The Texas housing agency’s board meets Sept. 3 to take a first step toward putting work requirements and time limits on the rent vouchers the agency hands out itself. The rule members would send out for public comment has not been released, so what it would require is not yet known.
The department is known mostly for financing apartments, but it also acts as a local housing authority across 34 counties, running federal rent vouchers itself — about 2,500 of them, by the count in its most recent public housing plan. The agenda asks the board to propose a new rule titled “Implementation of Work Requirements and Term Limits” and publish it for comment. That title tracks, almost word for word, a rule the federal housing department proposed in March, which would let housing authorities require as much as 40 hours a week of work, job training, schooling or community service from adults who are neither elderly nor disabled, and cut off help after a period no shorter than two years. Each authority would choose whether to do either, both or neither.
The federal rule is not final. Comments closed May 1, and federal officials have said a final version is expected this fall; the Dispatch found no notice that one has been issued. What the Texas rule would actually say, and whether the state would move before Washington does, are the questions the vote turns on. Nothing the department has published answers them. No comment deadline applies yet — one would start only after the board votes and the proposal appears in the Texas Register.
The board’s other large item is a full rewrite of the rulebook that decides which apartment developments win federal housing tax credits in Texas, which staff want repealed and replaced with a new draft for comment. The rest of a 37-item agenda is mostly detail work: a dozen waivers and amendments for individual tax-credit developments, a bond issue for one apartment project, homeless-services grants for the budget year beginning Sept. 1, and rewrites of the rules covering first-time homebuyer loans and minimum energy-efficiency standards.
Watch for whether members propose the voucher rule as drafted or hold it — and for how many Texas households it would reach. The department’s website and its own housing plan give sharply different voucher counts.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 10 a.m. CT Thursday, September 3, 2026. The notice was filed August 26 at 4:42 p.m. An Audit and Finance Committee meets at 9:30 a.m. in the same room.
- Where
- Room 1.110, University of Texas Thompson Conference Center, 2405 Robert Dedman Drive, Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs Governing Board — a seven-seat board appointed by the governor to staggered six-year terms. Six seats are filled. Leo Vasquez III is chair; the governor designates the chair.
- Format
- In person. The notice offers no online or telephone option for public comment, so speakers must appear. The board may close the meeting for legal advice, personnel, real estate, or audit matters.
- Live video
- The notice says the meeting will be streamed for public viewing. Board materials are posted on the department’s Legistar page.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · board meeting information center
Board members
- Leo Vasquez III — chair; Houston; corporate finance consultant.
- Kenny Marchant — vice chair; Coppell; former U.S. congressman.
- Cindy Conroy — El Paso; community outreach director at WestStar bank.
- Anna Maria Farías — San Antonio; former HUD fair housing assistant secretary.
- Holland Harper — Paris; chief development officer, Harrison, Walker and Harper.
- Ajay Thomas — Austin; head of public finance, FHN Financial.
- One seat is vacant.
Names, titles and term dates come from the department’s own board page, which lists six members for a seven-seat board. Cities and occupations come from the governor’s appointment releases: Vasquez and Conroy, Marchant and Thomas, Harper and Farías. The Dispatch could not confirm from a state source when the seventh seat was vacated. The terms of Conroy and Farías expire January 31, 2027. Meeting contact: Michael Lyttle, (512) 475-4542.