Federal enforcement is showing up at HUD-assisted properties in person. At the same time, the guidance agencies used to cite when defending a screening decision has been withdrawn. Those two facts belong together, because the second one determines how well an agency holds up when the first one arrives. 

What Operation Clean House Is 

Operation Clean House is a joint fugitive apprehension effort run by the U.S. Marshals Service and HUD’s Office of Inspector General, working with state and local law enforcement. The target is individuals with active felony warrants who are living in HUD-assisted housing or connected to assisted leaseholders. The operations have run in four metropolitan areas across the Midwest and the South so far in 2026. 

Each has lasted between four and six days and paired HUD OIG with a U.S. Marshals regional fugitive task force, county sheriffs, and state police. Individual operations have produced between roughly fifteen and fifty arrests.  The warrants have covered violent felonies, weapons offenses, drug trafficking, and failure to register as a sex offender. In one metro, sixteen individuals accounted for more than thirty-three active warrants.   

In another, HUD OIG reported that most of those taken into custody were current program participants apprehended inside HUD-assisted units. HUD OIG describes this work as part of its program integrity mission and reports it to Congress in semiannual reporting. 

What This Does and Does Not Mean for an Agency 

These operations do not cite housing agencies. They do not produce audit findings, corrective action plans, or repayment demands. No PHA has been named as a subject. What they signal is where federal attention sits. Criminal activity in assisted housing is an active enforcement priority, and the agencies running these operations are the same ones that publish findings about program administration. An agency whose properties appear in an operation will field questions from its board, its residents, and its local press. The answer to those questions is the agency’s own screening and lease enforcement record. 

What Changed in Screening  

On November 25, 2025, HUD issued a letter on screening responsibilities and rescinded three documents:   

• Notice PIH 2015-19, on excluding the use of arrest records in housing decisions 
• The 2016 Office of General Counsel guidance on applying Fair Housing Act standards to the use of criminal records 
• The 2022 Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity memorandum implementing that guidance 

HUD’s position is that those documents created confusion and discouraged lawful screening. The letter reaffirms that PHAs and owners are expected to screen applicants for criminal history before admission, monitor criminal activity among assisted households, address individuals who pose a threat to resident safety or the peaceful enjoyment of the property, and use available resources and safety measures to support secure communities.

The letter did not create new authority. PHAs already had broad discretion under existing regulations. What changed was the emphasis, and what was removed was the reference point.

The Gap That Opened   

For years, a PHA could align its screening policy to a published federal document and point to that document when a decision was challenged. That was not a formal safe harbor, but it functioned like one. It gave the agency an external standard to stand on. 

That structure is being dismantled from two directions. The interpretive guidance is withdrawn, and HUD has separately proposed removing its disparate impact regulations under both the Fair Housing Act and Title VI.  

Agencies gained discretion. They also lost the thing that made a denial easier to explain.

Why This Is a Governance Question 

What replaces the federal reference point is the agency’s own written standard. The board approves it. The executive director defends it. Staff apply it hundreds of times a year. If that standard is not written clearly, applied the same way across specialists, and documented at the point of decision, then every denial rests on individual judgment that nobody recorded. Two applicants with similar records can be treated differently by two specialists, and the file will not show why.   

That is the exposure. It has nothing to do with how carefully staff are working. It is a documentation problem, and it typically opens during staffing transitions rather than through any single bad decision. 

What Has Not Changed 

• Mandatory denial categories at 24 CFR 960.204 and 24 CFR 982.553 still apply, including lifetime sex offender registration and methamphetamine manufacture on federally assisted property 
• Fair Housing Act liability survives the rulemaking. Inclusive Communities (2015) held that disparate impact claims are cognizable under the Act, and removing a regulation does not remove the statute 
• VAWA protections still limit denial and termination where the criminal activity is connected to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking 
• Reasonable accommodation obligations still apply, including requests to consider mitigating circumstances 
• Due process in termination still applies, as do state and local fair housing statutes  

What PHAs Should Do Now 

• Read your ACOP and Administrative Plan screening sections against what staff actually do. The gap is usually there, not in the policy language.   
• Check whether lookback periods, mitigating circumstances, and the individualized assessment process are written specifically enough that two specialists reach the same result.   
• Confirm that denial notices state the basis, the evidence relied on, and the informal review or hearing rights.   
• Pull a sample of recent denials and ask whether the file alone explains the decision. If it takes a conversation with the specialist to reconstruct it, the record is not complete. 

A Resource to Support Your Team 

Both withdrawals took effect in September 2025 and were not published until months later. That gap is the hard part. No agency can review a policy against guidance it does not yet know has been pulled. AMA’s Affordable Housing Policy Alerts track HUD notices, guidance withdrawals, and Federal Register activity, then translate each one into what it changes for Public Housing, HCV, and LIHTC operations.

When Additional Support May Make Sense 

Most policies read well. The gap sits between the written procedure and the file, and it stays invisible until someone asks to see the record. 

AMA works with housing organizations to review screening policies against current federal and state requirements, test whether documentation practice matches written procedure, and build a defensible standard that leadership can stand behind. 

This article is intended as general information and does not replace HUD regulations or official guidance.