HUD Waiver Disclosure Shows EHV Transition Path for Nycha and Other PHAs

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has published its quarterly accounting of every regulatory waiver it granted during the first three months of 2026, a 12-page Federal Register notice that offers housing authorities an unusually detailed look at the flexibility HUD is willing to consider as the Emergency Housing Voucher program winds down.

The notice, published October 27 and covering waivers granted between January 1 and March 31, 2026, lists 51 separate waiver actions. Thirty-eight of them involve 24 CFR 982.204, the rule governing how public housing agencies administer their waiting lists - a concentration driven largely by PHAs seeking room to move Emergency Housing Voucher households onto other forms of assistance before program funding runs out.

The most prominent example involves the New York City Housing Authority. On March 17, HUD granted NYCHA a paired waiver of 24 CFR 982.204 and 24 CFR 982.206, allowing the authority to place EHV families onto one or more Project-Based Voucher waiting lists using participant information already on file, rather than requiring new individual applications. The companion waiver relieves NYCHA of the requirement to provide public notice before opening those waiting lists.

The Emergency Housing Voucher program was created in 2021 under the American Rescue Plan, steering tens of thousands of vouchers to people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Unlike the standing Housing Choice Voucher program, EHV came with fixed funding that HUD has said will be exhausted by the end of 2026 - the cliff that has driven a year of transition planning and a series of HUD instructions to housing authorities, including the frequently asked questions HUD issued pointing PHAs toward a December 1 target for moving EHV households to tenant-protection vouchers.

WHY HUD SAID YES

According to the notice, NYCHA is currently in a Housing Choice Voucher shortfall and cannot issue tenant-based vouchers, making the PBV waiting-list route the practical path for keeping EHV households assisted. The authority reported more than 5,200 EHV households at the time of its request, and HUD cited the expectation that EHV program funding will be exhausted by the end of 2026 as a reason for expediting the transition process.

HUD granted the waiver "on the basis of good cause," concluding that requiring fresh applications and a public waiting-list opening "would delay the ability of EHV families to transition to PBV units and put them at risk of homelessness." The waiver was signed by Benjamin Hobbs, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing.

The disclosure is a quarterly formality required by Section 106 of the HUD Reform Act of 1989, which obligates the department to publish every approved waiver of its regulations, identifying the project, the provision waived, the granting official and the grounds for approval. The notices typically attract little attention. This one lands eight weeks before the EHV program's anticipated funding exhaustion and days before the November 1 milestone many PHAs have been tracking for transition planning.

The quarterly notice is more than a formality for compliance officers. Because Section 106 requires HUD to name the regulation, the project, the granting official and the grounds, the notices function as the only comprehensive public record of which flexibilities the department considers grantable at all. Advocacy organizations and PHA counsel mine them for precedent when framing requests, and the October 27 edition is the first to cover calendar year 2026.

THE NYCHA RAD-PBV WAIVERS

The same notice documents a second NYCHA flexibility, granted March 25, that has drawn less attention but carries direct operational consequences for residents. HUD waived the regulatory definition of "project" at 24 CFR 983.3 - which treats a project as a single building or multiple contiguous buildings - for two NYCHA redevelopment groupings: Moore Houses and East 152nd Street-Courtland Avenue, and J.L. Elliott Houses Building 1 together with the Chelsea Addition and the Chelsea building 2.

The practical effect is to let NYCHA consolidate Rental Assistance Demonstration Project-Based Voucher housing assistance payment contracts across buildings that are not strictly contiguous. NYCHA told HUD the consolidation would preserve the current management and administration structure, directly benefit residents by expediting transfers between buildings under the same HAP contract - the notice specifically notes "the urgency of such transfer requests" - and reduce administrative burden on authority staff.

For residents, a consolidated HAP contract can mean the difference between a transfer processed within one project and a transfer treated as a move between separate projects, with the paperwork and waiting that entails. For other authorities weighing RAD conversions, the waivers illustrate that HUD will entertain project-definition flexibility when a housing authority can show resident benefit and administrative efficiency.

