Section 8: A Short Story

Unfortunately, the loss of housing occurs frequently and takes a psychological toll on the people affected by depression. Desmond displays how Arleen is very troubled when she gets evicted, thrown into the cold, and stranded with nothing. It takes a toll mentally when she realizes she has no home to get away from the cold, but also the eviction will be on her record for the next move. When people get evicted there is so much going against them, that mentally they can’t keep up and become depressed. Desmond describes the depression of a Hispanic woman and her three children during an eviction. At first, she had “borne down on the emergency with focus and energy,” then she started wandering the halls “aimlessly, almost drunkenly, her face had that look, the movers and the deputies knew it well”(125). Desmond adds, “It was the look of someone realizing that her family would be homeless in a matter of hours”(125). With vivid imagery, Desmond truly shows the mindset of a woman who knows she lost everything. Eviction scars people and that it makes a lasting mark on how they mentally feel as if they are worthless.

As if all of the more or less hidden fees were not bad enough, young, single, and poor families able to find a rental property are often discriminated against. Landlords tend to use factors such as income and credit history in determining who gets their rental property Richer families end up doing better with rent control laws because of this. Poorer people who make up a larger part of the population end up out of a house to live in.

Within each service area there is a host of many options available. Specifically, under the Public and Indian Housing is the Housing Choice Voucher Program, commonly referred to as Section 8 Housing. Section 8 is the federal government's major program for access to very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford suitable, safe, and sanitary housing in the private market. Housing choice vouchers are administered by the local public housing agencies (PHAs). The

Teater (2008) explained that the original intent of the Section 8 program was to allow minority households to move to neighborhoods that were less racially segregated and safer. Other intentions of Section 8 program were to open

Frank Gottie is one of the most well known gang member of The Eight-Tray Criminal Hoover in Memphis.  Gottie believes that gangs are becoming to spin out of control, that it needs to be a solution to gang activity. On July 10, 2016 Gottie says “I ain’t never seen heaven before, but it was like a Memphis heaven everybody was on one accord “, if the gangs could be on the same page for Black Lives Matter (Jones and Fretland, 2016) . Why can’t it happen for the youth? Ar’tavius Brown was 18 years old and joined a gang called the Pirus the Blood Alliance. Brown joined gang activity in South Memphis because he saw “people with the cars, with the money”(Goggans, 2014). Brown was put with the ramifications of having a gun shoot out at Central High school,but the judge saw something within Brown and gave him a second chance.

Section 8 housing was the first subsidized tenant-based housing program in the U.S. The program was established under the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974. It differed from the known public housing program by allowing recipients to obtain housing from the private market as opposed to government owned housing. Later after merging two aspects of the section 8, certificates and vouchers, section 8 housing program became known as the Housing Choice Voucher program (HCV).

The Public Policy Institute states that Section 8 project-based rental assistance contracts involving HUD and for-profit owners contracting private multifamily housing, which is made available by HUD to low-income households who qualify for housing assistance. The subsidy is such that pays the difference "between 30 percent of the household's income and the contract rent; the subsidy is paid by HUD to the landlord." (AARP Public Policy Institute, 2002) In addition, HUD has Dispersal programs for renters of Section 8 housing due to the desire of the public to avoid to concentration of poverty-level residents in urban areas. This is because there is a general consensus that Section 8 subsidized housing tends to drive down the market prices of property in the same area. There are various challenges that are faced by the Section 8 subsidized housing program as it assists low-income households obtain appropriate housing through the provision of rental assistance.

Given evidence of the effect of race on housing issues, even as it relates to home ownership, an exploration of the empirical evidence in how it manifests within rental markets is necessary. One of the leading researchers in the contemporary study of eviction is Matthew Desmond. In “Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty (2012), he combines statistical and ethnographic analyses to investigate the ramifications of eviction on the lives of the urban poor. The primary independent variable in this study was gender, while the dependent was eviction rates as a percentage. Half of his quantitative analysis involved extracting legal records or court-ordered evictions that took place in Milwaukee County between 2003 to 2007 (n=29,960) (“Eviction and the Reproduction” 91). Using addresses, eviction records were merged with population estimates of Milwaukee’s 880 block groups (“neighborhoods”), and yearly eviction rates for each block group were calculated by gender and pooled to calculate annual averages (Eviction and Reproduction 94). Then risk ratios and differences were determined using 3 different samples: all groups with at least 1 male and female evictee, high poverty block groups where more than 40% of the population lived at or below 150% of the poverty line, and hyper-segregated neighborhoods where at least 85% of residents were same race/ethnicity (Eviction and Reproduction 94). While these measures provided reliable and exact measures of incidence and location,

