If Some Have It Their Way ... No More Section 8

Just one of the many issues that no one seems to be discussing.  Not surprising that this was not mentioned during the debates.  plk

 

 

EDITORIAL DESK | October 16, 2004, Saturday
The War on Affordable Housing  

Summary:

Ideologues in the Bush administration would like to dismantle Section 8, the most successful public-and-private housing partnership in the history of the United States.

That's the only way to explain the destructive policies emanating from the Housing and Urban Development Department, which has been hammering at Section 8 all year.

The conflicting signals and general aura of hostility have convinced housing authorities around the country that they need to defend themselves by avoiding new commitments and cutting back on their old ones.

Even worse, the developers who have counted on Section 8 money to build affordable housing for the poor, the elderly and the disabled now think that they can no longer trust this program.

Republican lawmakers whose districts are being hurt have kept quiet in the name of party solidarity.

But this posture of loyal complicity will be difficult to maintain as the housing crisis deepens, which it surely will if HUD continues along its current course.

A landmark program, Section 8 has produced affordable housing for needy Americans since the Nixon years.

It works this way: instead of doing the construction itself, the government guarantees subsidies for rents in the private market.

Families, most of them at or below the poverty level, pay 30 percent of their incomes toward rent, and Section 8 vouchers pay the rest.

At the moment, the program covers about two million people, a majority of them elderly or in families with children.

Unable to dismember the Section 8 program directly, HUD has chosen to destabilize it with a series of rule changes and budget maneuvers that are being felt from coast to coast.

After an outcry from Congress, he retreats to lesser cuts that leave the program diminished, housing authorities confused and the general public mistakenly believing that the status quo has been regained.

The latest incident, laid out by The Times's David Chen, came after HUD released a vaguely worded and irrational proposal that involved reducing the value of housing vouchers for poor residents in some of the most expensive housing markets in the country.

The proposed change was widely thought to have been rescinded after housing advocates and lawmakers raised a fuss.

Faced with the prospect of Section 8 vouchers that pay less than fair-market rents, they have made it clear that they will simply refuse to deal with the program, especially in tight markets where they can pick and choose tenants.

The insanity of this ideologically driven attack on Section 8 is underscored in a bipartisan book -- written by two Republicans and two Democrats -- just out from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. The authors include two former housing secretaries: Jack Kemp, a Republican, and Henry Cisneros, a Democrat. The book argues convincingly that the country is sacrificing both families and neighborhoods by hacking away at the most successful housing program in history.

The book, ''Opportunity and Progress,'' calls for restoring the sane bipartisan effort that produced the federal housing program in the first place. Most significantly, the authors urge Congress to insulate the housing program from partisan sniping by creating a national trust fund. Modeled on similar programs that work well at state and local levels, that national fund would be used to build, rehabilitate and preserve 1.5 million affordable apartments.

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