"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Jeez, how can it possibly be a good idea?
If I'm not mistaken, I believe it was Bush's idea...
Perhaps, he's issued secret orders for bombs to be dropped on these Section 8 homes once the poor people move in. For his "amusement", of course...
Section 8 vouchers does neither. All they do is perpetuate slumlords and impoverish neighborhoods.
It’s been going on for years. Techwood Homes was the first Federal housing project, opened by FDR in 1936 (-ish); it was torn down before the 1996 Olympics, replaced with the Olympic village (now dorms for Georgia Tech and Georgia State) and mixed-income apartments.
East Lake Meadows, one of the worst projects in the area, was razed 8 or 9 years ago and replaced with a mixed-income community. The nearby golf course, once Bobby Jones’ home course, was revitalized and has hosted at least one PGA championship (I don’t follow golf) and a ton of pro-am and charity tournaments. I have several friends who’ve bough houses in East Lake, in areas where none of us would want to be caught after dark just a decade ago.
It’s not just Atlanta. Chicago’s Cabrini Green, one of the largest, most ambitious and most infamously drug-, crime- and gan-riddled projects, is no more.
As I’ve been saying for years, the War on Poverty is over, and we won. Our “poor” have color TVs, two cars and air conditioning. Their primary nutritional problem is not malnutrition, but obesity.
Housing projects made sense when the problem was a lack of decent, basic shelter, when people were living in shanty towns with leaky roofs, no running water, and third-world sanitation. Food stamps made sense when the problem was hunger — literally, folks suffering severe and chronic ailments from malnutrition.
Those days are gone. The problem today is not a lack of food or shelter, but a lack of family and community. Housing projects are nothing but stockyards for a permanent underclass, grim places devoid of much hope for the future. Children who grow up there grow up with no positive role models, because by definition success means leaving the projects. The only folks who have any material success, who have anything interesting going on, are the pimps, drug-dealers and gang-bangers.
Getting poor families into real neighborhoods gives those kids examples to follow. Folks who get up in the morning and go to work, and reap the rewards. Whether they’re on Indian reservations, in urban housing projects, or in the Appalachian backwoods, what perpetually poor families need is integration to the American mainstream — it may be too late for some of the adults, but at least the children can see that there is a better life within their reach, and the way to get to it is to stay in school and work for it.
And not to put a damper on FR’s favorite pastime, but sometimes an idea makes so darn much sense that it ceases to be partisan. Enterprise zones were Jack Kemp’s pet project as Bush 41’s HUD secretary, and were then adopted enthusiastically by the Clinton administration. Atlanta’s mayors, city council members and housing board members have been almost all Democrats, but they’ve been supported in this new direction by both Republicans and Democrats at the county, state and federal level. It’s a rare and heartening example of folks wiling to admit that something works and get behind it, even if the other guy thought of it.
It's hard for me to tell if you simply forgot the < /sarc > tag or if you're from another dimension.
You haven't lived until you've lived near one of these "Section 8 families".
If ever there has been an attempt to define "hell on earth" this would be among my top three definitions.
You can't "create" a civilized homeowner out of a "family" used to getting everything for free with no personal stake, responsibily or effort on their part...
Never could. Never will.
All you can accomplish is to spread filth and crime more "democratically". I hope you like pit bulls...