I've read a lot of comments on here about Section 8 and crime.
http://www.skywaynews.net/articl...news/
news02.txt
Challenging assumptions about affordable housing
By Michelle Bruch
Local experts dispute stereotype that low-income housing draws crime to neighborhoods.
Statistically, this is a stretch.
Poor people commit a disproportionate amount of low-level and violent crime. I'm not citing anything here as a source, mostly because I think this is an accepted statement.
Subsidized housing, by definition, brings people to an area who otherwise couldn't afford to live there.
A + B = . . .
So, no, I'm not arguing that subsidized housing causes more crime, but I think it would be very tough to argue that it doesn't result in more crime in the area in which it exists.
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This article is so full of liberal speak that I don't even know where to begin. A few points:
1. If we have such a huge growing unmet need for affordable housing, maybe we should stop encouraging a disproportionate amount of the poor to move here from neighboring states with our nanny state welfare policies rather than scrambling to meet the housing need once it's too late.
2. quote “I don’t think that the concentration of affordable housing is a problem. I think the problem, if any, is the concentration of poverty, not affordable housing,” Arthur said. “We have to provide housing for [the poor].”
I agree the poor should have housing, but simply "providing housing" only guarantees that we will continue to "provide housing" to the same families for generations to come. Instead we should implement free market housing policies that encourage the poor to better themselves so that they can afford to pay their own way. When my family came to America they received no housing assistance whatsoever, they had to build their own house with hand tools and a horse-drawn plow. They were successful because they had to be to survive, and I'm grateful that I'm not the fourth generation of my family living in subsidized housing.
An oft-maligned statistic is the epidemic of unwed mothers in America, especially among the poor. Yet section 8 is only a contributer to this huge societal problem because it encourages single mothers to stay single so they can continue to qualify for housing assistance. In many cases, if a mother marries and becomes part of a dual income household, that family will reach the income threshold at which they no longer qualify for housing assistance. This will force them to pay market rate and unable to afford the rent because they are only spending 30% of their income in a high priced rental market on section 8.
3. Quote: “Although there have been links established between crime and poor neighborhoods — that’s an historical connection that goes back hundreds of years — there isn’t a lot of evidence that, on a project-by-project basis, the amount of crime increases because a new piece of affordable housing gets built. These tend to be cumulative changes.”
Exactly. The key word is "cumulative".
4. Quote “In general, when people say affordable housing, they’re talking about poor, black people,” Arthur said. “That statement is ignorant at best, and I won’t discuss what the worst is.”
You just knew the race card would get thrown here. Calling those who are simply concerned about crime racists is a below the belt attempt to discredit those who oppose your nanny state position and it simply is no longer effective. People are sick and tired of this garbage coming from the left.
5. Quote: In new development projects, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) limits Section 8 voucher assistance to census tracts with poverty rates of 32 percent or less and minority populations of 32 percent or
putting affordable housing into crime-free neighborhoods will lead to higher crime rates, lower property values, and for sale signs as the neighbors slowly move out.
in my neighborhood, one apt. building with low rent tenants and a proportion on welfare have caused property theft, sexual assault, a carjacking, robberies, fear with residents, people moving, troubles at the local schools, and more such joys.
the police did not even lie about it either in the local newspaper saying the crime doubled in our town due to this apartment building. just one building! also the homes in my area are slowly becoming rental units instead of quiet young families moving in.
there is a house down the street that has been on the market for three years. this article is a true case in point that some news is almost pure public relations ploys.
So should government be deciding (through zoning) where we can locate market rate apartments that happen to charge low rents i.e. market rate affordable housing as seen in most of North Minneapolis?
there is a large migration of people, mostly middle class, moving out of California to states like nevada and colorado to escape the crime and congestion problems. as long as people keep on moving to flee areas that get worse with crime, the cycle will continue. i think it started with the growth of suburbs in the 70s where people left the larger cities to escape the problems.
Fleeing the cities in the 70s was a result of a natural cycle based on the free market. Property would get old and run down, the poor could then afford it and move into the area, and with more poor comes more crime (that's a fact not an opinion, the rich don't need to rob someone on the street for $10 to survive). People are fleeing suburbs now because the government is forcing them out even faster than normal with "decentralization of poverty". Now you have formerly nice suburbs getting ruined with crime decades before the natural cycle of property decay would have inevitably caused it. Not only this but we have a giant banner at our state's borders that says "Come one come all, better welfare here!". So now good people are moving out to the exurbs, outside the central counties where most of the "decentralization of poverty" is happening. It's ironic that urban sprawl, one of the great enemies of the left, is being accelerated by their own policies.
"Fleeing the cities in the 70s was a result of a natural cycle based on the free market."
Free markets have little to with suburbs or early suburbanization. They are a much more a result of federal policy such as the highways, federal mortgage policy, tax policy and public housing policies. Suburbs are also a product of zoning (see governmental land controls).
Shabadoo, what I was referring to in that statement was so called "white flight" the phenomenon of whites in the central cities of predominantly higher income leaving for the suburbs as the central cities decayed and poverty moved in. Of course I never meant to imply that this was the only reason the suburbs exist. My own grandfather moved to the suburbs in the 1930s from a rural town, long before "white flight" and "urban decay" were lexicons of American suburbia. While it's true there has always been city planning to a certain extent, clearly where people lived was much more a result of their income in the days before section 8 and related programs began tinkering with the natural dynamics of the housing market in this country.
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