Section 8 program driving high rents ? (Baltimore: fit in, real estate, apartment complex)

[pnello]

A realtor friend of mine was talking about secton 8 being a good deal for the landlord, a good deal for the tenant participating in the program and a bad deal for regular renters competing for similar size and price units.

He says that it artificially keeps the rents of low to average quality housing high due to the government subsidy and pushes renters who would qualify based on credit and income into higher priced units due to competition for the lower priced ones.

He says this is prime driver behind high rents in Baltimore and Howard County. I disagree with Howard County, not sure about Baltimore

What are your thoughts on this ?

[Baltimore suburbs]

Based on personal experience, Section 8 does artificially inflate prices in some areas of Baltimore. We don't accept Sec8, and I happen to know that the few units that do accept Sec8 in the area go for several hundred more, and are not as well maintained.

I don't know if it is the prime driver, but it certainly contributes to high rent.

[gobrien]

I've wondered that about military housing allowances too, if rents were higher in towns with an economy supported by having a base.

[goodlife36]

I cannot speak for Baltimore but section 8 people should not be allowed to integrate. They should live in areas designated for them. It is not fair for people of a different socioeconomic class to have to endure their ignorant ways. They are destroying lower middle class neighborhoods but I think it is done on purpose. The only way to legally keep them away is to impose higher income requirements but it also excludes middle class people on the lower end. Do you know how much money you need to make to pay $1800 dollars a month for rent? Social programs should help level the playing field for people that come from disadvantaged backgrounds but not forever.

[KLynch10]

Section 8 is obviously a high point of contention everywhere. It seems so messed up that the people we are helping out the most, are also the people acting the most irresponsibly as well. Only the most Liberal of liberals pledge their support of these Section 8 Areas, yet I guarantee they don't want to live anywhere near them.

There is a section 8 apartment complex near my neighborhood, it is surrounded by two of the nicest neighborhoods in the city, and the Stadiums. In the last two months there has been a murder and a gun seizure. Needless to say people completely resent it's existence, and it is sitting on some of the most prime real estate in the city. Nothing like working your butt off just to be able to barely afford your mortgage and sky high property taxes just to have a bunch of high crime freeloaders a block away.

I agree, either designate them to certain areas, or mandate that complexes can only have 15% Section 8 occupancy.

[B.K.]

Section 8 is a form of state-sponsored social engineering that I have never understood. If a person/family can barely afford to live in housing where they are right now, why is it a good idea to move them into more expensive housing in a better area and have their hardworking new neighbors pick up the tab for them? Is it the idea that by moving them to a neighborhood where people actually work/pay taxes/don't suck up government handouts they will somehow magically acquire those traits themselves? If so, it's not working.
For the last 15 years or so here in NE Baltimore we have been inundated with Section 8. Why here, specifically? Because we are close to southern and eastern Balto. County. As the waiting list for Section 8 properties in the county has become longer and longer, many of the lowest class of inner-city take-alls have been moved into Section 8 near the city/county border. Many if not most are only marking time until a fabled county Section 8 becomes available. Properties are destroyed, crime soars, school violence increases while test scores plummet, neighbors' property values decline, and there is a general dumbing down and trashing of the whole neighborhood.
Somebody please explain why Section 8 is a good idea.

[EdwardA]

Originally Posted by pnello

A realtor friend of mine was talking about secton 8 being a good deal for the landlord, a good deal for the tenant participating in the program and a bad deal for regular renters competing for similar size and price units.

He says that it artificially keeps the rents of low to average quality housing high due to the government subsidy and pushes renters who would qualify based on credit and income into higher priced units due to competition for the lower priced ones.

He says this is prime driver behind high rents in Baltimore and Howard County. I disagree with Howard County, not sure about Baltimore

What are your thoughts on this ?

You have a smart realtor he is 100% correct.

[EdwardA]

Originally Posted by KLynch10

Section 8 is obviously a high point of contention everywhere. It seems so messed up that the people we are helping out the most, are also the people acting the most irresponsibly as well. Only the most Liberal of liberals pledge their support of these Section 8 Areas, yet I guarantee they don't want to live anywhere near them.

There is a section 8 apartment complex near my neighborhood, it is surrounded by two of the nicest neighborhoods in the city, and the Stadiums. In the last two months there has been a murder and a gun seizure. Needless to say people completely resent it's existence, and it is sitting on some of the most prime real estate in the city. Nothing like working your butt off just to be able to barely afford your mortgage and sky high property taxes just to have a bunch of high crime freeloaders a block away.

