THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 17, 1994 TAG: 9408170010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
More than $131 billion has been spent on Section 8 Project-Based Housing since its inception; yet the government is just now discovering that the program is trapping the poor in miserable conditions rather than finding them adequate housing. And the proposed solution of vouchers, touted by conservatives and liberals alike, has also been found to cause a backlash among the working poor who can't qualify for the generous handouts and is also loosing the criminal element into once safe neighborhoods. With such a track record, maybe it's time the government got out of the business altogether.
According to the House Government Operations subcommittee, which recently held hearings on the subject, 30 percent of the Section 8 projects are considered to be in ``wretched,'' substandard condition.
And 42 percent of that housing, for which tenants pay 30 percent of their income with the government paying the difference to the landlord up to ``market rate,'' is priced at least 140 percent above privately run apartments in the area where they are located. There are 1.5 million units covered by the program in 20,000 apartment complexes.
But tenants living in filthy conditions cannot move because, under the rules, they lose their housing subsidy if they change addresses. The money is tied to the apartment, not the tenant. And since the landlords who own the buildings know their tenants can't move, the owners have little incentive to make repairs or improvements. Result: Section 8 housing starts falling down.
Housing vouchers, which allow the poor to shop for housing in the regular rental market, has been proposed as a solution to this problem. But the social engineers of the Clinton Department of Housing and Urban Development have made a hash of the theory.
Assistant Housing Secretary Roberta Achtenberg decided there was no reason that folks in subsidized housing should not be able to live in high-priced suburbs if they liked. So vouchers worth as much as $1,300 per month have been issued in some places, enabling public-housing tenants to live in apartment complexes beyond the reach of many working Americans.
And, inevitably, vouchers have have found their way into the hands of the criminal element that terrorizes public-housing residents, enabling them to now begin terrorizing their new neighbors. Since endless HUD red tape makes it all but impossible to evict Section 8 tenants, private tenants flee and blight creeps in.
HUD has so successfully defied reform that an unusually wide chorus of critics is calling for previously unspeakable solutions. A report by the National Academy of Public Administration and the Maryland Department of Housing, for instance, recommended HUD be completely restructured or abolished altogether.
Public housing has proved costly for the taxpayers and positively dangerous for those who must live in it. People have little incentive to maintain the property when they have no stake in it. Congress would do the country a favor by simply handing title to existing public housing over to the tenants and getting out of the housing business altogether. by CNB