Almost 3,000 city households in federally subsidized housing, including Section 8 and NYCHA, have members with mixed immigration statuses who would be impacted by the change, advocates said.

NYCHA’s Fulton Houses in Manhattan. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

At the end of last week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a rule that, if enacted, would ban families with mixed immigration statuses from living in federally subsidized housing.

The rule would “require the verification of U.S. citizenship or the eligible immigration status of all applicants and recipients of assistance under a covered program regardless of age”—what advocates say would impact thousands of New York City families who use Section 8 vouchers, or live in public housing at The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).  

Eligibility for federal housing assistance is already limited to U.S. citizens and non-citizens with a qualifying immigration status (such as lawful permanent resident, refugee or asylee).

Housing subsidies only cover the household members who are eligible, meaning mixed-status families pay a higher rent—also known as a prorated assistance—that takes any ineligible tenants into account.

But HUD called the current policy a “loophole” the federal government wants to close, and comes as President Donald Trump continues to wage an aggressive immigration crackdown. The administration proposed a similar rule banning mixed-status families during Trump’s first term, though President Joe Biden later withdrew it. 

“Mixed Status families are already paying their fair share and are receiving prorated benefits under strict eligibility requirements,” New York Congresswoman Nydia M. Velázquez said in a statement in response to HUD’s latest proposal. “This is a cruel and inhumane policy that seeks to force families into the impossible choice between family separation and homelessness. It is designed to terrorize immigrant communities, plain and simple.”

Around 20,000 families nationwide, the vast majority of them people of color, could lose assistance if the rule is implemented, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). The impact would be felt particularly hard in New York City and State, which HUD says is home to approximately 13 percent of mixed-status households getting federal housing subsidies.

“In New York state, there are a total of 498,440 households currently receiving federal rental assistance, an estimated 2,540 mixed-status families who would be prohibited from receiving assistance, and 914,060 individual citizens who would be subject to new red tape, even though they have already been found to be eligible for assistance,” said Sonya Acosta, a senior policy analyst with the housing and income security team at CBPP.

New York state has the third-highest number of mixed-status households in public housing after California and Texas, explained Francisca Fajana, director of racial justice strategy with Latino Justice PRLDEF, a national civil rights organization.

According to Alex MacDougall, an attorney in the public housing unit at the Legal Aid Society, almost 3,000 city households would be at risk, impacting over 11,000 people, including 5,000 children, with an average household income of $26,000.

If implemented, advocates warned, families will have to choose between giving up affordable housing or separating. “Many households will not even have the option to separate to save their housing because the only eligible family members are minor children, forcing the entire family into housing insecurity,” MacDougall said.

NYCHA, the largest public housing agency in the country, said that it was reviewing the proposal, but didn’t provide estimates on how many of its households could be impacted. The Housing Authority “is bound by current requirements set by HUD, which will remain in place unless there are modifications issued in a final rule,” a spokesperson said in a statement via email. 

Because households must declare their citizenship or eligible immigration status when applying, HUD already has information on the immigration status of households receiving federal housing benefits, the spokesperson reiterated.

“This administration is using immigrants as a scapegoat to distract from their failure to invest in affordable housing,” Congresswoman Velázquez said in a statement.

Local advocates and civil defenders also pushed back against the federal government’s false assertion that housing authorities are are providing subsidies to undocumented immigrants. In a Washington Post opinion piece last week, HUD Secretary Scott Turner said the proposed rule would end “the era of illegal aliens and other ineligible noncitizens exploiting public housing resources.”

“This is simply untrue,” explained Anna Luft, project director of the New York Legal Assistance Group’s Public Housing Justice Project. “NYCHA, along with other housing authorities, already have a process in place to verify tenants’ immigration status to confirm who qualifies for either HUD-funded rent subsidies or to pay prorated—essentially market-rate—rent as part of a mixed-status living arrangement.”

While advocates worry about the possibility of future evictions, they’re also urging people not to panic, since the rule is still only a proposal. 

The public has 60 days, until April 21, to comment on it. A similar proposal during Trump’s first term—which ultimately never took effect—garnered some 30,000 public comments, more than 95 percent of them in opposition to the change, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. 

“For the time being … the existing laws around prorated assistance remain unchanged as it applies to people in mixed-status households,” Luft said.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org.

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post Federal Proposal Would Ban Undocumented People from Public Housing. What Would the Impact Be in NYC? appeared first on City Limits.

As the tech industry races to build sprawling facilities to fulfill growing data needs, the Eagan City Council has decided to pause any further data center development within the city, allowing staff to study long-term infrastructure impacts, clarify changing design standards and review how future data warehouses could fit within the zoning patchwork of the city.

The moratorium halts development of any new data center that would use more than 20 megawatts of electricity or that is proposed to be within 500 feet of residential homes for one year, lasting until Feb. 17, 2027.

Eagan city staff were not aware of any other active data center moratoria in the Twin Cities area; this move is believed to be the first.

The push of artificial intelligence among industry giants in the technology sector has led to the growth of large scale data centers, required for the intensive computation power required to store, process and analyze data for the large language models driving popular A.I. applications.

The most noticeable growth has come from huge “hyperscale” data centers planned by tech giants like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google, facilities that can use hundreds of megawatts.

An Amazon Web Services data center is seen on Aug. 22, 2024, in Boardman, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

As of this fall, at least 13 hyper-scale data centers had been proposed across the state; there are no hyperscale data centers currently planned in Eagan.

Other types of data centers include “edge” data centers, smaller centers built near a business or its end users; “enterprise” data centers, a facility that handles a single organization and its information technology team; and “co-located” data centers, a shared space where more than one company might subcontract and locate IT needs. There also are data centers that focus on cloud computing.