I agree, either designate them to certain areas, or mandate that complexes can only have 15% Section 8 occupancy.

I agree but a little known secret about Section 8 as we know it today is that it was pushed by Republicans in the Nixon administration as an alternative to government run housing projects. The thinking was Section 8 was more of a private endeavor since private landlords would be responsible for the maintenance and collect the rent.

[Baltimore suburbs]

It's a tough argument based almost entirely on anecdotal information. While I can say with certainty I have seen families move into a neighborhood, I know for a fact they were receiving Sec8 because of business discussions with the landlords, and I have seen first hand the different value system displayed by these families, what I can't say is how many of the folks that "fit in" receive assistance too.

When a property is going downhill, there are complaints of trash, noise, violence etc. and the landlord discloses that the residents are section 8 recipients the reputation of the program goes downhill.

But how many times have there been wonderful families that take pride in their home, participate in school and community activities, and increase the value of their property - but they are also section 8 recipients?

I don't know the answer, I personally doubt I would ever question it if there weren't problems with the tenants.

Because of the bad rep of Sec8 tenants we don't accept them. Has anyone had positive experiences dealing with Sec8?

[EdwardA]

Originally Posted by Baltimore suburbs

It's a tough argument based almost entirely on anecdotal information. While I can say with certainty I have seen families move into a neighborhood, I know for a fact they were receiving Sec8 because of business discussions with the landlords, and I have seen first hand the different value system displayed by these families, what I can't say is how many of the folks that "fit in" receive assistance too.

When a property is going downhill, there are complaints of trash, noise, violence etc. and the landlord discloses that the residents are section 8 recipients the reputation of the program goes downhill.

But how many times have there been wonderful families that take pride in their home, participate in school and community activities, and increase the value of their property - but they are also section 8 recipients?

I don't know the answer, I personally doubt I would ever question it if there weren't problems with the tenants.

Because of the bad rep of Sec8 tenants we don't accept them. Has anyone had positive experiences dealing with Sec8?

It's more than anecdotal there are reams of data to support what folks are saying. In Memphis a husban and wife criminologist/housing expert duo developed two maps where former residents of the housing towers moved and crime reports. Areas where there previously was little crime saw a dramatic increase in crime.

(Richard) Janikowski might not have managed to pinpoint the cause of this pattern (of spreading crime) if he hadn’t been married to Phyllis Betts, a housing expert at the University of Memphis. ..... Betts had been evaluating the impact of one of the city government’s most ambitious initiatives: the demolition of the city’s public-housing projects, as part of a nationwide experiment to free the poor from the destructive effects of concentrated poverty.

Memphis demolished its first project in 1997. The city gave former residents federal “Section 8” rent-subsidy vouchers and encouraged them to move out to new neighborhoods. Two more waves of demolition followed over the next nine years, dispersing tens of thousands of poor people into the wider metro community.
If police departments are usually stingy with their information, housing departments are even more so. Getting addresses of Section 8 holders is difficult, because the departments want to protect the residents’ privacy. Betts, however, helps the city track where the former residents of public housing have moved.

Over time, she and Janikowski realized that they were doing their fieldwork in the same neighborhoods.
About six months ago, they decided to put a hunch to the test. Janikowski merged his computer map of crime patterns with Betts’s map of Section 8 rentals. ..... the match was near-perfect. On the merged map, dense violent-crime areas are shaded dark blue, and Section 8 addresses are represented by little red dots. All of the dark-blue areas are covered in little red dots, like bursts of gunfire. The rest of the city has almost no dots.
Betts remembers her discomfort as she looked at the map. The couple had been musing about the connection for months, but they were amazed—and deflated—to see how perfectly the two data sets fit together. She knew right away that this would be a “hard thing to say or write.” Nobody in the antipoverty community and nobody in city leadership was going to welcome the news that the noble experiment that they’d been engaged in for the past decade had been bringing the city down, in ways they’d never expected. But the connection was too obvious to ignore, and Betts and Janikowski figured that the same thing must be happening all around the country. Eventually, they thought, they’d find other researchers who connected the dots the way they had, and then maybe they could get city leaders, and even national leaders, to listen.

Read more: Section 8 Vouchers and Crime Correlated; Expect Media Indifference | NewsBusters.org