The Observation Deck

I figure my biggest question is that there are a lot of parties involved in this situation but most only focus on one aspect of it. Let's take a situation that we know to be chaotic and know involves a family who receives a CMHA voucher. Let's assume it is one we know for sure is involved in a number of police calls to the property. Let's say it involves dilapidated property (as is also being suggested, though not on this thread as much).

Who is involved:
1) The family, obviously.
2) A landlord.
3) Neighbors (who contact the police in the first place, most likely as well as the city in the case of poor care of the property.
4) the police
5) City of Lakewood
6) CMHA
7) Probably the Department of Job and Family Services (assuming they are on some form of unemployment)
8 ) Maybe Social Security Administration (if any family member is on disability, for example).
9) The Court system (maybe for domestic violence of course but there are courts for housing issues as well, involving eviction and so on).

There are probably others. It is rare that folks are just involved with CMHA alone. To get a voucher, it involves filling out forms and getting on a waiting list to get added to a lottery to be put on another waiting list. Our library had these forms and they put them out as the County decides to add more vouchers...which they haven't done in a while. So we aren't looking at a ton of NEW vouchers, just a re-distribution of existing voucher participants.

But there probably is an involvement from the Department of Children and Family services if there is a child in the home. Maybe Board of Mental Health if there are issues such as that, maybe including drug or alcohol addiction. Maybe my agency, the Board of Mental Retardation, when our people are lucky enough to get into the system. Maybe the very involved Lakewood Christian Service Center, an agency who is involved with a large amount of people in need in the city. What about the various churches who give out free food that might feed some people who live in voucher-assisted housing?


So anyway, we are looking at nearly a dozen or more parties that are in some way involved in any particular Voucher situation. Why are we blaming CMHA for this? Ken posted a statistic that there are 450 vouchers in Lakewood? Are they ALL bad situations? Well, not the folks I work with on that program (and I have a few). Clearly, we don't know all of them because there is no way to know. But also clearly there are houses and apartment buildings where police are frequent visitors. Is it fair to blame the system that simply helps pay for their living?

On that list above, who should be first held accountable for people's actions? And then after that? And after that? Bigger question: Who has the opportunity to effect the most change in these situations? The agency that helps pay?

Counter example. My neighbor is an alcoholic man who abuses his wife (he isn't, just an example). He works for Ford (he doesn't). Should we ask Ford to garnish his checks to the point that he can't afford alcohol because he clearly has too much extra money after paying bills that he can buy alcohol that poisons his mind to the point that he hurts people? Or maybe the booze company should be held responsible?

My point is, CMHA has work to do to make the program better but they aren't the best people to have a positive effect in people's lives. They are the safety net. You don't expect the safety net to teach a trapeze artist to catch their partner. It is there for when they don't catch them. So who should be more involved in these situations to help out?

I am curious why people take such a narrow view of the problem and figure if we just get rid of Section 8 we will suddenly be hanging our $10 bills on trees to dry without fear of them being stolen and laying off police for lack of need.

Phil Florian wrote:I am curious why people take such a narrow view of the problem and figure if we just get rid of Section 8 we will suddenly be hanging our $10 bills on trees to dry without fear of them being stolen and laying off police for lack of need.

Thanks for that comment, Phil.

[sarcasm]I keep thinking about the Westerly and the other senior building that are full of Section 8 slackers. It seems like they have EMS over at one of those buildings every day. Those old people are nothing but a drain on city services and the faster we get rid of them, the better off we'll be. Those buildings are full of them.[/sarcasm]

Phil and DL - Thank you , thank you and again, thank you.

dl meckes wrote: [sarcasm]I keep thinking about the Westerly and the other senior building that are full of Section 8 slackers. It seems like they have EMS over at one of those buildings every day. Those old people are nothing but a drain on city services and the faster we get rid of them, the better off we'll be. Those buildings are full of them.[/sarcasm]

That is awesome.

I generally hear the term Section 8 used in a negative register. Sometimes it is unclear whether the person has hard evidence that the persons and properties in question are aligned with housing vouchers.

Typically Section 8 encodes negative perceptions and responses to: 1) behavior - criminal, chaotic, psychiatric and disorganized; 2) class - poor, welfare class, low class etc. and race - African American.

I would expect a low rent neighborhood, with absentee landlords, such as Lakewood, may at times attract persons who fit the encoded negative register and racially charged sense of Section 8 though housing vouchers may have nothing to do with the low rent situation.

With an oversupply of rental property it seems difficult to know all the agencies and informants supplying tenants with information and resources about Lakewood, and how or why they should be held accountable.

There seems to be a veil over the political economy of housing, a veil we are attempting to rent, at least on the LO Deck.

Nonetheless, there’s an interesting statistical point made about housing vouchers in “Pa. officials concerned about migration from N.J.â€Â￾ published in USA Today.

“A person who qualifies by income for subsidized housing can apply for a unit anywhere, says Donna White, a spokeswoman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but most people stay in their local communities. Of the 1.8 million families in the rental subsidy program, 7%-10% get a voucher in one area, then use it in another, she says.â€Â￾

What this statement suggests is that CMHA may not be the only source of housing voucher distribution in Lakewood.

Perhaps a call to Donna White at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, could provide a number for the total number of housing vouchers in Lakewood.

A few years back my brother-in-law explained that gentrification in NYC was driving housing voucher load to Bath NY, which in combination with urban core settlers from a drug rehab program at a Veterans Hospital, raised the level of crime and disorder there.

The above article sheds a little more light on mobility, housing vouchers and the urban core, along with a sense how escalating housing prices in cities pursuing gentrification can have an effect on more remote areas.

Source:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... oona_N.htm

Kenneth Warren