Advocate NL 7/31/26

Hello and Happy Friday, folks! Audience Editor Edgar Ramirez, back in your inbox with a scoop from The Advocate's Christopher Wiggins.

For more than three decades, a little-known federal program has helped people with HIV secure something essential to remaining alive and healthy: a stable place to live, writes Christopher. Now, the Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS program, known as HOPWA, is being drawn into the Trump administration’s expanding system of immigration checks.

Recent HOPWA grant agreements contain language directing grantees to verify clients’ citizenship or immigration status through the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, or SAVE, according to the National HIV/AIDS Housing Coalition. Yet some Department of Housing and Urban Development officials have told those same grantees not to begin the checks until the agency issues final instructions.

“They’re hearing two different things,” Lauren Banks, the coalition’s executive director, told Christopher in an interview. “We have a duty to help and to serve and to make things as easy as possible. And instead, this is just one more admin piece that is rooted in fear.”

Be sure to catch Christopher's full reporting here, and if you enjoy receiving scoops like these, consider becoming an Advocate supporter! For as little as $5 a month (that’s less than a cup of coffee nowadays!), your donation will help journalists like Christopher continue providing the top LGBTQ+ journalism you receive in your inbox weekly.

Thanks folks, have a great weekend!

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Advocate NL 7/31/26

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