August 13, 2004
WELFARE REFORM CONTINUES:
Unlike welfare, Section-8 vouchers have remained an open-ended entitlement: no time limit applies to them. For this reason, they facilitate, just as welfare once did, the creation of single-parent households—families most at risk of long-term poverty and dependency and in which children disproportionately fail to flourish. Teen mothers clearly have been turning to Section 8s to start their own single-parent families. Between April 2002 and April 2003, 16,206 new voucher families were headed by people 21 or younger. Overall, out of the 1 million or so non-elderly, non-disabled Section-8 households, single parents head 783,000.
The vouchers also discourage recipients from going out and getting jobs. Section-8 regulations require that three out of four vouchers go to households earning 30 percent or less of a region’s median income. The tenant portion of rent is capped at 30 percent of their income, which in effect means that many of these low-income Section-8 families pay miniscule amounts of rent. Since households must re-qualify for the program every year, if dirt-poor voucher families want to keep receiving housing aid or avoid paying more in rent, they need to keep their income way below the regional median—that is, they need to avoid work, or at least avoid reporting income. Getting married to a wage earner also makes little economic sense, since a recipient risks losing her entitlement—it’s a classic perverse incentive. Says one HUD official: “Housing authorities tell us all the time about voucher holders who quit their job the day before they have to re-qualify for eligibility.”
Not only do the Section-8 vouchers hurt their intended beneficiaries by trapping them in dependency, they also damage neighborhoods and cities. Voucher holders have concentrated in working-class and lower-middle-class urban or inner-ring suburban neighborhoods, often home to minority families that have worked hard to escape the inner city and its attendant pathologies. (Eleven out of 25 cities that HUD surveyed had neighborhoods in which voucher holders made up 25 percent or more of the population.) As the poor, disorganized households move into these borderline neighborhoods, they bring with them the social problems of the ghetto, including crime and poverty, which the hard working families thought they had left behind. Small wonder established residents of new, Section-8-created ghettoes in south suburban Chicago and Prince George’s County, Maryland have protested vehemently the Section-8 vouchers that are destabilizing their neighborhoods and lowering their property values.
Given what we know about Section 8s, it would be best if the Bush administration simply put an unambiguous federal time limit on vouchers and worked to phase the program out entirely. But a term limit plan would not likely clear Congress in its current make up—Democrats would undoubtedly filibuster such a measure even if it could win a majority. Consequently, the administration has cleverly designed a reform, the “Flexible Voucher Plan,” that gives the local housing authorities that administer Section 8s a powerful incentive to make the vouchers less of an entitlement and bring housing policy more in line with our post-welfare-reform social policy.
Even better would be a plan that allowed them to use vouchers to buy their own places.
Husocks subjective article is hardly a comprehensive report on Title 8: An important policy aimed at relieving a segment of our American society which have the least possible opportunities available to them.
Nevermind the various studies which show that low income people are very interested in self-sufficiency. Husocks premise to limit Title 8 vouchers and it's terms suggests that "Flexible Vouchers" is the social panacea to raging immorality allegedly enjoyed by low income families. The unsubstantiated claim that low income families are dependent because they have affordable housing and are content to be poor is petty justification for the creation of a convoluted 'flexible' program without credible study. Under this implied 'panacea program', what possibilities are created for those living with poor education systems and decaying neighborhoods? Just how does this program increase worthwhile opportunity while decreasing rising homelessness? So, based on Husocks, a sence of urgency spawned from the "your times up!" stipulations without safety nets or viable supports is the golden egg? Simplistic solutions to complex social issues is a fools game.
Just taking a look at the easily accessible Urban Institutes research. Did Husock choose to ignore the potential of Title 8 Vouchers? There are success stories which have allowed families to live in "opportunity" neighborhoods. Low income American families who want better jobs, training and education, low crime rates, ect. Given viable opportunities, low income people can improve much to Husocks surprise, no doubt. [see Women's Institute for Policy Research, "Job Training and Education Fight Poverty", April 2002]
The article also fails to mention aggravating factors such as the current unemployment and income reports; the ongoing decrease in jobs, the increase in competition for low paying positions by a illegal immigrant force, shrinking earnings, higher rent (taking 50% or more in low wage earners income) and run away medical costs.
",,,,many workers earning less than what it takes to lift a family above the poverty line. In other words, the [last economic] boom didn't last long enough to bring more people into better circumstances. Now, in the current recovery, there has been brisk growth again, as well as high productivity and job creation. But so far, wages at the low end haven't budged much. Many of today's economic gains are flowing to profits and efficiency improvements, and the job market isn't tight enough yet to lift pay for average workers, much less for those on the bottom." [ "Working...And Poor. In today's cutthroat job market, the bottom rung is as high as most workers will ever get. But the political will to help them seems a long way off. By Michelle Conlin and Aaron Bernstein]
"Low-wage workers are relying on public assistance to make ends meet. Low-wage employers are essentially shifting their labor costs onto the public," [ Carol Zabin, research director of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.]
"Pay raises for many low- and moderate-income jobs generally aren't keeping up with soaring housing costs, with workers like janitors and sales clerks most often feeling the pinch, said a study being released Tuesday by an affordable housing coalition." [AP report of National Housing Conference: http://www.nhc.org/nhchome.htm]
" In many places, rents have risen or tenants' incomes have fallen since last August, making [Title 8] funding based on last year's data inadequate to cover the costs of all vouchers currently in use.
....The housing voucher program was called the "linchpin" of federal housing policy by the bipartisan Millennial Housing Commission. Approximately 2 million low income families, seniors and people with disabilities use vouchers to make up the difference between the cost of a modest apartment and what they can afford to pay in rent each month. Each voucher holder typically pays 30% of household income towards rent. The median length of time that a person uses a voucher is 3.08 years. " [ Kim Schaffer of National Low Income Housing Coalition; President's key homelessness initiative to be considered at hearing]
Rather than describing a noble struggle as an opportunity to improve, Husocks paints a solicitous broad stroke of failure. His attacks mimic the elitist movement which indulge in self-serving political agendas rather than take a conservative compassionate approach. What's constructive about destroying the last vestige of human dignity by employing prejudicial suppositions to legislate moving funds from one pocket of mercy into another pocket of who knows what end? Husocks wants us to bank on a program which has little chance of success before the next electoral session.
From National Low Income Housing Coalition wesite, you can find eight serious and intelligent considerations to decry the outrageous burden put on low income Americans by the "Flexible Voucher Program". I hope that people here will read carefully their reports.
"It appears that the Bush Administration's policy on affordable housing is to make the affordability crisis worse for those who can afford housing the least," NLIHC President Sheila Crowley said after reviewing the budget released today. "The President has taken the country into an ever deepening deficit with reckless tax cuts, and now he wants to start digging his way out by making life harder for those who have the least. Outrage is the only rational response." [ www.nlihc.org. ]