Main Street Dollars

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The rent ceiling HUD is imposing nationwide this fall was not measured this year, or even last year. It traces back to a five-year Census Bureau survey that began collecting rent data in 2020, years before the sharpest run-up in the rental market. The Fair Market Rents that take effect October 1, 2026, for fiscal…

No local rent ceiling may fall below the state or national non-metro median rent.

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Some of the cheapest rental markets in the country just picked up a rule that has nothing to do with how cheap rent actually is there. Each October, the Department of Housing and Urban Development recalculates the ceiling that decides how much a Housing Choice Voucher will cover in every county and metro area in…

HUD changed how it prices utilities inside the rent ceiling because the government stopped publishing the local index.

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For decades, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracked what households paid for electricity and natural gas city by city, feeding that local detail into how the government calculates rent ceilings for housing vouchers nationwide. Then the agency stopped. Starting with data published in February 2025, BLS discontinued the local and regional versions of that index,…

Housing agencies get three months after October 1 to move payment standards to the new rent ceilings.

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Federal regulations do not require a housing authority to change anything the moment a new rent ceiling takes effect. HUD’s fiscal year 2027 Fair Market Rents become official on October 1, 2026, but the agencies that actually run local voucher programs have a separate, longer clock for putting those numbers to work. Under HUD’s own…

Rent ceilings for housing vouchers reset October 1, and no local ceiling may fall more than 10 percent.

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Every fall, thousands of local housing authorities quietly swap in a new number that decides how much rent a housing voucher will cover. This year’s reset lands October 1, when the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s fiscal year 2027 Fair Market Rents take effect nationwide. Most of those numbers are climbing. But in the…

USDA told South Carolina, North Dakota and Ohio to hold off on banning candy and soda from food stamp cards.

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in Groceries & Gas

Grocery shoppers on food assistance in South Carolina and North Dakota were bracing to lose the ability to buy candy and soda with their benefits within days. Instead, the federal agency that runs the program told both states, plus Ohio, to stand down. The reason traces back to a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., not…

Home insurance is set to hold flat or fall this year in five states.

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Home insurance premiums are on track to rise again nationwide in 2026, but not everywhere. New projections show five states are bucking that trend entirely, with average premiums expected to hold flat or actually fall slightly by the end of the year even as the national average climbs. It is a rare bright spot in…

A flood policy already in force keeps paying through its expiration date.

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Congress’s flood insurance deadline gets most of the attention, but a narrower, more reassuring rule sits underneath it. If a homeowner already has a National Flood Insurance Program policy in force, that policy does not disappear the moment the federal government’s authority to sell new coverage runs out. It keeps paying covered claims and staying…

About 20 marketplace insurers are asking for 2027 premium increases above 20 percent, and states set the final rates before November 1.

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Roughly 20 health insurers that sell Affordable Care Act Marketplace plans asked state regulators for 2027 premium increases topping 20 percent, part of a wider round of filings that mostly proposed double-digit hikes for the second year in a row. The requests were among the earliest signals of what marketplace shoppers can expect to pay…

Federal flood insurance loses the authority to write new policies at 11:59 p.m. on September 30, and realtors count about 40,000 home closings a month riding on it.

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