Unhousing the Poor
[After WW2 I worked briefly in a community center in Bethnal Green, East London, which had been major target of the Nazi blitz -- as a teen with teens. The city was still bursting with the energies of rebuilding affordable housing for all -- Council Houses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_house
Comparably after my college graduation I worked with American teens in the (no longer existing) Manhattanville Community Center in West Harlem. Still later we lived in Grant Houses (Apt. 14G, 430 W. 125th. St.) in the same area. What was manifest was that decent housing made all the difference in the quality of life of children growing up. Those who lived in the broken down tenements in West Harlem -- most then -- mainly died young and violently. Those living in the projects could do such basics as homework in peace and quiet, remain in school, graduate and get decent jobs and with them lives. Robert A. Taft:
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=T000009
who ran against Eisenhower for the presidency from his position as majority leader of the Senate was persuaded that subsidized public housing was a must after his family had nearly lost its fortune, trying to build affordable housing in Cincinnati. He became the critical supporter of public housing in this country who made it possible to build many housing projects (one in Harlem named for him) until Reagan halted such efforts. And so it goes -- downhill -- with the Bush administration -- back to the killing slum conditions of the 19th century! We are seeing a very different Republican Party now than the one that contained honest and decent conservatives back then. Ed Kent]
P.S. Columbia, are you listening?
....................................................................
AlterNet
June 6, 2005
Un-Housing the Poor
By Dan Frosch, AlterNet
In December 1998, Tarrah Leach's life finally hit rock
bottom. She was barely 17 years old, already a mother
of two small infant daughters, and hiding out in a
domestic shelter. She'd been married only a year, a
difficult year that the teenage couple spent first in a
homeless shelter and then in a small public housing
apartment in Lancaster, Ohio, a town some 32 miles
southeast of Columbus. And though Leach still loved her
childhood sweetheart, she could no longer tolerate his
abuse and beatings. So she took her kids and walked out
the door without a dollar to her name.
"By the time, I'd left him, I had this new family with
no money and no home to help me raise them," Leach
says.
Help, however, was around the corner. Leach received a
fresh start in life courtesy of the Department of
Housing and Urban Development and the Section 8 Housing
Choice Voucher program. The federal assistance program
enabled Leach to rent an affordable apartment in a safe
neighborhood, a decision that she says saved her life.
After waiting for two months, her family was able to
move into a quiet two-bedroom trailer, which she rented
for a reasonable $100 a month thanks to the HUD
voucher, as opposed to the market rate of $425.
The Section 8 program, created in 1974 during the Nixon
years, offers poor families a housing voucher to rent
an apartment or home put on the market by participating
landlords. With the voucher, a family only has to pay
30 percent of their adjusted income toward the rent,
with the local housing authority paying for the balance
with HUD money. Under HUD regulations, 75 percent of a
housing authority's vouchers must go to families making
30 percent or less of the median income in their area.
The program represents a vital lifeline for families
with extremely low incomes who get the opportunity to
move their family out of public housing in poor and
often dangerous neighborhoods. Currently, more than two
million families use Section 8 vouchers to pay a
subsidized rent.
The Department of Housing, however, is planning to cut
that lifeline.
Last month, Congress began hearings on two bills -- one
each in the House and Senate -- that threaten to
reorient federal assistance away from the families that
need it most. Specifically, the legislation would
double Section 8's existing median income cap to 60
percent, thereby allowing families who earn more to
qualify for these vouchers.
It also removes rules which ensure that families in
serious need receive the most assistance. Under the new
measure, local housing authorities are free to award up
to 90 percent of their vouchers to applicants that
qualify under the raised income cap -- allowing them to
dole out the majority of vouchers to families who earn
more and therefore pay more of the rent.
HUD, which drafted both pieces of legislation, is
framing this reorientation as a response to the rising
costs of a program that has jumped from $11 to $15
billion over the past three years. Last year, HUD cut
millions in Section 8 funding but restored some of it
after an outcry from housing authorities who said they
were being asked operate the program but deprived of
the funding required to do it.
