Washington, DC, May 14, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has quietly waived flood protection standards for new housing built on flood plains and in coastal hazard areas, according to documents posted by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). This new “temporary” waiver of flood standards for federally guaranteed home loans and reconstruction assistance will remain in effect until February 21, 2027. Issued earlier this year; it was not published in the Federal Register as required by law.
Under prior regulations, housing built in areas prone to flooding had to be elevated at least two feet above the “base flood elevation” for the area. The stated rationale for extending a similar waiver first issued in 2025 is to make housing more affordable, per two Trump Executive Orders in that year. However, any savings in initial construction costs will be more than made up in higher flood insurance costs and higher flood damage.
“HUD’s move is a housing affordability shell game: reducing costs to home builders while increasing the long-term costs to homeowners,” stated PEER Public Lands and Rocky Mountain Advocate Chandra Rosenthal, pointing to HUD’s own estimates of damages and displacement costs avoided by the flood protections being waived. “Making new housing more vulnerable to flooding is the epitome of a false economy.”
Notably, HUD offers no evidence that extending this waiver will increase housing availability, a conclusion that flies in the face of the agency’s own prior cost-benefit analyses of the impacts of height requirements and other flood safeguards.
In the past, HUD land use and environmental waivers like this were done on a project basis, not on a nationwide basis, as is the case here. Moreover, even then, such a waiver followed a formal rulemaking process. Yet in this case, HUD acted in a fashion in which any public involvement was foreclosed by circumventing public notice and comment requirements.
Apart from impacts on housing, HUD’s waiver may increase the amount of construction in floodplains and wetlands, environmentally sensitive areas that carry greater ecological consequences. At the same time, climate change is intensifying the force of hurricanes and other storms, along with the resultant flooding.
“As tragically demonstrated each month, the flooding risks from sea level are rising and other side effects of climate change are increasing,” Rosenthal added. “Putting more housing in harm’s way from catastrophic flooding makes no sense whatsoever.”