Emergency Housing Voucher Conversion 2026: The HAP Does Not Vanish on December 31
If you have an Emergency Housing Voucher household in the unit, you already got the scary version of this story. Home Forward told those families in November 2025 that the rent help was on track to run out in the fall of 2026. That letter is still sitting on a lot of kitchen tables. It is not the rule you operate on this week.
On September 29, 2026, HUD issued Notice PIH 2026-25. The job of that notice is narrow. Award a tenant protection voucher, by December 31, to every family that was under an Emergency Housing Voucher housing assistance payments contract on September 30. Congress put that duty in section 153 of the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, the bill the President signed on September 2. After the conversion, those vouchers are Housing Choice Voucher assistance. HUD calls them EHV-TPVs. The Emergency Housing Voucher program itself ends.
That is a different pile of paper from the September landlordnews piece on the Home Forward owner pause and the tenant-share hike. The pause is still about contract rent on tenant-based vouchers from April 1, 2026 through March 31, 2027. This notice is about whether the subsidy on an old emergency voucher keeps coming after New Year's. Do not mix the two files.
Who was actually under contract on September 30
The cutoff is a housing assistance payments contract in force on September 30, 2026. Not a family that used to have an emergency voucher. Not a family you hope will get one. Not a name on a waitlist that already left the program.
HUD is plain about the miss. A family that had already moved to a regular Housing Choice Voucher, or to any other housing help, before September 30 does not get an EHV-TPV. A family Home Forward parked on the Housing Choice Voucher waitlist, with a preference, still counts if that family was under an Emergency Housing Voucher contract on September 30. Once the new voucher is issued, the housing authority takes them off that waitlist. The waitlist line was a backup. It is not a second voucher.
The voucher follows the housing authority that was administering the contract that day. If the family ported, count the authority that held the contract, not the one where they were shopping. If they were still under lease at home and only looking in another jurisdiction, the initial authority counts them.
One more limit, and it matters when they move out. These are not replacement vouchers. When the family leaves the program, the authority does not reissue that voucher to the next person on the list. HUD reduces the authority's unit months to match. Your next applicant does not inherit this one.
The calendar, and the November 1 fork
HUD told authorities, on or about October 1, what it thought the December award would be. The authority had until 11:59 p.m. Eastern on October 15 to correct that estimate. Write EHV@hud.gov. That correction is one month of funding. December only.
In December, HUD makes one award and the authority moves the family from the emergency voucher to the EHV-TPV. By December 31 the authority is not supposed to have Emergency Housing Voucher families left under lease. Calendar year 2027 money is a renewal, and the notice says that renewal depends on a future appropriation. December funding is not a promise about April.
There is a fork before that. An authority may still move a family onto one of its own existing Housing Choice Vouchers, under the older conversion notice, instead of onto an EHV-TPV. It may also move a family into its own project-based voucher building. If it does either of those between September 30 and November 1, it has to tell HUD so the estimate comes down. Those moves have to be finished by November 1. After November 1, the remaining emergency-voucher families convert to EHV-TPVs. HUD is not taking new waiver requests to push this into project-based vouchers. An EHV-TPV cannot be project-based.
If you own the unit, you do not pick the fork. Home Forward does. Ask which track your household is on, and ask in writing.
No new contract, and no rescreen
This is the sentence to keep. Families converted to EHV-TPVs keep getting tenant-based assistance under 24 CFR 982, without a break. The authority does not put them back on the waiting list for this conversion, and it does not rescreen them. They can stay in the unit they are in.
So you do not send a new rental application. You do not demand a fresh background packet because the program changed its name. You do not tell them the tenancy ended because the emergency voucher ended. The assistance is supposed to continue. The contract you already have is the contract, unless Home Forward sends a replacement housing assistance payments contract and tells you to sign it. If that paper shows up, read the rent, the utility allowance, and the effective date before you sign. Do not sign a lower contract rent by accident because the form looks familiar.
The emergency-voucher extras do not come with the new voucher. The special administrative fee and the one-time services fee do not apply, and the authority cannot claim them for this conversion. Those fees were never your rent. Do not let a caseworker's we-lost-the-services-money conversation turn into a request that you cut the contract rent.
Payment standard is the part that can move the tenant's share
HUD says the authority's Housing Choice Voucher payment standard applies to these families. That is not the same sentence as your contract rent changes.
Contract rent is what the assistance contract says the unit costs. The payment standard is the ceiling the authority uses when it splits that rent between the housing assistance payment and the tenant. If Home Forward's emergency-voucher payment standard and its regular voucher payment standard are not the same number, the tenant's share can move even though you did not raise the rent. That split is the authority's math. Get the new breakdown before you collect a different amount from the tenant. Do not invent the new tenant share off a Facebook post.
