The Community Stability Act ( Csa ) Essay

The problems that arise from housing are numerous. Housing takes up more than half of all real property tax. Not only that, it’s also the largest issue in a family’s budget. The federal government spent $38 billion in preferential subsidies and $2 trillion on housing in total in the year 2006. Rigid zoning codes prohibit certain types of housing from being built. This prevents some citizens from being provided with homes that fit their budget and ads to the chronic problem of homelessness our communities face. Too many houses can crowd neighborhoods and make transit difficult. They can also obstruct view and, when foreclosed upon, lead to plummeting property values.

These practices help maintain the status quo, helping low-income families remain poor. Moreover, it requires these low-income families to depend on government assistance, such as low-income housing and welfare. The reliance on assistance programs groups the poorest people in the same housing projects and communities, overwhelming schools with low-income students. Not only do these real estate practices concentrate the poorest in an area together, they also drive the often whiter, more affluent families out. The majority of poor feel they have no opportunity to transcend class restrictions, and the property taxes that fund our schools do not alleviate their stress. Further, homogeneous collections of poor means that school populations are rarely as diverse as we believe.

My proposal will benefit only families of the local communities mentioned previously. These communities have been afflicted with a new interest for gentrification of more affluent residents. We need to protect the low income families from displacement of their neighborhoods. Data that must be collected to initiate the proposal is the family’s income, financial issues, and household size. We are also going to gather data regarding housing prices, rentals and the impact of gentrification within the

For the past fifty years the shift from meeting the housing needs of the poor through government projects-based housing to a more individual approach, has been slowly implemented. Housing vouchers now enable underprivileged populations to move from high-poverty, segregated neighborhoods to more un-segregated, low-poverty neighborhoods. Low-poverty neighborhoods have less crime, better opportunities for employment, and more diverse schooling options. Some housing advocates however, contend that housing assistance is unnecessary and is an income subsidy that should be combined with other social safety nets (Clark, W. 2008).

California’s housing situation is severe compared to the rest of the United States. California is included in the top three states with the most “housing cost burdened individuals” (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2015). In a list of 20 cities where rents were highest compared to income, 10 of the 20 cities were in California with Los Angeles, CA topping the list (Dewan, 2014). Opponents might say that households in poverty could never afford housing due to their impoverished state but poverty measures of California show that the abnormally high cost of housing in California makes matters more severe and causes the amount of households that are severely cost afflicted to increase. Furthermore, when poverty measures take into account California’s uniquely expensive and insufficient housing supply, the results show that housing costs contribute significantly to poverty. For example, when housing costs were included in the California Poverty Measure as well as federal Supplemental Poverty Measure, the poverty rates rose substantially (Wimer, Mattingly, & Levin, 2013) (Short, 2015). And when high housing costs were artificially substituted with low housing costs, poverty rates significantly dropped (Bohn, Danielson, & Levin, 2013). And it’s not just the poor who are affected! Even those who are moderate income earners are becoming financially burdened by high housing costs. Those who are moderately well off compared to low income earners are financially burdened by rent costs in expensive cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University,

It is often easy to castigate large cities or third world countries as failures in the field of affordable housing, yet the crisis, like an invisible cancer, manifests itself in many forms, plaguing both urban and suburban areas. Reformers have wrestled passionately with the issue for centuries, revealing the severity of the situation in an attempt for change, while politicians have only responded with band aid solutions. Unfortunately, the housing crisis easily fades from our memory, replaced by visions of homeless vets, or starving children. Metropolis magazine explains that “…though billions of dollars are spent each year on housing and development programs worldwide, ? At least 1 billion people

Families require stabilized housing that is affordable, safe and maintained. If they don’t have stabile housing they are moving more often and this can effect the children’s education when being moved from school to school. The parents are unable to focus on the other areas of their lives when they are unable to find decent housing.

Although most American citizens do not typically notice government programs in their daily lives, implemented policies have major effects on American citizens. It is estimated that around 1.35 million children suffer from homelessness due to their families living on the streets (Crook). With this massive housing conundrum, the United States government should increase funding for the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Increased funding would decrease homelessness by lowering the crime rate, educating students, and improving American living conditions.

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

The DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) draws upon promising practices from a national body of work that suggest that dual-generation programming is an effective strategy for breaking the cycle of poverty. Specifically, two-generation strategies that suggest integrating education, employment opportunities, and peer support for parents and academic and support services for their children will produce far more promising outcomes for both the parents and their child.

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

The educational gap between low-income children and the average American presents a serious problem that has only been perpetuated through government-funded public housing projects. Indeed, this divide eventually translates to a disparity of college acceptance rates and job placement rates. Thus, the academic success of children from low-income families directly threatens their upward mobility. A continued shift toward increased tenant-based housing would give families the opportunity to move out of their economically segregated neighborhoods and choose the neighborhood that best meets their children’s needs. Indeed, despite the Housing Choice voucher program’s current flaws, in each of the case studies, the housing choice vouchers have resulted

The bigger an issue, the more likely it is to be ignored because then people are able to blame the size of the issue. In 2015, a study found that over 500,000 people were homeless in the United States. At this point, major cities were beginning to declare homelessness an emergency situation, yet majorly successful solutions remained few and far between. In Kozol’s book. he writes about how common it is for the government to look the other way or to choose the option based on what will cost the government the least or what is more beneficial for the government, rather than what is best for the schools. “... the districts that face the toughest challenges are also likely to be those that have the fewest funds to meet their children’s needs” (Source G, 56). It is important to recognize that the book is written based off of Kozol’s experiences in the late twentieth century, meaning that the specifics of the situations may differ in present day but the basic themes and issues remain. In Source B, Lloyd Pendleton discusses how the Housing First system helped to decrease chronic homelessness in Utah by 91%. In Source E, Richard J. Berry, the mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico, describes how he helped create

The lack of affordable housing in the United States is a problem that doesn 't receive nearly the attention that it necessitates. This absence of affordable housing became especially prevalent following World War II when suburbanization spread across the country like wildfire. Although the sheer number of homes increased, Jim Crow segregation influenced housing policy, meaning that white institutions prevented blacks from obtaining the mortgages needed to afford such homes. Therefore, rather than accept subprime loans, which often result in foreclosure, many black people have been pigeonholed into paying exorbitant rates for dilapidated rental properties located in inner-cities, thereby creating the affordable housing problem. Although the situation seems bleak, with careful planning and execution, we can solve the affordable housing problem. Specifically, my proposal involves the following two components: the government must first revise and draft three forms of legislation that create strict yet concise standards that landlords must follow, and then allocate federal funding to health and wellness programs within poor communities. By examining the contributing societal factors to the lack of affordable housing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and then implementing the proposal mentioned above, one could potentially solve the affordable housing problem there and transpose the plan to other impoverished cities across the country.

In 1999 Ontario implemented the Safe Streets Act (SSA). Broadly, this legislation prohibited “aggressive panhandling”, solicitation of a captive audience and unsafe disposal of needles, condoms and broken glass (O’Grady, Gaetz and Buccieri, 2013). Even though the legislation does not explicitly state this, there is consensus in the academic literature about the SSA that this legislation was, for the most part, a response to “squeegee kids” (Chesnay, Bellot, and Sylvestre, 2013; Glasbeek, 2006; O’Grady et al. 2013; Parnaby 2003). Squeegee kids were a group of homeless youth in the city of Toronto that would wash car windshields at intersections, during red lights, in the hopes of getting money in exchange from drivers. Chesnay et al. (2013)