Posted on 12/29/2008 10:13:35 AM PST by Between the Lines
The Charlotte Housing Authority is considering giving thousands of public housing residents a choice: Get a job or get out.
Agency leaders are proposing a plan that would force tenants to find work to keep their government housing benefits.
The idea has prompted criticism from some advocates for the poor who say it would be wrong to impose the rule during the country's worst economic crisis in decades.
But backers say it's only right to make able-bodied adults work and try to gain self sufficiency.
“There's never a perfect time to start a change,” said Jennifer Gallman, a spokeswoman for the Housing Authority. “This is a positive change.”
Under federal guidelines, recipients generally put 30percent of their household income toward rent. The federal government subsidizes the remainder.
The proposal would require the head of each household to work at least 30 hours a week by April 1, 2011, to keep the subsidy. Elderly and disabled residents would be exempt.
The Housing Authority's Board of Commissioners will decide next month whether to implement the rule.
It would impact many of the 15,000 people in Charlotte who live in public housing apartments or rent homes from private landlords using government-issued Section 8 vouchers.
A recent survey conducted for the Housing Authority found that the head of the household was employed in 31percent of public housing units. The head of the household was working in 43percent of homes rented with Section 8 vouchers.
The employment rule is one of several restrictions the Housing Authority has implemented or weighed in recent years. Residents who move into some newer, recently built developments must now meet work requirements designed to move them out of public housing in five years.
But the latest idea surfaces just as the unemployment rate in North Carolina has reached 7.9percent, the highest figure in 25 years.
Alfred Riley, who lives in the Boulevard Homes public housing complex in west Charlotte, said he has tried hard “for a long time” but can't find work.
The proposed rule “comes at the worst time ever,” Riley said. “People can't even find work at a fast-food restaurant.”
Advocates for the poor fear the rule could add to Charlotte's growing homeless population.
Many public housing tenants cannot afford daycare for their children and don't have needed transportation or job skills, said Ted Fillette, lead attorney with Charlotte's Legal Aid office.
Some 30,000 people in North Carolina are on waiting lists for affordable daycare, Fillette said. Affordable daycare typically costs about $175 a week, he said.
The Housing Authority has not promised to help pay to remove such barriers, Fillette said.
Revoking subsidies is “tantamount to evicting families who have the least capacity to survive in the non-subsidized market,” he wrote in a letter to other local advocates for the poor.
Gallman, the Housing Authority spokeswoman, noted that tenants would have two years to find work.
Those who do not meet the requirement would receive up to two counseling sessions and a 90-day grace period. When the period ends, the agency would reduce an unemployed tenant's housing subsidy by 50percent. After that, officials would take away an unemployed tenant's entire subsidy.
Gallman said the Housing Authority has studied how the rule worked in cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore and Chicago and found that it did not lead to increased homelessness, Gallman said.
Charlotte officials, she said, may create programs or partner with other agencies to help tenants with daycare, transportation, job training or other obstacles.
“They won't just throw people out,” Gallman said.
Have you stopped beating your wife?
Wish I had a wife to beat.
I know it is a stupid example, but did you ever see the “childhood” scenes in the Movie “Ray”? Nobody lost their kids even though they were dirt poor. The planet is designed to support life. If government would get out of the way, things would actually work pretty well.
I understand that in some parts of the country you need a permit to grow a garden.
Social workers can review cases and make recommendations on how to get people to a point they can make it on their own.
Social workers are suck off the system make work by crippling people scum.
>>Again, I believe it is necessary to have some sort of safety net for the poor.<<
With that I FIRMLY agree.
It should have no involvement whatsoever with the government, however, with the exception of the local (within a couple of square miles) government. I mean, we want to keep it within that “takes a villiage” thing.
Unemployment is rising...most of the really poor |I have worked for didn’t have good skills...so I think some can’t get jobs.
If the minimum wage, employment and liability laws were loosened many many people could hire people and they would have work.
>>Unemployment is rising...most of the really poor |I have worked for didn’t have good skills...so I think some can’t get jobs.<<
In the USA, the only way you cannot get a job is if you are bedridden, have severe palsy, etc. Using the example of those who TRULY cannot get jobs is akin to using the example of a woman who was made pregnant due to rape as an excuse to allow abortion on demand.
It is really a red herring.
