Posted on 07/05/2005 10:47:31 AM PDT by marylandrepub1
LEGISLATION PENDING in Congress that would convert a popular federal rent-assistance program into a fixed grant program has public housing authorities around the country worried - and with good reason. Under the legislation, public housing agencies would be limited by caps in the number of poor people they could help, and unable to move thousands off waiting lists for subsidized housing into affordable apartments. Given the nationwide shortage of affordable housing and other recent funding cuts to federal public housing programs, changes to the rent-assistance program known as Section 8 are sure to worsen the problem and force people to spend more on rent or live in substandard housing.
The bill in Congress comes on the heels of three years of funding-formula changes in the Section 8 program that have exacerbated the housing crisis in communities around the country. According to the Council on Large Public Housing Authorities, an advocacy organization, housing agencies have been forced to make retroactive budget cuts, lower rent payments, cut the number of rent vouchers they distribute and freeze voucher waiting lists. Landlords who participated in the program are bailing out and no longer accepting the vouchers as payment. Investors have withdrawn from affordable-housing developments supported by the program.
The voucher program has worked well for more than 30 years and has received high marks from the White House Office of Management and Budget. It has helped millions of low-income families live in affordable housing that meets federal living standards, and helped the federal government ease the national housing crisis by allowing housing authorities to use the private housing market.
The program is far from broken; lawmakers don't need to fix it.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Unfortunately Howard County Maryland passed a law making it illegal to reject these people directly(but they can still do credit checks.) This has wrecked the apartments.
This is exactly what will make the program work. Require the Section 8 recipient to pay a large >50 % proportion of their rent. Only the motivated will take advantage of the program. When taxpayers pay the entire rent there is no ownership or motivation for the recipient to value the rental unit. Libs are clueless.
Why don't you caring liberals take in these people? You can rent them a room instead of using 'our' money to wreck our neighborhoods.
"Next Store?" Are you sure you don't mean "next door?"
Yup. The voucher program has destroyed one neighborhood after another.
I think all libs should be sentenced to live next door to a section 8 rental.
Long term assistance ONLY for disabled and elderly.
Two fellows in the neighborhood, both good hearted people wanting to help folks out, rented their homes to poor people under Section 8.
Both had their homes wrecked.
In one case one of the "visitors" had shot a hole in the roof one night, and in the other case the family of 12 was actually a family of 15, with "older members" who were professional burglars.
Those guys wrecked my window screens trying to break in.
This is why Section 8 landlords have bailed out.
Our plan is that the next neighbor to even think about it will be quickly kidnapped and shipped back to his own home country where he can be reminded what it was he didn't like about people who do not respect law nor person.
BTW, just about everybody here is an immigrant, so they know the deal.
I don't think they should live in stores.
Section 8 is being cut? Good.
But what is being done about the HUD home ownership program? Bush administration implemented that, and now my folks have to live next to ex-cons and drug addicts who "own" their home (subsidized by taxpayers) and cannot be kicked out, even when they harrass their neighbors.
I'm waiting for that to be cut.
Oooh, its popular, can't touch it now.
If the Baltimore Sun wants Federal programs to be popular, the program should be converted to driving around blighted neighborhoods and throwing wads of cash to the clamoring throngs. That would be popular, and be essentially the same thing as Section 8, but with a lot less administrative cost.
Um, because the same liberals penned zoning and tax laws that make it extremely difficult?
Just a guess. ;-)
Excellent point.
My in-laws have a fairly large stock (> 30) of rental properties that could be characterized as lower-working-class in nature. They built up this little nest egg through hard work and thrift over many years, as sort of a second "job" along with working full-time jobs in the medical care field (hospital lab manager and nurse, now both retired from those roles, still have the rental properties).
They were always very careful on checking out the background of potential renters, and always stayed away from getting involved in Section 8.
Smart people, my in-laws. Did I mention they are life-long Republicans?
I used to run a very large apartment complex that was trying to get rid of the last of it's Section 8 tenants. What a pain in the rear they were. We had one family that paid less than $100 for a $900 apartment and the kids would punch holes in all the doors, holes in the walls, tear up and destroy the carpet, cabinets, and practically everything else and the withhold their portion of the rent and we couldn't get the government portion until WE fixed the apartment. This happened over and over again for years.
The kids from this same family almost burnt their building up because she left the kids at home and they were playing with matches. We still couldn't get them out even after all that. The court looked after the tenants and let the landlords twist in the wind, backed up entirely by the state.
My wife was a property manager for a bunch of apartements in the Seattle area few years ago. One of them was probably 50% Section 8. There was one lady who paid $3 a month in rent. THREE DOLLARS! She would drive up in her Acura and pay with a $3 money order.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Oh, that's easy.
Call the cops. Be a PITA by calling them daily to complain about the traffic and the noise.
Take pictures, especially of license plates.
Make sure you write the media how the cops seem to be ignoring certain areas of the city.
"But what is being done about the HUD home ownership program? ...and now my folks have to live next to ex-cons and drug addicts who "own" their home ..."
In Maryland you have to live in a expensive neighborhood or this type of thing will happen. It only takes a couple of bad neighbors to destroy a neighborhood(the parents are scared of their kids.) In MD, housing values are doubling every few years, yet some neighborhoods have decreasing property values. Bush thinks that owning a home changes losers to responsible home-owners but that is simplistic liberal thinking. Worse, we have affordable housing initiatives pushed on the developers by the county.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Penguins don't come from next store, they come from the Ant-arctic.
""Long term assistance ONLY for disabled and elderly."
I even disagree with that. That is what the church is for. People will only rise to the level you expect them to rise."
Sometimes life intervenes. I have worked with the severely disabled and elderly, as well as the so-called 'dis-advantaged'. One size does not fit all.
While faith-based programs have a greater success rate than the govt. run, I have not seen 'the church' step in very much.
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