If HUD is successful in its latest bid, success stories
like Tarrah Leach will likely become a faraway memory.
Thanks to Section 8, Leach was able to get her GED even
as she worked at WalMart, and later attended nursing
school on her days off. She eventually graduated with
honors and got her nursing license.
"I still would have been struggling, I wouldn't have
been able to go to school, to get the nursing job I
have now-not to mention paying rent, the bills and
taking care of my kids," she says. "It wouldn't have
happened without that voucher."
Low-income housing advocacy groups and some members of
Congress say that HUD's proposals will essentially
decimate its own program and unduly target the very
people it's supposed to help most. According to the
National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), the
impacts of the changes would be enormous: low income
families in need of vouchers will invariably be passed
over by cash-strapped housing authorities who will tend
to horde their funds by giving the vouchers to families
who make more money. Housing authorities have lost $2
billion in HUD funding over the past four fiscal years
and are in the midst of a serious budget crunch.
"It's as if HUD figured out the worst possible
solutions to low income housing problems and crammed
them into one bill," says Linda Couch, NLIHC's deputy
director. "The administration's goal here is clearly to
save cash. And it's at the expense of the people who
need housing the most."
The people most in need of HUD's assistance are often
black and Hispanic families, who account for 53 percent
of all vouchers a year, according to a recent Poverty
and Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) study.
Executive Director Philip Tegeler says the proposed
legislation could create a scenario where housing
authorities are denying vouchers to poor minorities
while giving them to slightly better off white families
in order to preserve their already depleted coffers. If
the legislation moves forward, PRRAC predicts that the
131,000 families of color served by Section 8 could
quickly be cut in half, and over the next decade,
hundreds of thousands of vouchers would be shifted away
from poor black and Hispanic applicants to less
impoverished whites.
"This lifting of the current income targeting is not
race neutral. And so the bill ends up having serious
civil rights consequences," Tegeler says. He also
points to the serious implications of another aspect of
HUD's proposal which would give housing authorities
more power in determining whether Section 8 families
can move out of a particular neighborhood -- a process
called "portability." The proposed restrictions will
make it much harder for black and Hispanic families to
move from ghettoes into areas with more opportunity,
further entrenching segregation in cities that are
already carved up by color lines.
HUD spokeswoman Donna White does not agree that the
proposal will push lower-income folks out of the
program.
"The bottom line is now they have options. If you make
32 percent of the median income in your area, why
should you be cut out of the program?" she says. "We
think that by giving the housing authorities more
options, more flexibility, as opposed to having follow
strict guidelines," housing authorities will be better
able to help the families in their area. White also
claims that this increased flexibility could help cut
down on waiting lists for vouchers, which can last up
to five years in major cities according to HUD.
HUD's argument, however, does not impress a number of
members of Congress who are opposed to the bill. A May
17 Congressional hearing before the House Financial
Services Committee provoked decided and bipartisan
opposition from numerous members, including Barbara Lee
(D-California), Julia Carson (D-Indiana) and
Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut). Shays was one of 20
members of Congress who wrote a letter on Apr. 29
urging the House Appropriations Committee to boost
funding for Section 8.
"While it is clear we need to take steps to reform the
Section 8, we can't forget how successful the program
has been," Shays said in an email response to AlterNet.
"I'm eager to work with the Financial Services
Committee to craft responsible legislation, but am
concerned [the bill] simply passes the buck to the
local housing authorities."
Among those testifying in front of Congress was Leach,
now 24 and a nurse at a convalescent home. She came all
the way from Ohio because she couldn't stand the
thought of another single mother having to endure what
she went through without any help.
"If it had not been for the Housing Assistance, I, as a
single mother, would not have been able to put a roof
over my children's heads. My children would have
suffered because I would have had to work all of the
time just to make ends meet to pay rent and utilities,"
she told the committee. "I ask that you consider my
story."
Dan Frosch is a New York-based journalist whose work
has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Source and
the Santa Fe Reporter.
