Federal officials spend more tax dollars on Section 8 housing vouchers than they do on cash welfare, and the program often perpetuates poverty rather than alleviating it, according to an urban housing expert.
“Its incentives are completely skewed,” Howard Husock, vice president for policy research and director of the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative at the Manhattan Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“You’ve ‘hit the lottery’ and you’re set for life,” said Husock, referring to those who receive housing assistance for decades, a lifetime or even generations, while others wait for years on a waiting list. “Not only do you hit the lottery and you can sit back and have a housing unit for life, but remember, your deal is you pay 30 percent of your income in rent, but what it means is for every additional dollar you earn, you pay an addition 30 cents in rent,” he said.
Voucher recipients pay 30 percent of their income in rent no matter how much they earn, which stifles motivation to earn more, Husock said. Federal housing assistance, unlike the five-year cap imposed on welfare benefits in 1995, has no time limit. Husock, author of, “America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake: The Failure of America’s Housing Policy,” calls it “welfare unreformed.”
The Department of Housing and Urban Development paid $18 billion in vouchers, not including associated costs, in fiscal year 2014, versus the $16.5 billion the Department of Health and Human Services spent on cash welfare the same year.
Continue reading “Here’s How Gov’t Housing Vouchers End Up Causing More Poverty”
