What is the exact waiver language in H.R.4552 and the Senate THUD bill regarding HUD and PHA authority to modify Housing Choice Voucher rules?

1. What the House bill says in practice: broad waiver authority flagged by advocates

The House Appropriations Committee’s H.R.4552 was reported out with a provision that observers and housing advocates characterize as giving HUD broad flexibility to allow public housing authorities (PHAs) to waive or create alternatives to key statutory requirements governing public housing and rental assistance programs; groups such as the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the National Alliance to End Homelessness explicitly flag this language as enabling HUD/PHAs to implement policies like work requirements, time limits, or rent changes that advocates view as “problematic” ^{[2] [4] [3]}. The congressional bill itself is listed on Congress.gov, but the snippet set supplied here does not include the verbatim waiver clause from H.R.4552—only summaries and committee descriptions noting the policy change ^{[1] [5]}.

2. What the Senate draft signals: similar waiver power described, exact text absent

Senate committee materials and advocacy summaries describe the Senate THUD approach as rejecting some House funding cuts while nonetheless including or discussing forms of expanded HUD authority in related housing bills; several outlets report the Senate’s draft would also permit the HUD Secretary to waive or create alternative statutory requirements for public housing and rental assistance, language that has drawn criticism from housing advocates for the same reasons as the House proposal ^{[3] [6]}. The source material confirms the characterization of expanded waiver authority in Senate messaging but does not provide the exact statutory phrasing of the Senate THUD bill’s waiver clause in the materials supplied here ^{[3] [7]}.

3. Historical and statutory context matters: MTW and prior waiver precedents

The HCV program already contains waiver and demonstration precedents: the Moving to Work (MTW) demonstration allows participating PHAs to receive waivers of many federal HCV and public housing rules, and expansions in 2016 and other demonstration acts have created more limited waiver regimes for cohorts of PHAs—precedents that illustrate how waiver authority can be structured and limited in statute ^{[8] [9]}. Past mobility demonstration bills explicitly authorized the Secretary to waive or specify alternative requirements for specific statutory provisions, and they included notice and implementation controls—examples that advocates cite when contrasting narrow, tested demonstrations with broad, open-ended waiver language ^{[10] [11]}.

4. Where reporting and advocates diverge: intent versus text, and political framing

Advocates and committee summaries frame the House language as “broad” and potentially opening the door to policy changes like work requirements; House Republicans advancing the bill characterize the change as flexibility and modernization. The sources show an implicit policy battle: advocates warn of hardship risks from sweeping waivers, while proponents argue for local flexibility and administrative efficiency—however, because the exact bill text for the waiver clause is not reproduced in the provided reporting, assessment of how broad or constrained the legal authority would be—its duration, required HUD notice, PHA limitations, or guardrails—cannot be definitively settled from these sources alone ^{[2] [3] [4]}.

5. Conclusion and reporting limitation

Both the House H.R.4552 materials and Senate THUD reporting included in this packet consistently report expanded HUD/PHA waiver or alternative-requirement authority for HCV and related programs and show robust debate over its implications, but none of the supplied URLs/snippets contain the verbatim statutory waiver language needed to quote the “exact waiver language.” To produce the verbatim phrases and clause-by-clause legal consequences requires consulting the official bill text or committee report language directly on Congress.gov or the committee print—documents identified here (H.R.4552 on Congress.gov) but not excerpted with the specific clause in the provided material ^{[1] [5] [3]}.