(c) 2005 Independent Media Institute.
http://www.alternet.org/story/22106/
--
"A war is only just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.legendgames.net/blognews.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_house
Comparably after my college graduation I worked with American teens in the (no longer existing) Manhattanville Community Center in West Harlem. Still later we lived in Grant Houses (Apt. 14G, 430 W. 125th. St.) in the same area. What was manifest was that decent housing made all the difference in the quality of life of children growing up. Those who lived in the broken down tenements in West Harlem -- most then -- mainly died young and violently. Those living in the projects could do such basics as homework in peace and quiet, remain in school, graduate and get decent jobs and with them lives. Robert A. Taft:
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=T000009
who ran against Eisenhower for the presidency from his position as majority leader of the Senate was persuaded that subsidized public housing was a must after his family had nearly lost its fortune, trying to build affordable housing in Cincinnati. He became the critical supporter of public housing in this country who made it possible to build many housing projects (one in Harlem named for him) until Reagan halted such efforts. And so it goes -- downhill -- with the Bush administration -- back to the killing slum conditions of the 19th century! We are seeing a very different Republican Party now than the one that contained honest and decent conservatives back then. Ed Kent]
P.S. Columbia, are you listening?
....................................................................
AlterNet
June 6, 2005
Un-Housing the Poor
By Dan Frosch, AlterNet
In December 1998, Tarrah Leach's life finally hit rock
bottom. She was barely 17 years old, already a mother
of two small infant daughters, and hiding out in a
domestic shelter. She'd been married only a year, a
difficult year that the teenage couple spent first in a
homeless shelter and then in a small public housing
apartment in Lancaster, Ohio, a town some 32 miles
southeast of Columbus. And though Leach still loved her
childhood sweetheart, she could no longer tolerate his
abuse and beatings. So she took her kids and walked out
the door without a dollar to her name.
"By the time, I'd left him, I had this new family with
no money and no home to help me raise them," Leach
says.
Help, however, was around the corner. Leach received a
fresh start in life courtesy of the Department of
Housing and Urban Development and the Section 8 Housing
Choice Voucher program. The federal assistance program
enabled Leach to rent an affordable apartment in a safe
neighborhood, a decision that she says saved her life.
After waiting for two months, her family was able to
move into a quiet two-bedroom trailer, which she rented
for a reasonable $100 a month thanks to the HUD
voucher, as opposed to the market rate of $425.
The Section 8 program, created in 1974 during the Nixon
years, offers poor families a housing voucher to rent
an apartment or home put on the market by participating
landlords. With the voucher, a family only has to pay
30 percent of their adjusted income toward the rent,
with the local housing authority paying for the balance
with HUD money. Under HUD regulations, 75 percent of a
housing authority's vouchers must go to families making
30 percent or less of the median income in their area.
The program represents a vital lifeline for families
with extremely low incomes who get the opportunity to
move their family out of public housing in poor and
often dangerous neighborhoods. Currently, more than two
million families use Section 8 vouchers to pay a
subsidized rent.
The Department of Housing, however, is planning to cut
that lifeline.
Last month, Congress began hearings on two bills -- one
each in the House and Senate -- that threaten to
reorient federal assistance away from the families that
need it most. Specifically, the legislation would
double Section 8's existing median income cap to 60
percent, thereby allowing families who earn more to
qualify for these vouchers.
It also removes rules which ensure that families in
serious need receive the most assistance. Under the new
measure, local housing authorities are free to award up
to 90 percent of their vouchers to applicants that
qualify under the raised income cap -- allowing them to
dole out the majority of vouchers to families who earn
more and therefore pay more of the rent.
HUD, which drafted both pieces of legislation, is
framing this reorientation as a response to the rising
costs of a program that has jumped from $11 to $15
billion over the past three years. Last year, HUD cut
millions in Section 8 funding but restored some of it
after an outcry from housing authorities who said they
were being asked operate the program but deprived of
the funding required to do it.
If HUD is successful in its latest bid, success stories
like Tarrah Leach will likely become a faraway memory.
