Posted on 08/09/2008 4:57:40 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Under the Section 8 federal housing voucher program, thousands of poor, urban and often African-American residents have left hardscrabble neighborhoods in the nation’s largest cities and resettled in the suburbs.
Law enforcement experts and housing researchers argue that rising crime rates follow Section 8 recipients to their new homes, while other experts discount any direct link. But there is little doubt that cultural shock waves have followed the migration. Social and racial tensions between newcomers and their neighbors have increased, forcing suburban communities like Antioch to re-evaluate their civic identities along with their methods of dealing with the new residents.
The foreclosure crisis gnawing away at overbuilt suburbs has accelerated that migration, and the problems. Antioch is one of many suburbs in the midst of a full-blown mortgage meltdown that has seen property owners seeking out low-income renters to fill vacant homes. The most recent Contra Costa County records available show that from 2003 to 2005, the number of Section 8 households in Antioch grew by 50 percent, to about 1,500 from 1,000. Many new residents are African-American; Antioch’s black population has grown to about 20 percent, from 3 percent in 1990.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Of course. Thugs, slugs, and other assorted vermin don’t change their behavior just because their locale has changed.
Any self-respecting landlord would reject Section 8 vouchers.
WTF????? Have we gone mad?
When the units were emptied, the owners who previously thought they were doing such a grand thing, we greeted with destroyed walls, appliances pulled out and just gone, carpet matted with urine and various other bodily fluids from both man and animal, a conspicuous lack of toilets. (Who steals toilets? Honestly)
This was in the exurbs of DC mind you--far far far from the inner city. Our answer? We moved into a single unit house, taking on a bit more mortgage than we really wanted in exchange for knowing that larger single family houses are much harder to rent out.
Who are these so called experts? Probably Ivy tower academics who base their research on what they read in "Mother Jones", "The Nation". and the NYT. They live far away from the people/culture they profess "expertise" on.
Sounds to me like the Big City has just found a way to reduce their crime and problem statistics by forceing them on to someone else.
People who WITHOUT A DOUBT do not live in the affected neighborhoods.
Which creates an incentive for the landlord of an old apartment in need of renovations, to rent to destructive Section 8 tenants. He then gets a government-paid renovation when they move out
The government pays the absolute MINIMUM for the replacement, not the true value. It was and is a losing proposition for someone who wants their house to stay in good condition
except that it is highly illegal to reject section 8 tenants and it lands you a big fat discrimination lawsuit. One of the reasons there are people that would rather loose their property than rent it.
I have a friend who rented to section 8 tenants. They did over 50,000 in damage to a 150,000 unit (basically he had to take everything to the studs and start over)
I am not aware he got one dime from the government to help pay for the damage.
....here’s a hypothetical question:
....if foreclosures continue on government backed mortgages does that mean the government takes possession of the empty house?
.....and if the government ends up with a bunch of empty houses what’s to stop them from just GIVING them to folks now living down in the projects?
.....coming soon to your and my neighborhood???
We are renting a large farmhouse on 80 acres. The last tenants were ghetto escapees. They wrecked the place.
This practice has ruined an area and school in my hometown. This is an affluent and mostly white town. Thanks to Habitat and the county we have seen crime skyrocket. Many Katrina refuse.
The county used it as revenge for various parts of the county voting for cityhood and escaping their tax heavy service non-existant clutches.
Do you mind if I ask where? We moved out from the NoVa suburbs about 10 years ago.
This is not quite true. I used to rent to S-8 tenants and I assure you the government does not pay for the repairs.
You actually believe that the government pays enough to repair the damage?! Welfare commandeered a local motel for welfare recipients. They wrecked it. The owners finally tore it all down. It had been cute cabins with an inground pool. The inground pool was the first casualty of the “less fortunate”.
So which is it? Are these welfare recipients being "stalked" by crime or is it just a coincidence that wherever they are,crime is?
That is part of the program. I think $4 billion ofr cities to take over foreclosed properties - don’t pay taxes and they seize the property - fix them up and give them to “poor folks who have suffered the consequences of racism” all these long years. That is not quite correct. They give them to white trash too.
...I used to work in the rental office of a large apt complex....it’s hell to evict a Section 8 tenant...you’ve got to take all kinds of photos and documentation to the hearing....we had one where the pet urine was so heavy it actually buckled the floor....we had another guy who was on disability and every govt. program available....said he had a chronic bad back....yet on the night he skipped, he managed to wrestle the refrigerator out of the apt and into the back of his mazda pick up.