A PATTERN ACROSS SMALLER AUTHORITIES

NYCHA was not the first or the smallest agency to receive this flexibility. The notice shows HUD granted the identical paired waiver - 982.204 and 982.206 together - to a string of much smaller authorities on January 26, 2026, each signed by Hobbs and each justified on EHV continuity grounds.

The Lynchburg Redevelopment and Housing Authority in Virginia told HUD that without the waiver, families who are elderly, disabled or fleeing violence could face interrupted or terminated assistance, and that a fresh application process would divert its staff from functions like rent reasonableness, inspections and recertifications. The Victoria Housing Authority in Texas, with just 11 EHV families, cited barriers its households face in applying to a reopened waiting list - disabilities, limited English proficiency, lack of public transportation and low digital literacy. The Municipality of Juncos in Puerto Rico, with 13 EHV families, argued that moving households already determined eligible and already stably housed directly onto the Housing Choice Voucher waiting list was the only realistic way to keep their assistance uninterrupted when EHV funding expires.

Read together, the January 26 grants describe a consistent HUD posture through the first quarter: where an agency can show that its EHV families would otherwise be stranded by waiting-list mechanics, the department was willing to waive both the application requirement and the public-notice requirement so transitions could proceed administratively.

The distinction matters for mixed-finance portfolios. Under the un-waived rule, combining buildings that do not touch into one project would conflict with the regulation, forcing owners and authorities to administer parallel HAP contracts, separate waiting lists and separate transfer queues for what is operationally a single community. NYCHA's successful request shows the department weighing that operational reality against the regulation's text when residents stand to gain.

NOT A BLANKET RULE

Housing attorneys and PHA consultants caution that quarterly waiver notices are backward-looking disclosures, not new policy. Every waiver listed was granted between January and March of this year, in response to a specific request from a specific agency, and each remains tied to its facts. The notice does not create standing permission for any other PHA to skip waiting-list notices or redefine PBV projects.

What it does provide is a documented template. A housing authority facing the same EHV cliff can cite the NYCHA grant when framing its own waiver request, and the notice shows which officials - in this case the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing - hold the pen on such requests. The notice also lists HUD staff contacts for each waiver, including the Housing Voucher Management and Operations Division, which fielded both NYCHA actions.

The 38 waiting-list waivers in the notice were not limited to New York. Authorities of several sizes received similar 982.204 flexibility during the quarter, much of it connected to EHV transitions, according to the notice's program-office listings. That breadth suggests HUD was receptive, at least during the first quarter, to individualized requests that keep voucher households housed as EHV funding sunsets.

WHAT PHAS SHOULD TAKE FROM IT

First, the waiver pathway is real but individualized. Agencies that want EHV transition flexibility must request it, document good cause, and wait for a signature; the disclosure confirms requests are being granted, not that any flexibility applies automatically.

Second, timing matters. NYCHA's request preceded the end-of-2026 funding exhaustion by most of a year. PHAs that have not yet mapped their EHV households to a transition destination - tenant-based HCV, PBV waiting lists, or other assistance - are now working with considerably less runway than NYCHA had when it asked.

Third, the RAD-PBV project-definition waivers show HUD will consider structural flexibility where an authority can tie the request to resident-facing benefits such as faster transfers, not merely internal convenience.

Housing authorities weighing a request of their own should note the common threads in the granted applications: a concrete household count, a specific regulation pair, a demonstrated risk of assistance interruption, and an administrative-burden argument tied to core voucher operations. Requests that mirror that structure have a documented track record this year. For owners and managers of PBV properties, the same record is a reminder that waiting-list administration is a regulatory matter, not just an administrative one: the rules at 24 CFR 982.204 and 982.206 govern who must be offered a chance to apply and how the public must be told, and changing either step for any household group requires a HUD signature in advance.

The full notice appears at 91 FR 67598 in the October 27, 2026 Federal Register. HUD's quarterly notices are compiled from granting officials across program offices, and the department invites requests for additional information about individual waivers through the staff contacts listed with each entry.

Sources: Federal Register, "Notice of Regulatory Waiver Requests Granted for the First Quarter of Calendar Year 2026," 91 FR 67598 (October 27, 2026), federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/27/2026-21886.