Inside Portland, a change in associated housing costs can still matter under the relocation ordinance. A payment-standard correction the authority makes is not the same thing as you adding a fee. Keep those files apart. If you are the one changing the rent or a recurring charge, you are back in the September article: the owner pause, and the 10 percent relocation tripwire.
Home Forward's page is still the February story
Home Forward's federal-funding page, last updated February 2026, still says the agency expects emergency-voucher money to run out in the fall of 2026. It still describes the November 2025 letter. It still says those households were added to the Housing Choice Voucher waitlist with a preference, and that Home Forward is not issuing new vouchers off that list. It still says the agency will give families 90 days' notice before the assistance expires. It does not mention Notice PIH 2026-25.
Read that as a stale page, not as a second statute. The notice is the newer paper. It does not cancel Home Forward's duty to tell you and the family what it is actually doing. It does cancel the idea that you should pre-write a nonrenewal off the November 2025 letter.
What you can do this week is small. Pull every emergency-voucher housing assistance payments contract. Note the contract rent, the tenant share, and who pays the utilities. Email the Home Forward contact on that contract and ask three things. Is this household in the September 30 count? Are you converting them to an EHV-TPV in December, or moving them to a regular voucher or a project-based unit by November 1? Will the housing assistance payment for January be issued on the same schedule, at the same contract rent?
Save the reply. If you get silence, save the sent mail. A missing January payment is a housing-authority problem to chase. It is not a reason to serve a 72-hour nonpayment notice for the authority's share.
and now a couple shameless plugs.
The Portland Area Rental Owners Association (PAROA) is where this kind of paper gets passed around before it becomes a Friday helpline call. Membership comes with the landlord forms, the classes, and a room of people who have already held a Home Forward contract. Join at www.paroa.org.
If the voucher file is one of ten things on a desk you do not want, Northwest Real Estate and Property Management (NWRPM) runs the contract, the inspections, and the housing-authority email for owners in the Portland Metro and Central Oregon. www.nwrpm.com.
Do not raise the rent, and do not shed the voucher
The owner pause on tenant-based contract-rent increases still runs through March 31, 2027. Project-based rents were held for calendar 2026. Turning an emergency voucher into an EHV-TPV does not open a window to catch up the contract rent. Ask Home Forward before you submit anything. A request that sits in a paused queue is not an increase.
Ending the tenancy to get out of the program is the expensive version of the same idea. Oregon's source-of-income rules, and Portland's on top of them inside the city, are how that case gets filed. Inside Portland, a landlord-reason ending can also be a relocation bill under PCC 30.01.085. The program was optional on the way in. It is not a free exit on the way out.
The other trap is the tenant who calls because the November 2025 letter said the help dies this fall. Tell them the truth you actually know. HUD ordered a conversion for families under contract on September 30. Home Forward has not posted the local steps. Nobody has to move because of this notice. You will pass on whatever Home Forward sends. You will not collect a new tenant share until the authority writes it down.
January is the test, and 2027 is the open question
Watch the January housing assistance payment. December's award is one month of funding. The notice plans later months as renewals, if Congress funds them. That is the sentence to keep next to the good news. The family is not supposed to lose the voucher on New Year's Eve. The money after December still needs an appropriation.
In early 2027, HUD starts closing out the emergency-voucher accounts. Authorities send back unspent emergency-voucher funds. That closeout is the old program's bank account. It is not a bill to your tenant, and it is not a reason to rewrite your contract rent.
If January's payment is short, call the housing authority before you call the tenant. If the payment standard changed and the tenant's share moved, collect only the figure on the new breakdown. If Home Forward says this household was not under contract on September 30, get that in writing too, and then you are in a different conversation. Until that paper exists, do not serve a notice that treats the subsidy as dead.
and now a couple shameless plugs.
PAROA members get the practical version of a notice like this while the housing authority is still updating its own page. Bring the contract. Bring the question. Join at www.paroa.org.
NWRPM already works the Home Forward file for owners who would rather have the January payment checked by someone who does it every month. Portland Metro and Central Oregon. www.nwrpm.com.
Christian Bryant
President of both the Portland Area Rental Owners Association (PAROA)
If this conversion is sitting in your own file, join PAROA and bring the contract to the next landlord conversation. www.paroa.org.
If you would rather hand the housing-authority email to a manager, use Northwest Real Estate and Property Management (NWRPM). www.nwrpm.com.
Sources
Notice PIH 2026-25, Availability of Tenant Protection Vouchers for Emergency Housing Voucher Families, issued September 29, 2026: HUD notice PDF
Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, Pub. L. 119-103, section 153, signed September 2, 2026.
24 CFR 982.
Home Forward, Federal Funding and Policy Information, last updated February 2026: Home Forward funding page
National Low Income Housing Coalition summary, October 5, 2026: NLIHC summary
Prior article, not this conversion: Home Forward Section 8 Landlords 2026
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