On Wednesday, August 5, 2026, Bill Hagerty introduced a bill he calls the End Housing Welfare for Illegal Aliens Act.

The premise, in his own words, is that "illegal aliens have long exploited federal housing programs by taking advantage of gaps in existing law."

There is no gap. Undocumented immigrants have never been eligible for federal rental assistance. That's not a matter of interpretation — it's settled and long-standing. No undocumented person receives a HUD subsidy today.

What Hagerty is actually going after is something else entirely, and it's worth understanding exactly what it is before you decide how you feel about it.

What the "mixed-status loophole" really is

Picture a family of four in Memphis. Two parents, two kids. The kids are U.S. citizens, born here. One parent is a citizen. The other parent is undocumented.

Under current HUD rules, that family can get help with rent — but only a prorated share. HUD divides the full subsidy by four and pays three-quarters of it, because three of the four people qualify. The undocumented parent's share of the rent comes out of the family's own pocket. They get nothing from the government.

That's the "loophole." It's an accounting rule that lets an American child keep a roof over their head without the government first throwing their parent out of the house.

Hagerty's press release describes these households as "illegals who are roommates with eligible individuals."

They are not roommates. They are families.

Who actually loses the housing

Here are the numbers, from the Terner Center at UC Berkeley: roughly 80,000 people in about 20,000 mixed-status families currently receive HUD assistance. The typical household is two adults and two young children, with three of the four eligible. And 46% of the people in those households are children — about 37,000 kids.

Hagerty's own release puts the number of ineligible people in those 20,000 households at roughly 24,000.

So the arithmetic of his bill is this: to remove 24,000 ineligible adults from housing they are not currently subsidized to live in, you destabilize the housing of 80,000 people — including some 37,000 children who are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, United States citizens.

Those kids don't get relocated to better housing. There is no better housing waiting. They get evicted, doubled up with relatives, or put into a shelter.

What else is in the bill

The mixed-status provision is one of four. The bill would also:

• Deny Community Development Block Grants to sanctuary cities. CDBG money funds housing rehabilitation, homeless services, water and sewer work, and disaster recovery. Withholding it is a punishment aimed at city governments that lands on the residents.
• End non-citizen eligibility for HUD programs designated for seniors and people with disabilities.
• Require public housing authorities to affirmatively verify citizenship before providing services — a paperwork requirement that falls on every applicant, citizen or not, and slows down every application in the system.

The political theory Hagerty put in writing

Most press releases stick to the policy. This one didn't.

"Democrats have facilitated such abuse for political gain, because overrunning sanctuary cities with illegal aliens artificially boosts their party's power and representation when congressional districts are reapportioned."

That's from the release itself. It's the great-replacement framing — the claim that immigration is a deliberate scheme to change who holds power — stated as fact, on Senate letterhead, as the justification for a housing bill.

He then lists among the harms that these families "endanger the integrity of the electoral process." Non-citizens cannot vote in federal elections. It is already a felony. The bill Hagerty introduced is about rent.

"American families are left waiting in line"

Hagerty's central claim is that immigrants are crowding out Americans:

"For too long, Democrats have encouraged illegal aliens to raid taxpayer-funded housing programs while American families, seniors, and people with disabilities are left waiting in line."

The waiting lines are real. They are long, in Tennessee and everywhere else. But 20,000 households — three-quarters of whose members are eligible Americans — are not why. The shortage is a shortage of units and a shortage of vouchers. Congress decides how many of each exist.

Hagerty sits on the Senate Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal housing programs. If the problem is that Americans are waiting in line, he is on the committee that could shorten the line. He introduced a bill to remove 37,000 children from it instead.

This is a well-worn move. Alabama's Tommy Tuberville told Fox News that a bipartisan bill to lower housing costs would build homes for people "here illegally" — PolitiFact rated that False — and used it to justify voting no. The pattern is the same: point at immigrants, vote against or legislate against the housing, and call it standing up for Americans.

What this costs Tennessee

Nothing in Hagerty's bill builds a single unit of housing. Nothing in it lowers a single Tennessean's rent. Nothing in it moves anyone up a waiting list, because the vouchers freed up by evicting a mixed-status family are prorated shares — the smallest subsidies in the program.

What it does is make it federal policy that an American child can be put out of their home because of who their parent is.

Source

Sen. Bill Hagerty's press release, August 6, 2026. Figures on mixed-status households come from the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley.