Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/public-housing-tenants-evicted-if-unable-to-meet-volunteer-rule Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript According to federal law, each member of low-income families in the United States living in subsidized housing must perform 96 hours of volunteer service every year. If any member falls short, the whole family is removed. A report looks at this controversial law. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. MARLA BIG HORSE, Evictee: See, I need more boxes. Myrna? Or, Nicki, grab me just a couple little-bitty boxes. LEE HOCHBERG, NewsHour Correspondent: They packed boxes to move, but Marla Big Horse, her 19-year-old son Adam, and 17-year-old daughter Myrna had no idea where they were going. The family has lived in this public housing unit in Denver for almost 20 years. They always paid their rent. But on the day we visited in August, Big Horse and her family had just been evicted. MARLA BIG HORSE: I don't got no place to go. I don't got no family here. All I got's my kids. My circumstances, when it came down to it, is I'm homeless. LEE HOCHBERG: They're one of the first low-income families in the country to lose their subsidized housing for violating a controversial federal law. It requires each family member perform 96 hours of unpaid volunteer service every year. The government said everyone in the Big Horse family fell short, so the family was kicked out. MARLA BIG HORSE: Let me call my mom. I'm going to call her collect. LEE HOCHBERG: As she scrambled to find housing, Big Horse told us she tried to do her hours at a food bank in Denver and an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. But with ill health and little income for transportation, she fell behind. MARLA BIG HORSE: I mean, you could ask my children, my mother. We tried. We tried everything to cure our hours. We were trying. You know, and then plus me being sick, it was just too hard.