Now don't get me wrong. Some of these people truly do need help but whatever happened to private charity? How did people get by before the 60s? Gov't policies create the very poverty it tries to solve. I say everyone on welfare should be forced to re-registered and have a strict time-line of 2 years. That's more than enough time to get back on your feet.
I understand that in some parts of the country you need a permit to grow a garden.
We have been govermenttized and beurcratized into being crippled.
In my area if you pick up a jay feather and you are not American Indian you can be prosecuted. Everything belongs to the state.
I know it is a stupid example, but did you ever see the “childhood” scenes in the Movie “Ray”? Nobody lost their kids even though they were dirt poor. The planet is designed to support life. If government would get out of the way, things would actually work pretty well.
No I have never heard of it.
In a free society, whoever is paying for the "free" housing pretty much has the right to make whatever rules they desire.
And trusting social workers to make these case-by-casee decisions is pretty much a losing battle. The vast majority of social workers are either a.) committed to maximizing participation in a specific program, thereby insuring their job (the suitability for their client being the least of their worries) or b.) committed to doing what is "fair" for their clients (not to be confused with what is "best").
As a group, social workers aren't known for making really good decisions. Not that any government bureaucracy is even capable of making good decisions.
You need to understand that the whole structure of the welfare bureaucracy is dedicated to maintaining the status quo. The inevitable correllary being: nobody ever escapes welfare.
We've spent $5 trillion dollars on the structure. Where are the results?
The only true solutions to the welfare conundrum are found in a.) jobs, b.) better education and c.) a stronger sense of personal responsibility. Note: by "solutions", I mean getting people off of welfare and becoming functioning self-supporting members of the community. That is true compassion.
Giving them more money and fewer responsibilities is neither productive nor compassionate.
The first thing runaway Welfare did was destroy the black family. Many may have been poor, but they had family. Now they grow up in the projects, raised by grandma. There is no grandpa, no pa, and mom may be workin’ the corner to support her drug habit and livin’ somewhere else.
I understand your objection. Indeed, I sympathize with it.
Consider the objectionable statement to be a stipulation for the purpose of argument.
Thomas Sowell talks in some depth about the American Black Family. So does Clarence Thomas in his bio.
Best take on black family and black twentith century history is Issues and Views. It is on the net now.
You are absolutely correct, and I suspect a lightning bolt is in the cards. On another thread and reviewing "In Forum" history, this is definitely an interloper and needs to be flushed.
You wouldn't know conservatism if it walked up to you, introduced itself, and kicked you right in the b***s.
L
It says christians are only supposed to help those who help themselves. That is all Charlotte is asking these people to do, to help themselves. Then they can stay on taxpayer subsidized rent. They just cant stay when they are not willing to do anything to help out the situation themselves.
I live on the west coast. There are so many Mexicans. They all have 2 jobs, if not 3. I have never known a Mexican who wasn’t working at least 60 hours a week.
From what I've been able to gather bronxboy wants to live in a world where he has unlimited access to your money. But he doesn't want to actually get his grubby little hands any dirtier than they already are and actually have to stick a gun in your face himself to do it.
So he'd rather have the Government do it for him. That way the shriveled up thing he mistakenly thinks is his conscience stays quiet.
L
Don't paint with such a broad brush. For every single bad story you have about a foster home there are dozens of bad stories about real parents. After all why do you think most of these kids are in foster care in the first place?
My wife taught school in Wisconsin last year. This family dressed their foster kids in rags...
I doubt every word of this story that either you or your wife has fabricated.
My wife actually called the social worker who was aware of the situation, but she said they were not actively abusive...in the physical sense so it was a pretty decent placement for foster care.
You wife would have been told "thank you for the information and that it would be looked into" and nothing more. The DCF is required by law to investigate every complaint/report that a foster parent might be neglectful or abusive.
The DCF would have given her NO information on the family (they were not "actively" abusive) nor would she had been informed how this home compared to the rest of foster care (it was a pretty decent placement).
The DCF is staffed with mostly competent people who understand that it is against the law for them to give out ANY type of information about a foster family or a child to the general public.
“Sorry- I completely disagree. I would not wish to live in the sort of world you describe.”
Then why don’t you and other like-minded individuals pay the expenses of the many millions who can work but won’t? Just leave those of us who are not suckers out of it.
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