I found the article linked below in a current legal publication, and found it very thought provoking and well written. I think it raises a whole bunch of thorny issues about class and race in our society. Anyone care to discuss? (hope the link works . . . .)
Here in Aus. we don’t have any such laws pertaining to public housing tenants (that I know of), and that is a jolly good thing too. That sort of arcane rule essentially would render many people homeless…I imagine that any private landlord would want prior references, and to hear that his prospective tenants were evicted from public accomodation would certainly not be in their favour!
Now on the issue of inequalities in general, where does one begin? The whole notion of ‘welfare’ is seen and debated from a ruling-class perspective, but as is pointed out in the article, it is the ruling-classes themselves who generally benefit most from such fiscal measures. While the poor are scapegoated for sucking from the public purse, it is more often the ‘invisible’ welfare in the form of tax concessions etc that gobble up most of the funds. Why aren’t all these income enhancing practices also included in the right-wing welfare crackdowns? Why are the unemployed, the single mother and the disabled (sorry if I’ve left anyone out) the one’s to bear the brunt of these rationalist approaches? Because they are the least powerful and there is nobody to protect their interests. And they are easy targets.
From your cite:
“One Strike For the Poor and How Many for the Rest of US?”
How about zero?
I was thrown out of my apartment so that it could become low income housing for people like Pearlie Rucker.
They did reimburse me for about half of my moving expenses, but to qualify for that money I had to remain in the building during about five months of major construction while they gave the building a new roof, new paint, all new carpeting, all new kitchen counters, all new refrigerators, all new dish washers, all new stoves, then revamped the heating system, added a security system with cameras to the garage and installed a sauna.
Unfortunately I make too much money to live in such a nice place.
If there is federally (HUD) subsidized housing in Austin, then the laws are there too. It’s national. It’s ruthless. It’s the law.
Hrmm, based on the fact that kambuckta is from Oz, I’d guess that the Aus. wasn’t refering to Austin.
The woman in the article was not punished for being poor, she was rewarded for it with a free apartment. Part of the deal for the free apartment was that those who live in the free apartment stay off drugs. She could not live up to that part of the agreement so she lost the free apartment. That is bad for her but good for those who live around her who have managed to stay off the drugs. They no longer have to live next to a druggie.
I think that I can add a little perspective here. First of all, as one who has worked closely in the HUD world for several years (both as tech support for property management software, as well as (briefly) a property manager for HUD buildings, I can tell you that in general this particular regulation is almost never invoked.
My experience has been that once a tenant is housed in a HUD building, it practically takes an act of congress to evict them. I would guess that there was a lot more going on with this tenant that has been reported in the story.
Keep in mind that once a building is a HUD building, it is almost impossible to change it back to regular (market rate) housing (a typical contract with HUD can be to the tune of 30 years or so). Also, the owners of a HUD subsidized building have absolutely no motivation to evict a tenant unless they are causing real problems. They get paid the same amount no matter who occupies a given unit. It is not as if, by evicting a subsidized the landlord will be able to move in higher paying renters.
What Puddleglum said.
If these people want to stay in their taxpayer provided housing, then they better follow the rules.
If they want to do drugs, or have drugs, then I guess they can get a place of their own, with their own money, just like any normal person would.
Ahhhh, the good old ‘honest taxpayer’ strikes his ugly head again!
And don’t you ‘normal’ people recieve tax concessions/rebates etc when purchasing a house?
Or is it only welfare when the poor person gets it?
And we know damn well they don’t deserve it…just look at them doing drugs and all.
I wouldn’t know as I can’t afford a house.
But we do have tax credits for renters. Unfortunately they are only for low income people. I make too much money for to qualify for that.
Actually Kambuckta, the homeowners interest exemption only allows homeowners to deduct interest payments. In other words, they are keeping THEIR OWN MONEY. Its not welfare
Unlike subsidized housing, which is paid for by the government stealing the earnings of those who work for a living, and giving it to pay for the housing of those who do not.
Barking Spider, I do not see any difference between an exemption and a subsidy, given that both provide a net benefit towards the WELFARE of the recipient. I understand where you’re coming from in terms of ‘Who Pays?’ but in the case of interest exemptions, it is still a case of the taxpayer paying because the govt. loses money that has to be then sourced from somewhere else.
Tax exemptions are not welfare. When a person receives money that is not theirs, that is welfare.
Also, theres no such thing as the gov. losing money. The government has no money to lose.
In other words, WELFARE is when someone RECEIVES something from the governmentl.
All those who are getting a tax break, and who are not getting as much money stolen by the government, are not getting welfare. They are merely keeping their own money which they earned.
Wow…I can’t believe some of the responses in this thread. Housing can be a very large percentage of one’s income, and for the “working poor”, it can be very difficult to manage to live at a sustainable level.
The draconian rules people are subject to in order to live in subsidized housing are absolutely unfair. One should be free to live in their home without fear of gov’t intrusion. I can light a doobie in my home without fear of getting kicked out. To deny someone the same right just because of the circumstances of their life strikes me as being unreasonable.
And the reasoning behind many of these evictions is appalling!
