Why I am against the section 8 program and the like social programs!

Part 3




The Boston Globe noted in April 1993 the disruption caused by Section eight renters living across the street from Mayor Raymond Flynn:
"The subsidized tenants living in the house across the street were nuisances, allegedly using drugs and making loud and threatening noises, but little could be done about it. The landlord had paid no attention. The housing organization that provided the subsidy had thrown up its hands; federal rules forbade it from removing the family from the program.


"In other cities, Section 8's links to crime and declining property values have become political hot potatoes. In August 1994, the adverse impact of subsidized housing in eastern New Orleans became a major issue in a race for the Louisiana legislature. Candidate Louis Ivon called for a moratorium on additional Section 8 housing until the program was reformed to better protect surrounding homeowners and the tenants themselves."




It is a damaging program. Which cheats the American taxpayer causing the deficit to continue to go up and up. Most of the recipients on the program allow people to live in the home not on the lease so their income is never counted. These tax-cheats get away with this time and again. I once spoke to a Government official about this very issue and was told they have no way of knowing who is in the home.

Americans have become feed-up and want change.

"In Haledon, New Jersey, a public meeting on Section 8 exploded. The Record , a local newspaper, reported:
"The meetings were as rancorous as any ever held in the borough. Residents denounced their neighbors in federally subsidized housing, accusing them of ruining property values and bringing a bad element to the borough. The two meetings held to protest the 'problem' were standing room only."


We are now into this experiment over 40 years and it is obvious it does not work, yet our law makers do not want to be proved wrong or apologize for the failure so they keep throwing money into these social programs.

"When 441 new Section 8 vouchers were proposed for St. Louis in late 1991, St. Louis Alderman Jack Garvey complained: "I do want to get funding but I don't want to put the neighborhoods in my ward at risk with a program that is ruinous." After a $35 million public housing/Section 8 plan for St. Louis was approved in February 1992, St. Louis Alderman Marit Clark promised to "go to war" if Section 8 landlords did not evict trouble-making tenants. Clark also stated: "I get as many complaints from my black constituents as I do from whites [about trouble-making Section 8 tenants]." This past January, Alderman Paul Beckerle publicly protested that neighborhoods throughout his ward were being dragged down by a crime wave generated by Section 8 clients who were recently moved into the area. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch , in a March 18 article entitled "Housing Subsidies Set Off Exodus" (of middle-class homeowners), reported that, as a result of Section 8 subsidies, "crime has soared" and a growing number of homeowners say Section 8 is undermining their neighborhoods. From the Shaw neighborhood to the Hi Pointe neighborhood to the Dutchtown South area, people want the government to keep a closer eye on Section 8 landlords and tenants."
Lt. Joseph Richardson of the St. Louis Police Department declared of one batch of Section 8 renters:
"There is evidence of drugs being sold there, and ample evidence of gang activity responsible for the drug activity. These are terrible neighbors. No one would want to live next door to them."
Members of the neighborhood loudly protested but, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatchnoted:
"Both sides [of the controversy] agree that the rules for the Section 8 subsidized housing program make it difficult to get rid of troublesome tenants. Section 8 recipients can't be punished — by losing their eligibility for rent subsidies, for example — for bad behavior."


It is obvious that a neighborhood change does not change the person. If the soul was corrupt in the housing project they will be the same person in an upscale community.

James Bovard is the author of Shakedown (Viking Press, 1995) and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martin's Press, 1994). Stated "Federal rental subsidies should be abolished. Giving subsidies to allow selected welfare recipients to live the high life is an insult and an injustice to all working Americans."


If the individual has nothing invested in the new home the same attitude will be with the new address. Paying someones rent does not help a person achieve a better life if they do not understand what a better life is.


I have experienced section 8 properties in my neighborhood and in 2010 I see the same picture as Alderman Jack Garvey complained about in 1991. My neighbor would throw trash on the street in-front of her own home, despite trash cans at bay, the grass would go uncut, and cursing and unruly conduct was away of life, a lack of respect to me and my family was the continued mindset. They even had a friend living there who died of a drug overdose I was told. When he lived there it was 8 people living in the 3 bedroom home. Complaining to the landlord did nothing to bring changes. But just created a hostile environment for me as I was blamed for being a trouble maker for bringing the issues to the landlord. To date the recipients are still in that home as HUD looks the other way and continues to pay this problem landlord. This is a story almost everywhere section 8 and project based housing is the norm.

Government Funded Housing has historically depressed even more, the most depressed areas. And has made once tranquil neighborhoods crime ridden.