....you’d be surprised at how knowledgable these people are about welfare laws and regulations...being on the tit is a way of life for many....they know the ropes better than you do...once you get ensnared with them it’s hard to get free....stay clear of them if you can.
Bingo!
Not quite true. Unless a state has statutes that make discrimination based on source of income illegal, you CAN refuse to rent to S-8. I have done that for years.
On the other hand, running background checks on S-8 will invariably drag up many skeletons which will provide a basis for rejecting applicant.
Section 8 merely serves to disperse the deadbeats through the neighborhood instead of keeping them concentrated in dense, isolated public housing complexes. Like most forms of welfare, the program should be abolished.
Not so fast. It is Legal Aid/Poverty Law Programs that provide tenants with the guidance to screw landlords at every turn.
We just went through an issue with the courts where a Judge pulled out a big manual called the Michigan Landlord-Tenant Law and was quoting from that in some arguments. This book it turned out was published by the Michigan Poverty Law Program/U of M Law School. We tried to buy a copy and they asked us who we were. We were told we were not the kind of group (landlords) they sell to. I complained to my state Rep. regarding their refusal to sell us a copy produced with tax payer funds. He contacted them and they about faced. These are the real enemies in the low income landlord tenant wars.
There are landlord/property owners associations all over that can keep landlords informed and help fight the battles. t is one of the great joys of being a member: Doing battle with the system.
Yes, and the rules exist to perpetuate the therapuetic-administrative leviathan, not justice - least of all to the non-recipients in its path.
That Atlantic article is well worth reading. The results of this whole thing are very much a case of Liberals getting mugged by reality, and an “Oh we’re doing so much GOOD!” program creating much harm.
How F'ing much would a working stiff have to make to have $2200 to put down on rent? Plus I bet free health care, child care and food stamps are added to this mix!
No wonder we have 3rd generation welfare families.
>If you live in the “hood”, it’s difficult to avoid some association with dirtbags and gang bangers. If you move to the “burb” these associations may continue. Then you have the dirtbags and gang bangers introduced into the “burb”. I’ve seen it happen. Nice people move in. But some of their visitors, not so much. <
Which is why living in a rural area is preferable to a lot of people. In many country areas, it doesn’t matter what your color, people tend to have similar values, and they get along way better than do those crammed together in big cities.
The rule is that you can’t reject Section 8 if you’ve got any other Section 8 renters in any of your other properties. You don’t have to start taking Section 8 people if you don’t have any others. It does make it very hard to get out of renting to Section 8 once you start.
Section 8 used to be a better deal for landlords because the rent check went right to the landlord, and the government did pay for most of what was damaged. Now, neither is true and I would not touch Section 8.
Talk about a welfare queen....at $2,200 per month that’s a nicer home than most FReepers have. I know it’s more than my mortgage.
two-thirds of the rent of $2,200 is $1,465. That's $17,600 a year. $8.50 a hour for a 40 hour week.
The federal government is giving that much money to poor people so they can live in the burb's???
We have lost our ******* minds, that we as citizens aren't marching on DC.
The former home owner moved and the new owner, I thought, are probably renters.
I wondered how people who look and dress like a small step up from the ghetto, have two Lexus, muliple children, and surly attitudes could afford to live in my neighborhood
The housing crunch in Florida is fertile ground for people who own homes that are struggling to pay their mortgage, rent them out to section -8 vouchers.
Subsidy your high mortgage and live in a cheap rental unit until the housing market comes back so you can sell your home and not lose your ass
They did this in Pittsburgh a few years ago. They moved the lowest scum of all from Braddock where they burned down several multi-family housing units (no I’m not exagerating) to the nice suburbs (not the lower price houses, but houses at the higher end of the market, including new construction single family housing!)
In one area the moving truck were met by protesters who refused to allow the section 8 tenants to unload the trucks and move in. In the front of the line blocking access? Black families who worked their way out of the ghetto who didn’t want their new neighborhoods to go to hell.
“Which is why living in a rural area is preferable to a lot of people.”
