ACLU Denounces My Work as “Galling” and Vicious

Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal has 4 letters in response to last week’s “Raising Hell in Subsidized Housing” article.
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James Bovard’s piece criticizing the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 8 housing (“Raising Hell in Subsidized Housing,” Aug. 18) viciously scapegoats families who receive housing subsidies. His condemnation of survivors of domestic violence as “troublesome tenants” is particularly galling.

Domestic violence is a primary cause of homelessness among women, and many battered women are unable to escape abusive situations because they can’t secure housing. By Mr. Bovard’s logic, an abused mother must either stay silent and endure the violence she and her family are experiencing, or sacrifice her housing by reporting the abuse to police. Penalizing women who seek to protect their families is discriminatory and inhumane.

In these economic times, homelessness is an inescapable risk for increasing numbers of families. Families need access to more affordable housing, not less.

Sandra Park
ACLU
Women’s Rights Project New York
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James Bovard describes Section 8 payments to recipients of subsidized housing in Stamford, Conn., Honolulu and Columbia, Md. as $2,851, $2,764 and $2,582, respectively. I assume these payments are tax free. Compare this to the monthly retirement check of an E-9, the highest enlisted rank in the Air Force, after 20 years of dedicated and noble service to his county. He would be in the top 1% of enlisted retirees, with most making substantially less. His pension system would start at approximately $2,500, all taxable. Considering the additional benefits and services the “subsidizee” may also receive from other federal and state welfare programs, the disparity just might double.

Michael Kohnen
St. Louis
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Mr. Bovard paints a grim, if one-sided, picture of the state of rental subsidies. This relies, in part, on race to explain how supposedly hard-living voucher holders are ruining once nice (and mostly white) neighborhoods: “Because Section 8 recipients in some areas are mostly black or Latino, almost any enforcement effort can be denounced as discriminatory.”

The truth is that for all the uproar around Section 8 vouchers, they’ve actually done very little to diversify communities, especially in cities like Chicago. IHARP, the Illinois Housing Assistance Research Project of which my policy shop is part, found that vouchers haven’t reversed Chicago’s stubborn segregation over the last decade. To the contrary, voucher recipients are more concentrated in African-American communities now than in 2000.

I agree with the author on one point: Section 8 vouchers aren’t improving neighborhoods—white, black, Latino or otherwise. As the Obama administration looks to revamp the program, it must take an honest look at the systemized discrimination that limits housing choices for many families of color. If diversifying “good” neighborhoods is a pipe dream, let’s rally efforts around transforming the poverty and crime in the “bad” ones. Everyone deserves an affordable, safe place to call home.

Sylvia Puente
Executive Director
Latino Policy Forum
Chicago
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Under the current program, Section 8 voucher support never expires as long as one is “income eligible.” Once recipients get on the program they can stay forever, as long as they don’t break their lease or run afoul of the law. Infractions can be easy to spot but difficult to prove, so problem tenants tend to stay in place for years. Controlling the flow of unrelated people in and out of these units is nearly impossible.

There will always be those who need help. Seniors on fixed income and those with legitimate disabilities are unable to work, so they have no mechanism to keep up with rising costs. This constituency accounts for half of our program. The rest are families, some of whom have been on the program for decades. Rental support for the able-bodied should expire after five years, the fuse most states have adopted for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. This will go far to reduce dependency and allow the support to rotate to those who need it most.

The idea is not new. HUD has tried to impose limits through regulation, only to be beaten back by an army of activists and advocates. The solution must be legislative.

Matther T. Sternberg
Executive Director
Lancaster Housing & Redevelopment Authorities
Lancaster, Pa.
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BOVARD REPLY: On the points raised by the ACLU Women’s Rights Project rep – A major problem with domestic abuse cases is that the female does not evict the violent male. The police come – they separate the combatants – and then the police return once or twice a month for similar referee functions for a long period of time. Section 8 recipients are renowned for having unauthorized guests.

I would assume that a landlord of a Section 8 tenant would not be opposed to evicting a violent male
tenant. In that sense, HUD’s “solution” seems to respond to a problem that may not exist. The problem arises when troublemakers often do not stay away — they return and the pattern is repeated – to the detriment of both the woman and the neighbors.

The new “legal right” trumpeted by Obama’s HUD could easily subvert domestic tranquility. Does the ACLU Women’s Rights Project assume that all the neighbors of violent-prone tenants will be male?