Every travel assignment forces one early decision: let the agency arrange housing, or take a stipend and arrange it yourself. The choice changes how much of the package reaches the nurse, how much risk the nurse carries, and how much of the first week is spent on logistics rather than on the unit.
Agency-placed housing
The agency finds and pays for accommodation, usually a furnished apartment or extended-stay unit, and the cost comes out of the same hourly bill rate that pays everything else. The nurse gives up the lodging stipend in exchange.
What it buys is certainty. Somewhere to sleep exists on day one, the lease and deposit are the agency's problem, and a cancelled assignment does not leave the nurse holding a rental agreement. What it costs is control: location, quality and whether the unit is shared are decided by someone else, and the agency has an obvious interest in spending less on housing than it withheld from the package.
Questions worth asking before accepting agency housing: how far from the facility, furnished to what standard, utilities and internet included or not, parking, pets, whether it is shared and how travellers are paired, what happens if a shared arrangement does not work, and what happens to the housing if the assignment is cancelled.
The stipend, and the number it is built from
The alternative is a fixed lodging allowance and the job of finding somewhere. Nurses who take the stipend and rent cheaply keep the difference, and if the tax conditions are met, they keep it untaxed.
The reference point is the federal per diem schedule. The General Services Administration publishes maximum lodging rates and meals and incidental expense rates for every locality in the country, and agencies work from those figures.
For the year that began on 1 October 2025 the standard rate for most of the continental United States is $110 a night for lodging and $68 a day for meals and incidentals: $178 a day, or $1,246 for a seven-day week if a package paid the federal maximum for both. Around 300 higher-cost localities carry larger rates, which is why the lodging component of an offer in an expensive city is genuinely bigger rather than a favour.
Two uses for that. It tells you roughly what an untaxed stipend can be worth in the place you are going. And an offer well below the published locality rate is an agency decision worth asking about, in the same way an unusually low package overall is.
The risk sits with the nurse. Deposits, a lease that outlasts a cancelled contract, a rental that is not as advertised, and the cost of a hotel while looking are all the nurse's to absorb.
The tax condition attached to both
A lodging stipend is untaxed only if the nurse is genuinely working away from a tax home, which requires duplicated living costs at that home and a real connection to it. A nurse who gives up their home base and lives assignment to assignment is an itinerant worker for tax purposes, and the stipend becomes ordinary taxable wages.
This catches people in one particular way. Taking the stipend and staying with family, in a camper, or in a cheap room is fine. Doing it while having no maintained home to be away from is not. The full test is set out in travel nurse taxes.
Finding short-term housing
Thirteen weeks is an awkward length: too long for a hotel, too short for a standard lease. The usual options are furnished corporate or extended-stay units, short-term rental platforms with monthly rates, month-to-month sublets, and rooms let by other nurses near large hospitals.
Practical points that recur. Monthly rates on short-term platforms are far below the nightly rate and are worth asking a host for directly. Anything requiring payment before a signed agreement, or a landlord who will not do a video walkthrough, deserves suspicion at a distance. Parking near an urban hospital can cost enough to matter. And housing arranged before the licence and credentials are confirmed is a bet on a start date that has not been confirmed either; see licensing a travel assignment.
How housing changes what an assignment is worth
Two assignments with identical packages are not worth the same if one is in a city where the lodging stipend covers a studio and the other in a city where it covers half of one. Local prices vary as widely as wages do, which is the same reason a state's average nurse pay says less than it appears to; see registered nurse pay.
The comparison that settles it is what remains weekly after housing, whichever route provides it.
Related
Sources
- Per diem rates. U.S. General Services Administration, lodging and meals and incidental expense rates by locality. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- GSA releases FY 2026 CONUS per diem rates for federal travelers. U.S. General Services Administration, 15 August 2025, for the standard rate and the number of non-standard areas. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses. Internal Revenue Service, on tax home and lodging while away from home. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- What is Travel Nursing? NurseRecruiter, on agency-arranged housing and stipends. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Ten questions you should ask your travel nurse recruiter. NurseRecruiter, 26 January 2017, on housing questions including shared accommodation. Accessed September 9, 2026.