Housing vouchers can benefit local economy, federal official says in Cedar Rapids

The Cedar Rapids Gazette ^ | November 8, 2012 | Rick Smith

[2ndDivisionVet]

The city’s Civil Rights Commission has pushed to bring attention to housing discrimination based on how a tenant pays rent, including low-income tenants who qualify for and use Section 8 housing vouchers to help pay for housing.

At the commission’s Fair Housing Conference here on Thursday, the regional fair-housing director for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development took time to emphasize the value of the sometimes maligned “Section 8″ housing vouchers to both extremely low-income households and to the overall economy.

Betty Bottiger, who works in HUD’s regional office in Kansas City, Kan., noted that the agency’s “housing vouchers” no longer are called “Section 8 housing vouchers” by HUD.

Then Bottiger started: “This is what I think about this as a practical matter: If I’m a low-income mother with kids and I’m having trouble paying my rent and all my resources are going to rent and I don’t have enough money for shoes for the kids …”

She noted that the intent of the HUD voucher program is to limit to 30 percent the amount of a low-income household’s resources that goes to rent. The voucher then pays the remaining portion of the rent so the members of the household have money to meet other household needs, like food, shoes and clothes...

[2ndDivisionVet]

And that, children, is why we're $16 trillion dollars in the hole.

[The Working Man]

Ah yes... Help the local economy as we move the people you moved away from to your neighborhood to live next door to you and they will trash your neighborhood and cause you to spend more more money to repair it.

I’m from the Federal Government and I’m here to “help” you.

[2ndDivisionVet]

And as if those hundreds of billions of dollars every year come out of a magic box or from the housing fairy instead of working taxpayers and loans from Communist China.

[TigerClaws]

Exactly. Crime shoots up. Schools go to crap. Thugs on the street corners.

Section 8 takes the inner city problems and dumps them in the low crime areas. Stick it to The Man. Garbage thrown everywhere. Foot traffic. Total destruction by the locusts.

[noiseman]

A friend of mine has seen this first hand. The apartment complex he lives in has gone from a relatively upscale yuppie enclave to a near slum, and it has happened in direct proportion to the number of Section 8 residents that have moved in.

While he has at times struggled to pay rent and avoid being evicted, he has encountered Section 8 residents that have bragged, “They won’t throw us out cause we Section 8.” And they’re right. His management company has tried to rent to as many Section 8 folks as possible because (as they have admitted to him privately) “the government always pays.”

To add insult to injury, his rent keeps going up because the complex is 100% leased, in large part because of a government policy that results in responsible renters having to compete with government-subsidized leeches. Sound familiar?

[niteowl77]

His management company has tried to rent to as many Section 8 folks as possible because (as they have admitted to him privately) “the government always pays.”

It goes on in every Iowa city, and even some smaller towns. The urban landlords are subsidized now, just like the farmers have been for years. Anyone who doesn't think Iowa is now a majority welfare queen (in one form or another) state is willfully blind.

And it gets worse (as has been admitted to me privately, to borrow a phrase): all those nice, new "retirement" apartments springing up for seniors? The sustainable (think Agenda 21) planners - yes, we have them in Iowa - really don't plan on them being filled by grandmas and grandpas in perpetuity. Meshes suspiciously well with the death panels that everyone was assured won't happen, eh, what?

Hell on earth is never that far away.

Mr. niteowl77

[cgbg]

Just call them “love” vouchers.

“Love” polls well with focus groups. :-)

[matginzac]

“The TAXPAYER is NOT your baby’s daddy”

[hondact200]

is that like Food Stamps cause for the spending of $1.86 of every Food Stamp Dollar spent in the economy (According to Nancy Pelosi)

what is ironic in the county that I live in Michigan (Iron), MSHDA and HUD have spents millions on low income housing projects that are completed or will be completed in 2013. Two buildings for 18 units and 22 units of apartments with the main floor for businesses. The 18 unit is complete and occupancy is at 25%, with no business in the main floor. the second 22 unit is having difficulty obtaining contractors to do the work. the building being worked on has been left vacant for 32 years, so the inside has to be gutted and the entire roof has to be replaced. In 2010 asbestos removal was done at the cost of $1.5 million dollars.

Not enough people to meet the HUD requirements to get the buildings to be occupied. so the 30% of the income required requires the taxpayer to pay the additional amount for the renting the apartment (Average rent for the taxpayer funded amount is 600.00 average rent paid for the Section 8 recipient is 170.00 More government waste. No wonder the taxpayer is on the hook for trillions of dollars - the state and federal have no understanding of reality.

[AbolishCSEU]

I used to WORK for Section 8 as a clerk. The things I saw would raise the hair on the back of your neck! I had liberal leanings—until about two weeks into that job!!! I discovered Rush Limbaugh about the same time!!

Here’s a story about one of the locals who was a kid at the time I worked there. Her mother was on Section 8 with a plethora of biological extrusions; she being one of them:

http://www.whec.com/news/stories/S2833934.shtml?cat=566