Thanks to Section 8, Leach was able to get her GED even
as she worked at WalMart, and later attended nursing
school on her days off. She eventually graduated with
honors and got her nursing license.
"I still would have been struggling, I wouldn't have
been able to go to school, to get the nursing job I
have now-not to mention paying rent, the bills and
taking care of my kids," she says. "It wouldn't have
happened without that voucher."
Low-income housing advocacy groups and some members of
Congress say that HUD's proposals will essentially
decimate its own program and unduly target the very
people it's supposed to help most. According to the
National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), the
impacts of the changes would be enormous: low income
families in need of vouchers will invariably be passed
over by cash-strapped housing authorities who will tend
to horde their funds by giving the vouchers to families
who make more money. Housing authorities have lost $2
billion in HUD funding over the past four fiscal years
and are in the midst of a serious budget crunch.
"It's as if HUD figured out the worst possible
solutions to low income housing problems and crammed
them into one bill," says Linda Couch, NLIHC's deputy
director. "The administration's goal here is clearly to
save cash. And it's at the expense of the people who
need housing the most."
The people most in need of HUD's assistance are often
black and Hispanic families, who account for 53 percent
of all vouchers a year, according to a recent Poverty
and Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) study.
Executive Director Philip Tegeler says the proposed
legislation could create a scenario where housing
authorities are denying vouchers to poor minorities
while giving them to slightly better off white families
in order to preserve their already depleted coffers. If
the legislation moves forward, PRRAC predicts that the
131,000 families of color served by Section 8 could
quickly be cut in half, and over the next decade,
hundreds of thousands of vouchers would be shifted away
from poor black and Hispanic applicants to less
impoverished whites.
"This lifting of the current income targeting is not
race neutral. And so the bill ends up having serious
civil rights consequences," Tegeler says. He also
points to the serious implications of another aspect of
HUD's proposal which would give housing authorities
more power in determining whether Section 8 families
can move out of a particular neighborhood -- a process
called "portability." The proposed restrictions will
make it much harder for black and Hispanic families to
move from ghettoes into areas with more opportunity,
further entrenching segregation in cities that are
already carved up by color lines.
HUD spokeswoman Donna White does not agree that the
proposal will push lower-income folks out of the
program.
"The bottom line is now they have options. If you make
32 percent of the median income in your area, why
should you be cut out of the program?" she says. "We
think that by giving the housing authorities more
options, more flexibility, as opposed to having follow
strict guidelines," housing authorities will be better
able to help the families in their area. White also
claims that this increased flexibility could help cut
down on waiting lists for vouchers, which can last up
to five years in major cities according to HUD.
HUD's argument, however, does not impress a number of
members of Congress who are opposed to the bill. A May
17 Congressional hearing before the House Financial
Services Committee provoked decided and bipartisan
opposition from numerous members, including Barbara Lee
(D-California), Julia Carson (D-Indiana) and
Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut). Shays was one of 20
members of Congress who wrote a letter on Apr. 29
urging the House Appropriations Committee to boost
funding for Section 8.
"While it is clear we need to take steps to reform the
Section 8, we can't forget how successful the program
has been," Shays said in an email response to AlterNet.
"I'm eager to work with the Financial Services
Committee to craft responsible legislation, but am
concerned [the bill] simply passes the buck to the
local housing authorities."
Among those testifying in front of Congress was Leach,
now 24 and a nurse at a convalescent home. She came all
the way from Ohio because she couldn't stand the
thought of another single mother having to endure what
she went through without any help.
"If it had not been for the Housing Assistance, I, as a
single mother, would not have been able to put a roof
over my children's heads. My children would have
suffered because I would have had to work all of the
time just to make ends meet to pay rent and utilities,"
she told the committee. "I ask that you consider my
story."
Dan Frosch is a New York-based journalist whose work
has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Source and
the Santa Fe Reporter.
(c) 2005 Independent Media Institute.
http://www.alternet.org/story/22106/
--
"A war is only just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.legendgames.net/blognews.asp
posted by Ed Kent at 7:39 AM
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