Service worker speaks out on Asheville’s minimum wage struggles and rising cost of living
Asheville service worker Bobby Skelton shares his experience balancing minimum wage with the city’s rising cost of living and housing challenges.
Rumored changes to a rental assistance program known by many as “Section 8” are swirling on social media.
Videos on TikTok and other platforms claim that the program, which helps low-income families with rent, is changing, and could include a two-year cap in the future.
Spending for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, much of which goes to providing assistance to low-income renters, has been on the chopping block during Trump’s second term. President Donald Trump’s presidential budget for the 2026 fiscal year proposes overhauling the agency, which administers Section 8, but it has not yet been enacted by Congress.
As of August 2025, no changes to Section 8 housing vouchers are set to go into effect. Here’s what else we know.
What is Section 8 housing?
Section 8 includes two rental assistance programs under HUD: project-based Section 8 and the housing choice voucher. Among the public, people talking about Section 8 are usually talking about the housing choice voucher program.
The program “helps low-income families, elderly persons, veterans and disabled individuals afford housing in the private market. Program participants can choose any eligible housing unit, including single-family homes, townhouses, and apartments, with rent partially covered by a subsidy paid directly to the landlord,” according to the HUD website. Local Public Housing Agencies help administer the program with funding from HUD.
The housing choice voucher program helps more than 2.3 million households rent private-market housing units, according to the Urban Institute.
What is Donald Trump proposing for Section 8?
Trump has proposed a 51% cut in gross discretionary funding from HUD for the 2026 fiscal year budget. This includes eliminating both parts of Section 8 and other HUD programs. HUD would instead provide block grant funding to states to administer their own rental assistance programs.
The “state rental assistance program” budget idea does propose a two-year limit on assistance for households, with the exception of the elderly and people with disabilities, to “incentivize self-sufficiency.” The details in the budget are recommendations from the president, but Congress ultimately decides how funding is allocated.
Is Section 8 changing?
A July report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities states that Congress does not appear to be considering the “state rental assistance program” this year, meaning that Section 8 housing won’t end or be capped in 2025.
Yonah Freemark a researcher at the Urban Institute, believes the Trump administration’s proposal as it is laid out in the budget is unlikely to happen.
“One thing that’s worth emphasizing is that what is proposed is undermining the local agencies,” Freemark said in an interview. “Because right now HUD works directly with local housing authorities, but what the Trump administration would be proposing is that the states essentially control what the local housing authorities can spend money on.”
Cutting off rental assistance after two years would put more than 3 million people, half of whom are children, at risk of eviction and homelessness, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The center estimates 411,000 fewer people would be served by the program under the House committee bill and the Senate version would serve 243,300 fewer people. Congress is on summer break until Sept. 2 and has until the Sept. 30 government funding deadline to finalize and pass a funding bill.
Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAY, contributed to this report.
Iris Seaton is the trending news reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at iseaton@citizentimes.com.
