies, like the Delaware State Housing Authority, have also reported success when it comes to initiatives like term limits.
Korey Lundin, senior attorney at the National Housing Law Project, said the HUD rule is not written to replicate success. Delaware, using a more liberal cap of seven years rather than two, also mandated savings accounts for clients. It’s that kind of nuance that’s missing in HUD’s proposal, Lundin said.
“Those are programs that are not as harsh as this rule, that have put tons of money into actual supportive services, and none of them are doing anything close to a 40-hour-week work requirement or two-year time limits,” Lundin said.
JHA’s policy, aside from requiring the authority to enforce its work requirement and provide clear guidance, offers only “referrals to employment/training resources” as a support. Lundin described such efforts as “checking a box” without offering real help.
The rule also allows private owners to set their own policies around work and occupancy, which Lundin claimed could open the door to discrimination. Under the rule, a landlord managing privately held subsidized housing could retaliate against tenants who complain by forcing them to leave after two years.
The goal, Lundin said, is the Trump administration’s “continued assault” on people of lesser means and the diminishment of agencies, like the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, meant to serve them.
“The proposed rule is in line with what the administration as a whole wants: reduce the number of poor people who are getting benefits from the government; increase benefits for people who are not poor,” Lundin said.
JHA has informed people of changes through meetings around its 2027 proposed plan. The next meeting is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday at Fairway Oaks, 5570 Golfbrook Drive in Jacksonville.