This all seems great, a savior program that allows people who cannot afford to pay rent normally. Section 8 is utilized by the elderly, disabled, and families with and without children but is it really a golden program? Stated above, section 8 provides for vouchers for all types of apartments and even condos in certain states; however, are these opportunities open to all races? 41.6 percent of African Americans are on housing assistance programs, as in this county’s displaced history on minorities, the voucher program produces elements that affect minorities. Although African Americans make up the overall higher percentage when it comes to housing assistance programs, according to National Low-Income Housing Coalition, surprisingly Caucasians make up 49 percent of the project-based section 8. Yet, National Low-Income Housing Coalition mentions that African Americans as of 2010 shows that black and Hispanic public housing residents are four times more likely than their Caucasian counterparts public housing residents to live in high-poverty neighborhoods. Black and Hispanic voucher recipients are about three times as likely as their white counterparts to live in high-poverty neighborhoods. Analyzing this data; furthermore, as of 2010, 28 percent of white voucher recipients live in the lowest poverty neighborhoods! Reviewing this data Caucasians obtains overall nationwide more voucher approvals that African Americans living in the highest of poverty neighborhoods and that comes

In Fiscal Year 2016, the area median income for Chicago was $76,900. Because Housing Choice Vouchers are intended to assist low income families, eligibility for vouchers is limited to households whose income does not exceed 80% of area median income, which was approximately $61,520 in 2016. More importantly, distribution requirements specify that at least 75% of Section 8 vouchers must go to households designated as “very low income,” meaning that their income does not exceed 30% of the area median income. In 2016 in Chicago, the figure constituting 30% of area median income was approximately $18,456. Complainant’s annual income, excluding the Section 8 voucher, was $8,796, thus placing her within the very low income threshold for housing seekers. Therefore, it appears that Respondent’s minimum income policy excluded over 75% of Section 8 voucher holders. As such, this facially-neutral policy has a disparate impact on persons with a Housing Choice Voucher as a source of

According to this estimate, a greater percentage of inmates have been previously homeless, (5% of general population versus 15% of incarcerated population with history of homelessness), which illustrates that homelessness often triggers incarceration. (Metraux S, Culhane , 2006.) Individuals with past incarceration face great barriers attempting to exit homelessness due to such policies which disqualify them from most federal housing assistance programs due to their criminal records. One of the federal housing assistance programs of the community is through the Great Falls Housing Authority, also known as “Section 8 Housing”. This program offers privage landlords contrated with the Housing Authority which approves the home for Housing Quality Standards and subsidizes the rent for the client which pays approximately 30% of their adjusted income as rent. Due to people with previous felonies of sorts being disqualified from such programs, these individuals may feel it necessary to engage in criminal activities to attempt to break the cycle of homelessness, only in turn perpetuationg the viscious cycle of homelessness, and being

People have been associating where others reside with who they are for the majority of history. In June 2015, this issue brought itself into the limelight when a McKinney, Texas police officer said, “Go back to your section 8 home,” to a group of African American teens who were using a community pool in a primarily white neighborhood (The Washington Post, 2015). The term “section 8 home” is loaded, and refers to an old public housing community created by the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, which was considered viable for white Americans at the time of its creation, that has unfortunately become a place where poverty stricken people of color often reside (The Washington Post, 2015) Sadly, the basis of this racial slur is valid;

In the letter she pours a lot of emotions and makes it obvious that she have been told that “he

Living in a Section 8 neighborhood my whole life, I’ve learned a lot about struggles that most kids at my school haven’t even come to see. In my neighborhood, everybody has something working against them and statistically speaking, most of the kids here will never go to college, will never have a stable career, and will end up in prison, if not dead. I know myself growing up without a father and my mom working day and night to support the family, I often didn't get the support I needed growing up and a lot of the kids here are in the same position. We’ve have had to take care of ourselves and fill the position our parents can’t.

Those who have experienced evictions are forced into multiple logistical housing situations. Due to the stigma associated with a court-ordered eviction, landlords would often engage in rent screenings to ensure that potential renters not only have a “clean” criminal record but also an eviction “free” record (Desmond, 2016). As Desmond discusses (2016), the landlord’s double barrier screening is shielding their neighborhood from criminality and poverty. Correspondingly, some landlords knowingly do not engage in these screening practices as a “business model” to potentially profit off of the poor (Desmond, 2012a). As the person who is evicted fall into the bottom of the rental market, the housing fate of the evicted