Travel nurses do not pay for housing out of their base hourly wage. Staffing agencies handle lodging in one of two ways: they either place you in a furnished apartment they’ve leased and paid for directly, or they add a tax-free housing stipend to your paycheck and you rent your own place. Which route you take changes your take-home pay, your tax paperwork, and how much say you have over where you live during an assignment that typically runs 8 to 13 weeks.
When the Agency Provides the Apartment
Under a company-housed arrangement, the agency finds an apartment, signs the lease, and covers rent and basic utilities. You arrive at your assignment with a place already waiting. No credit check, no security deposit, no scrambling to find a landlord willing to do a short-term lease. The unit is usually in a professionally managed complex within a reasonable commute of the hospital.
The trade-off is financial and practical. Because the agency absorbs the housing cost directly, your weekly paycheck is smaller than it would be under the stipend model. You also give up control: you can’t pick the neighborhood, the specific unit, or the amenities. Nurses who want to focus entirely on clinical work and skip the logistics tend to prefer this route. Nurses who want to maximize income usually don’t.
When You Take a Stipend Instead
Under the stipend model, the agency adds a set dollar amount to each paycheck earmarked for housing. You then find and rent your own place — a short-term apartment, an extended-stay hotel, a room in a shared house, whatever works. You sign the lease, pay the landlord, and manage the timeline yourself.
The financial appeal is straightforward. If your agency provides a $2,500 monthly housing stipend and you find a place for $1,800, you keep the $700 difference. As long as you maintain a qualifying tax home, the entire stipend, including that surplus, stays tax-free. This is why most experienced travel nurses prefer the stipend model when the numbers work in their favor.
The downside is risk and workload. You need to line up a move-in date with your contract start, negotiate with landlords who may not be used to short-term tenants, and handle your own rent payments. Some landlords require a security deposit of up to a full month’s rent, and that money may sit tied up until you move out.
How Much the Stipend Can Be
The stipend is not an arbitrary number the agency picks. The General Services Administration publishes per diem rates for every county in the United States, originally designed for federal employees on travel, and those rates set the ceiling for how much a staffing agency can pay you tax-free for lodging and meals. Your agency uses the GSA rate for the specific location of your assignment.
For fiscal year 2026, which runs October 2025 through September 2026, GSA kept per diem reimbursement rates at the same level as FY 2025.1GSA. GSA Releases FY 2026 CONUS Per Diem Rates for Federal Travelers A standard rate applies to most locations across the continental United States. Roughly 300 higher-cost areas, including San Francisco, New York City, and Boston, have individually calculated rates that run significantly higher. You can look up the exact rate for any assignment location on the GSA per diem site.2GSA. Frequently Asked Questions, Per Diem
The IRS also allows a simplified “high-low” method. For the period beginning October 1, 2025, the high-cost locality rate is $319 per day and the rate for all other areas is $225 per day, with a portion allocated to meals and the remainder to lodging.3IRS. Special Per Diem Rates – Notice 2025-54 Any stipend amount that exceeds the applicable GSA rate for your assignment location becomes taxable income.
The Meal Stipend Is Separate
Housing isn’t the only stipend in a typical travel nursing package. Most contracts also include a separate allowance for meals and incidental expenses, often called the M&IE stipend, which covers food, tips, and small daily costs while you’re away from your tax home. Like the housing stipend, it stays tax-free as long as you maintain a qualifying tax home and the amount doesn’t exceed the GSA rate for your assignment location.2GSA. Frequently Asked Questions, Per Diem When you’re comparing contract offers, add the housing and M&IE stipends together to see the full tax-free portion of the package, then set that against the base hourly rate to see what you’re actually earning.
Keeping the Stipend Tax-Free
Every tax-free dollar depends on one thing: you must maintain a tax home. Federal law makes travel expenses, including lodging, deductible only when you are working “away from home.”4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 162 – Trade or Business Expenses For travel nurses who move from assignment to assignment with no single regular workplace, the IRS applies a three-factor test.5IRS. Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
- You perform some work or business in the area of your main home and use that home for lodging while doing so.
- You pay for housing at your permanent home (mortgage, rent, or utilities) while also paying for temporary housing at your assignment location.
- You have not abandoned the area: family members live there, you return regularly, or you have historical ties.