Most Fortune 500 companies would never open for business in communities that have majority section 8 renters or a huge population of Government projects, therefore jobs and money that could go to the already struggling economy is not there.

Furthermore, really you could not blame them, most people refuse to shop or doing anything in such places, as historically they have not been managed properly and are unsafe.

Take Homewood a Pittsburgh neighborhood for instance, an extremely violent place where gangs rule fighting for the lucrative drug trade that is always is apart of such communities.

Almost all business have left. Homewood has over 80% section 8 properties and a huge government project complex. Sadly a lot of the media focus has been on the tenant being a ruinous seed but the property owner is the one giving the person a place to dwell and continues to look the other way as violence and crimes gets out of control. Housing those who would deal in narcotics, be apart of gangs and more.


Studies have shown that time and again such section 8 landlords could careless if the tenant deals drugs uses drugs, or anything outrageous. The questions is why is the Government looking the other once again but now in regular neighborhoods?


Therefore change must come at the federal level we need to persuade our legislators change must come to this program. My petition is meant to bring real change, and weed out the trouble makers altogether.


No community is immune to this issue, no matter where you live as the economy worsens and more and more homes are foreclosed on many of them become Government owned. Some areas that were filled with new homes that went for over $500.000 are now Government owned as builders have gone bust. Some of those very houses could easily become project based Government funded housing. Moreover a homeowner who pays a mortgage on a $500.000 home could live next to a section 8 renter. Furthermore builders that find such properties hard to sell and need to make mortgage payments could rent them to section 8 recipients due to the federal Government paying huge amounts for rent. Studies have shown that because the section 8 renter has nothing invested in the property they many times just destroy it. And if they are coming to the property via the program which was intended for low-income people how could they do the up keep for such an elaborate home.

According to Solomon Moore a writer for the New York Times "Law enforcement experts and housing researchers argue that rising crime rates follow Section 8 recipients to their new homes", additionally

"The foreclosure crisis gnawing away at overbuilt suburbs has accelerated that migration, and the problems. Antioch is one of many suburbs in the midst of a full-blown mortgage meltdown that has seen property owners seeking out low-income renters to fill vacant homes. The most recent Contra Costa County records available show that from 2003 to 2005, the number of Section 8 households in Antioch grew by 50 percent, to about 1,500 from 1,000. The Section 8 program is designed to encourage low-income tenants to settle in middle-income areas by subsidizing 60 percent of their rent. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development issued 50,000 more vouchers for suburban relocation's in 2007 than in 2005, bringing the total number of renter families to 2.1 million.Federal officials and housing experts say that the increase in vouchers was offset by people being forced out of federal housing projects that closed and by renters moving into foreclosed properties. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy and research group, 30 percent to 40 percent of residents in foreclosed properties were renters, many of whom have since sought federal assistance. Sociologists have long claimed that leaving behind high-crime, low-employment neighborhoods for the middle-class suburbs buoys the fortunes of impoverished tenants. An article in the July/August edition of The Atlantic Monthly, however, cited findings by researchers at the University of Memphis that crime in Memphis appeared to migrate with voucher recipients. More broadly, a 2006 Georgia Institute of Technology study found that every time a neighborhood experienced three foreclosures per 100 owner-occupied properties in a year, violent crime increased by approximately 7 percent."

I am against the section 8 program because simply put it makes a mockery of hard working Americans in their pursuit of the American dream and undermines it all together, The Federal Government for whatever reason let the projects get so out of control that they had to do something fast and tearing them down was an easy fix. Moreover they felt mainstreaming the residents into suburbia was the away to bring balance. But all this did was make our deficit even worst. While it rewards those that choose failure. And gives money to even more derelict landlords, it does not change or balance neighborhoods because the true wealthy just leave. Creating more and more slums. And destroying more and more jobs in that community. The section 8 program needs to be repealed all together as it keeps the poor poor, if they try to achieve they will lose their housing this keeps anyone on the program from trying to better themselves.

Obama never once in any of his speeches addressed this issue nor crime in the neighborhoods which is unfair to those who live there and cannot afford to leave, people who are good taxpaying citizens that pursued the American dream with hard honest work which have found their community changed over-nite folks that pay property taxes and via hard work built an once great community now having to deal with lower property values and wicked crime, instead of being aided by the Federal Government they have been fleeced by it.

According to the New York Times article "several white women, all professionals who attend the same church and have lived in Antioch for 12 years or more, recently sat outside a Starbucks coffee shop and discussed how their declining home equity had trapped them in a city they no longer recognize."


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Jane White-Franco