Sylvia Blanco, the chief operating officer of the Housing Authority of the City of Austin and Doug Guthrie, the president and chief executive officer of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles both spoke with the New York Times about the rule’s potential impact on their residents, communities, and PHA operations, for the article “Landlords Oppose Trump Plan to Evict Undocumented Immigrants.”
Blanco told the Times, “The housing authority would bear the brunt of the expense of having to completely evict and go through the court action of having to evict these families…We would be on the hook for having to pay for that.”
“You can imagine, if you’re forcing the eviction of nearly one-third of these very large public housing sites, the impact that has on households as well as the broader community,” said Doug Guthrie.
Guthrie also sat for an interview with KCRW radio’s Greater LA Podcast to explain the proposal and the toll its already taking on residents. “I really do think that this is cold hearted,” he said. “It truly hurts a lot of people that have been following the rules. Nobody here has done anything wrong. Nobody here is receiving a subsidy.”
That’s a message Guthrie reiterated during a press conference yesterday in Los Angeles with city officials that was covered by theLA Times. “What sort of sense does that make?” he said. “These mixed-status households have played by the rules — they’ve done nothing wrong. There’s not one dollar of federal funding that is supporting an undocumented resident.”