[ul][li]Pearlie Rucker is a 63-year-old great-grandmother whose mentally retarded daughter was caught with a crack pipe three blocks from the project. She was not using drugs in the apartment, and the grandmother wasn’t even aware of the drug use! This could lead to absurd situations: If a tentant living in Chicago has a son that visits New York and gets busted for drugs, the family could be evicted![/li]
[li]Willie Lees,a 71-year-old grandma, was evicted after her grandson was caught smoking pot in the parking lot.[/li]
[li]Herman Walker,a 75-year-old semi-paralyzed former preacher, got an eviction notice after it was discovered that his caretaker was stashing crack paraphernalia at his apartment. He was completely unaware of this.[/li][/ul]
This all smack of the “War on Drugs” being taken to an insane level. Most of the tenants were unaware of the drug use of their family member, and most of the use took place away from the apartment. The conservatives amongst us should be outraged at this latest incarnation of “The Nanny State”. This is regulation run amuk! But since it only affects the underclass, it’s OK. What if they passed a law that if your child was caught using drugs, the gov’t could sieze your house? I don’t think that would pass muster with the “law & order” crowd. But this is basically what’s going on in our nation’s housing projects!
Fair? or Ugly?
I’ll give up any and all rebates, local & mortgage tax deductions I receive from the gov’t if and when the gov’t gets out of the housing business.
Things like;
Section 8: Scandalous subsidies to small landlords
Public housing: More like warehouses for the poor.
Rent Control: Gov’t imposed available housing shortages causing demand to exceed supply and rents to artificially inflate for everyone.
Inane zoning laws: Screw Walter Cronkite’s view of the East River.
It’s time to phase out public housing and phase in vouchers for the needy.
JohnBck, I’m not familiar with the US Federal or State housing policies (I’m from downunder) so you might want to give a brief outline of the points you mentioned above.
But I’m not comfortable with the proposal of keeping govt. out of housing. The provision of decent affordable housing for everyone is, I believe, one of the tasks of the state. Leaving ‘the market’ to its own devices is generally not in the interests of those who are not active players in ‘the market’. While governments are notoriously inefficient and at times downright corrupt, we can at least vote them out of office next time. We do not have the same privilege in a market-directed economy. Housing for the poorer members of the community would revert to slums, such as were rife in the days when ‘welfare’ was provided by individual charities and not by the state.
It’s just that I believe that everybody has the RIGHT to have a roof over their head, access to decent medical care, and food on the table.
I wouldn’t be so annoyed by your response if you didn’t claim to be an expert on the subject. You don’t seem to have even a basic grasp on how public housing programs work. First of all, the article states that thousands of people have been evicted under this regulation.
It’s true that tenants in public housing generally have a right to a hearing before being evicted. Having a chance to present your side of the story is hardly an act of Congress. Poor tenants are frequently and routinely evicted from public housing.
Denying the facts doesn’t make them untrue. These cases have been well-documented - this law really is a f*cked up as it sounds. Note also that “[e]viction does not depend on actual guilt or a criminal conviction; a mere accusation is sufficient to kick a family out of its home.”
Here you are talking about Section 8, not HUD housing. The rule in question applies to public housing, not Section 8. In subsidized housing, the landlords can evict for any reason. And the reason why landlords can’t just change to building back to market rates is that they got a subsidy from the government to provide the low-income housing.
The one-strike law applies to both Section 8 and HUD public housing. I was exaggerating when I said Section 8 landlords can evict tenants for any reason at all. And by the way, I do not claim to be an expert on the subject, but I did work with attorneys who helped tenants who were evicted from public housing, so I know that it is not an infrequent occurrence.
Chula first of all; tone down that bile. If you read my post with care, you will note that I stated that in my own experience, this particular regulation did not tend to be enforced. Nor do I claim to be and expert, rather, I shared some of my background in order to establish why I felt qualified to comment on this matter.
Allow me to restate this differently, as I somehow seemed to have expressed myself poorly the first time around.
[ul]In working in a busy call center, many of the folks that called were inquiring about HUD regulations (and other government subsidies). This included, but was not limited to; Section 8, Section 236, Tax-credits and various stated funded programs. In that time, one focus of many calls was the conditions under which and eviction was possible. Percentage wise, successful evictions were a rarity. A lack of knowledge on my part of the basic way that these regulations work, both on paper and in the real world, would have resulted in swift termination.
[/ul]
[ul]In my anecdotal experience, due to the fact that part of being a property manager involved yearly inspections of tenants units, a significant majority of the people that live in government subsidized housing have a higher standard of living that me, or the people that I know that hold a job.[/ul]
Finally, props to you for working with tenants. Counter to what you seem to think, I am not some demagogue interested in screwing the poor. I specifically entered in to the subsidized housing world, because I fundamentally believe that people deserve safe and decent housing no matter what their income. That said, I will state that I have also attended many eviction hearings. These were cases in which the tenant was being a clear danger to the safety of the others in the building. In every case (and one comes to mind where the tenant was specifically arrested selling Crack on the property), the judge was extremely careful to make sure that this was a just eviction and that the tenant was being granted all of his rights.