.....we got out of the suburbs/exburbs in 2005 and relocated to a rural county in N.C.....it is 97% anglo-european/judeo-christian and in many respects is like America used to be...we bought a hollow at the end of the road and have quiet and privacy....we were surprised when we learned we had neighbors from Mass, Wisc and Virginia...all of them had left urban/suburban areas and mentioned reasons like drugs,crime,gangs,taxes,failed schools ect.
.....I hope that anybody reading this will take heart...it’s not easy to relocate, but if you’ve always dreamed of living in a special place, start planning today...it took us almost 10 months to move plus another 10 to fix up our new place but we’re glad we did....I wouldn’t trade anything for the life we have now....good luck to everyone!
Plus the old man stands in front of home depot to get tax free day job.
I never knew exactly who lived in the house permanently, but Grandma would come to get the kids every day, sitting on the horn instead of walking the ten feet to the front door. Naked kids were often running around outside. Whenever I pulled into our driveway which was next to their house, I heard yelling -- there was always yelling.
And that driveway of ours -- how many times did I have to get them or their friends to move cars from our driveway? Twenty?
Then there was the creepy son who looked like a predator who only came home in the middle of the night, walking to the back door, always with an air of menace.
Of course, there was the garbage, the radios blaring, and the constant cursing -- mf this, mf that.
These people had no respect for anyone or anything. We ended up selling our house to get away.
It is living proof that the “Broken Window Theory” is dead on.
You could call Section 8's awful consequences the "Broken People Theory."
My boy knew a white young welfare couple who would work the churches. Each month they went to a different one with a sob story and an unpaid utility bill. The church coughed up out of Christian charity. This was near a big city, so they could work the scam all year long. When my boy's wife said she could get the woman a job, she literally blanched and said, "But then we'd have to get off welfare!"
My boy and his wife were going through some lean times then (later on he told me that at one point they sold blood, which horrified me) but they never went on welfare. He said they lived on hot dogs and Top Ramen for weeks at a time and then one night he visited that couple's apartment and saw them eating halibut steak. He became a rabid conservative after that. He and his family are back on their feet via the "pull on your bootstraps" method.
once you get ensnared with them it’s hard to get free....stay clear of them if you can.
That goes for the agencies as well, who have a vested intered in keeping you on the dole. For once in my life I applied for Florida unemployment (contract ran out around Thanksgiving and NO One was hiring until after the New Year.) As I signed up, the retired Navy guy took out a bunch of forms and enumerated all the bennies I was eligible for. I told him I didn't need anything else as I'd soon have another job. He looked at me, and in a LOUD voice said, "Oh, I guess you don't want any other benefits!" as if I was unclean. I swear that when he started naming all the different programs, I could feel tentacles pulling me in. One Hell of a creepy feeling.
It becomes a problem in apartments when the few S-8 tenants cause an exodus of the law-abiding, peaceful tenants.
This happened to a co-worker of mine. He lived in a nice, safe apartment complex. It only took ONE family to change everything. A single mother and her teenage sons on S-8 moved into a unit and overnight the apartment complex became Thug Central when her sons' gang-banger homies all started hanging around. Robberies started happening, car break-ins, fights, loud music, intimidating the other residents, etc. My co-worker was robbed at gunpoint when he went out to his patio to smoke a cigarette!
Eventually, all the good tenants moved out and the landlord found himself with a 50% vacancy rate. He couldn't give units away.
I wouldn't think so, given the fact that payments on quality new vehicle will typically run you about $400 a month with tax and insurance.. give or take. Throw in 2 car payments...Well.. you get the picture.
If you want less expensive house payments, try Arkansas, Kansas, Ohio, etc....
A middle school sits between the two apartment buildings. It was once one of the best schools around — a country school with good teachers and attentive students.
A friend who teaches there now recently told me “No learning happens there. It's just trying to keep them from killing each other until 3:00.”
Section 8 has destroyed my part of town.
It's just another way for leftist idiots to ruin nice neighborhoods via their moronic "do-goodism" which never does anyone any good at all, except to make them feel morally superior by acting like they "care." Who are these "experts" that claim moving people out of high crime areas into low crime areas doesn't increase crime in the low crime areas? More clueless liberal idiocy run amok.
What these "experts" are really saying is that law abiding citizens don't have the right to live in clean, peaceful, low crime areas. It's unfair, so we'll ship some people that don't give a crap about laws, or noise ordinances, or litter ordinances into your area and see how you like it, since it's your fault that crime, noise, and trash are at high levels in other areas because you don't "care" as much as they do.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
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