Raising Hell in Subsidized Housing

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In the 1990s, the feds were embarrassed by skyrocketing crime rates in public housing–up to 10 times the national average, according to HUD studies and many newspaper reports. The government’s response was to hand out vouchers to residents of the projects (authorized under Section 8 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974), dispersing them to safer and more upscale locales.

Section 8’s budget soared to $19 billion this year from $7 billion in 1994. HUD now picks up the rent for more than two million households nationwide; tenants pay 30% of their income toward rent and utilities while the feds pay the rest. Section 8 recipients receive monthly rental subsidies of up to $2,851 in the Stamford-Norwalk, Conn., area, $2,764 in Honolulu and $2,582 in Columbia, Md.

But the dispersal of public housing residents to quieter neighborhoods has failed to weed out the criminal element that made life miserable for most residents of the projects. “Homicide was simply moved to a new location, not eliminated,” concluded University of Louisville criminologist Geetha Suresh in a 2009 article in Homicide Studies. In Louisville, Memphis, and other cities, violent crime skyrocketed in neighborhoods where Section 8 recipients resettled.

After a four-year investigation, the Indianapolis Housing Authority (IHA) in 2006 linked 80% of criminal homicides in Marion County, Ind., to individuals fraudulently obtaining federal assistance “in either the public housing program or the Section 8 program administered by the agency.” {snip}

Dubuque, Iowa, is struggling with an influx of Section 8 recipients from Chicago housing projects. Section 8 concentrations account for 11 of 13 local violent crime hot spots, according to a study by the Northern Illinois University Center for Governmental Studies. {snip}

Dubuque’s city government responded by trimming the size of the local Section 8 program. HUD retaliated by launching a “civil rights compliance review” of the program (final results pending).

HUD seems far more enthusiastic about cracking down on localities than on troublesome Section 8 recipients who make life miserable for the rest of the community. And because Section 8 recipients in some areas are mostly black or Latino, almost any enforcement effort can be denounced as discriminatory.

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Nevertheless, middle-class blacks are the program’s least inhibited critics. {snip} Shirlee Bolds told Iowa’s Dubuque Telegraph Herald in 2009: “I moved away from the city to get away from all this crap. Dubuque’s getting rough. I think it’s turning into a little Chicago, like they’re bringing the street rep here.”

Remarkably, HUD seems bent on creating a new civil right–the right to raise hell in subsidized housing in nice neighborhoods. Earlier this year, the agency decreed that Section 8 tenants (as well as other renters) who are evicted because of domestic violence incidents may sue for discrimination under the Fair Housing Act because women are “the overwhelming majority of domestic violence victims.” In essence, this gives troublesome tenants a federal trump card to play against landlords who seek to preserve the peace and protect other renters.

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The Obama administration is now launching a pilot program giving local housing authorities wide discretion to pay higher rent subsidies to allow Section 8 beneficiaries to move into even more affluent zip codes. Hasn’t this program helped wreck enough neighborhoods?

NCJRS, November, 2009

Abstract: The study concludes that low-income public housing and Section 8 housing properties provide an environment conducive to homicides. This pattern remained even when the nature of public housing changed. The reform designed to provide affordable housing in the form of new single-family homes, rental apartments, and townhouses was based on the principle of “new urbanization,” which promotes inner city neighborhood stability by encouraging the disadvantaged to develop a sense of pride in their neighborhood through home ownership. Crime, specifically homicide, became displaced to where the low-income residents were relocated. Homicide was simply moved to a new location, not eliminated. The revitalization of low-income housing shifted the homicide occurrence to other socially disorganized areas that continued to promote the growth of the urban underclass. Public housing residents are exposed to an elevated risk of victimization that may also cause them to become more isolated through fear. {snip} Although the low-income public housing itself may be safe, it draws offenders to vulnerable victims and produces an elevated crime risk. {snip}