Satisfy all three and the IRS treats your permanent residence as your tax home. Satisfy two and you may still qualify depending on circumstances. Satisfy only one and the IRS treats you as an itinerant worker whose tax home is wherever the current assignment is, and every dollar of your housing and meal stipends becomes taxable income. Losing tax home status can cut the value of your stipends by roughly 20 to 30 percent once federal and state income taxes hit. Keep copies of your home lease or mortgage statements, utility bills showing ongoing service, and any other proof you maintain that residence year-round.
The One-Year Limit
Even with a solid tax home, federal law caps how long you can work in one area before the IRS considers it your new tax home. A work assignment that exceeds one year is treated as indefinite rather than temporary.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 162 – Trade or Business Expenses Once it’s indefinite, any amount your employer pays toward living expenses is taxable, even if labeled a travel allowance.5IRS. Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
The rule works off your realistic expectation when you accept the assignment. If you initially expect to work an area for under a year and later extend past 12 months, your stipends become taxable from the point your expectation changes, not retroactively from day one.6IRS. Topic No. 511, Business Travel Expenses If your total time in the same metropolitan area exceeds 12 months within a 24-month window, the IRS may reclassify your stipends. Resetting the clock generally requires leaving that area for a full 12 months.
The 50-Mile Rule Is Not the IRS’s
Many travel nurses hear that assignments must be at least 50 miles from home to qualify for tax-free stipends. That is not an IRS rule. Publication 463 requires that you need to “sleep or rest to meet the demands of your work while away from home,” with no specific distance threshold.5IRS. Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses The real requirement is that you actually incur duplicate living expenses. The 50-mile figure comes from internal agency policies and from hospitals that want to distinguish travel nurses from local per-diem staff. Those are business rules, not tax rules.
Ask Your Agency About the Accountable Plan
For your stipends to be excluded from taxable income, the agency must pay them through what the IRS calls an accountable plan. This is not something you set up; it’s a structure the agency must follow, with three requirements: the expenses must relate to your work, you must substantiate them within a reasonable time, and you must return any reimbursement that exceeds substantiated expenses.5IRS. Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses Most agencies handle this by setting stipends at or below GSA rates and requiring you to attest that you’re maintaining a tax home. If the agency doesn’t use an accountable plan, or if you can’t demonstrate a qualifying tax home, the stipends are treated as regular wages subject to income tax and payroll withholding.7IRS. Adjusted Gross Income Defined 26 CFR 1.62-2 Ask how a prospective agency structures its reimbursement plan before you sign.
What Happens to Your Housing if the Contract Ends Early
Travel contracts get canceled or shortened, sometimes with little warning, and if you’ve already signed a lease or prepaid rent, recovering that money can be hard. You may have already paid a full month’s rent plus a security deposit, and a first-week cancellation leaves you liable for the housing costs with no assignment income behind them. Most travel contracts do not include provisions to reimburse you for housing losses caused by a cancellation.
To limit exposure, look for month-to-month or week-to-week rentals rather than fixed-term leases. If you do sign a lease, ask about early termination clauses before committing. Some nurses use extended-stay hotels for the first few weeks of an assignment and move to a cheaper apartment once the contract feels stable.
There’s a related trap on missed shifts. Many agencies calculate the housing stipend on an hourly basis, not as a flat weekly amount. Miss a shift for illness or personal reasons and the agency may reduce your stipend proportionally for those hours. If the hospital cancels a shift for low census, most agencies continue paying the stipend for that day, but the specifics depend entirely on your contract. Read the section on missed or partial shifts before you sign.
Finding a Place Once You Take the Stipend
Once you accept the stipend option and confirm a start date, the clock starts. Most travel nurses use short-term rental platforms, extended-stay hotels, or housing groups aimed at traveling healthcare workers. These options typically offer the month-to-month flexibility that lines up with contract lengths. Furnished units are popular because they eliminate moving furniture for a few months, and landlords may ask for a copy of your employment contract to verify income and length of stay.
Sign a formal short-term rental agreement even for brief stays. It protects both sides, and it also serves as documentation of your duplicate living expenses if the IRS ever questions your tax home. Keep copies of every lease, rent receipt, and utility bill from both your assignment location and your permanent home. In an audit, the IRS may ask for proof of duplicate expenses going back several years, and that paper trail is your primary defense.