Costs and benefits

Reached by email, city of Eagan Director of Community Development Jill Hutmacher said the temporary pause allows for reasonable planning before high-impact facilities potentially are approved one day.

Previously, Eagan has considered data centers within “warehouse” use classifications in business park and industrial districts. But modern data centers are not traditional warehouses, Hutmacher said. They can have higher energy demand and produce significant noise due to large backup power systems, continuous operations and specialized cooling equipment. Reviewing them under warehouse standards can limit the city’s ability to tailor regulations to those unique characteristics.

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Eagan has two existing data centers currently, and two facilities under construction. These smaller data centers fit under the definitions of enterprise, co-location and edge data centers. Under the ordinance, these centers can still complete updates and repairs and finish approved construction.

“Data centers can provide economic benefits, including contributions to the tax base,” said Hutmacher. “At the same time, very large facilities can have unique operational characteristics, including significant energy use, noise-producing mechanical equipment, and long-term infrastructure demands.”

As an indicator of potential economic impacts, the city of Pine Island, Minn., announced this week that Google will build a data center that is expected to pump over $20 million “in Google and developer-funded infrastructure upgrades” to the city and school district, along with creating 100 permanent jobs and 500 construction jobs.

Hutmacher said Eagan’s data center pause should provide clarity and predictability for the city and taxpayers. “It ensures we are planning ahead rather than reacting later. For residents, that means growth that is intentional, transparent, and aligned with the long-term interests of the community.”

With the pause in effect, Eagan city staff plan to review its current codes, consider long-term infrastructure impacts and study noise and operational characteristics.

Community concerns

Eagan resident Leo Caravello spoke before the city council on Feb. 17, supporting the pause on any data center development.

“Modern data centers today have proven time and time again to not be beneficial for our communities overall. They hog and pollute our water. They consume electricity like no other business,” Caravello said. “They generate profit and money for businesses outside of our community while benefitting off of our infrastructure, and rarely improving our community itself.”

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Residents across the state have been concerned about the growth of data centers, specifically regarding the intensive water and energy drain of the mega processing sites. Data center opponents held a rally at the State Capitol on Feb. 18, calling for a statewide ban on hyperscale facilities.

President Donald Trump in Tuesday’s State of the Union address said he would press tech companies to pay higher electricity rates in areas where their data centers are located.

A 280-acre development in Rosemount for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is still under construction, while in Farmington, residents verbally sparred with the Mayor Joshua Hoyt during a contentious discussion about a proposed data center.

Hoyt has since resigned.

Five months after a touring production of “The Addams Family” departed St. Paul’s Ordway Music Theater, another unpredictably off-the-wall family has come to visit. And they’re sharing the stage with the kind of quirky and painfully awkward teenagers that many pop culture offerings seek but fail to find.

They populate “Kimberly Akimbo,” a musical by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire and composer Jeanine Tesori that took home the “Best Musical” Tony and a host of other awards in 2023. And it’s a wonderfully weird show that strikes me as exactly what’s been needed to bust out of the increasingly narrow confines of “Broadway.”

Both hilarious and heartbreaking – the rare show I’ve attended at which audience members both roared and sobbed – it’s a quirky masterpiece of musical theater, an audaciously original dark comedy that benefits from exceptional performances from all nine of its actors. That’s right: A Broadway musical with only nine characters. But what memorably vivid characters they are.

Ann Morrison, left, who plays the title character, and Marcus Phillips in “Kimberly Akimbo,” a musical dark comedy about a high school student with a disease that rapidly ages her who has an eccentric family and group of friends. The North American touring production is at St. Paul’s Ordway Music Theater through March 1, 2026. (Courtesy of Joan Marcus)

At the center is Kimberly, who is turning 16, but suffers from an affliction that ages her body at four to five times the pace of a normal human. Hence, the end of her life expectancy is nigh, but she’s also finding a fresh beginning at a new high school, where she’s confronted with typical teen challenges like finding friends and assembling science projects. And atypical challenges like having her uproariously unfiltered serial criminal of an aunt hiding out in the school library and trying to get Kimberly and her friends involved in her latest fraud scheme.

And then there’s Kimberly’s home life, which features an emotionally and physically fragile mom preparing to give birth and an undependable alcoholic father. Yes, they’re exasperatingly flawed as parents, but they’re also wildly funny, especially when that unpredictable aunt comes through the window and gradually transforms this offbeat portrait of family and high school life into a caper comedy.

This North American tour played Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theatre last July, and I felt it to be one of the best theatrical experiences I had in 2025. But it’s evolved into an even better production, one that manages to be simultaneously outrageous and moving, carrying its conflicting emotional extremes with grace and nuance.

Director Jessica Stone has given the show a briskly engaging pace that slows enough to let its deepest emotions resonate. Skillfully carrying the tale as Kimberly is Ann Morrison, marvelously placing the qualities of a bubbly when not sulky teen in the voice and body of an older woman.

Her unreliable parents are fascinatingly fleshed out by Jim Hogan and Laura Woyasz. Yes, the characters can be frustratingly self-absorbed, but Hogan and Woyasz might summon up your sympathy for this pair that became parents too early and have never really gotten the hang of the job.

Marcus Phillips spearheads a spot-on quintet of classmates, each bursting with self-conscious awkwardness and a desire to be seen and understood. But no character in any Broadway musical of recent vintage is designed to steal scenes like Aunt Debra, and Emily Koch obliges with a bold, brassy portrayal that proves a key catalyst for the engaging spirit of this marvelous production.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

‘Kimberly Akimbo’

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 1:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: Ordway Music Theater, 345 Washington St., St. Paul

Tickets: $150-$45, available at 651-224-4222 or ordway.org

Capsule: A quirky masterpiece of modern musical theater.

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