Yesterday, I read the following article about the negative affects of section 8 housing in one Los Angeles suburb.
As always I will be excerpting here, but read the whole thing when you get a chance. I am merely thinking out loud in this post, so there is no real structure.
(LATimes.com) On a recent morning, Lee D’Errico, a Los Angeles County Housing Authority investigator, bounded up the stairs of the sprawling two-story complex in Lancaster, half a dozen armed sheriff’s deputies on his heels.
D’Errico rapped on the door of Baker, a 28-year-old single mother of three. She took one look at the group on her stairs, ordered her children into a bedroom and moved aside.
Then the officers, who had no warrant, searched the home. Within minutes, they discovered a half-smoked marijuana cigarette under a couch cushion — enough, D’Errico told Baker, to terminate her subsidy under the federal Section 8 program.
“What?” Baker said, sobbing. “I didn’t know it was there. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have let you in.”
It was another fruitful investigation for the housing authority in the Antelope Valley, where officials have launched one of the most aggressive campaigns in the nation to stamp out unauthorized or illegal behavior in federally subsidized housing.
Baker’s boyfriend, who said he was there to watch the children while she went to work, admitted that the marijuana was his. But the Section 8 program has zero tolerance for drug use.
The crackdown, initiated by local political leaders with the support of county Supervisor Mike Antonovich in mid-2004, has been fueled by the anger and fear of homeowners in the Antelope Valley. Many associate rising crime, gang violence and declining property values with an influx of poor and mostly black Section 8 tenants from South Los Angeles.
Before I continue with this post, let me give you some additional information about this area that the LA Times left out.
From Wikipedia
“Lancaster and nearby Palmdale had a history of ethnic/racial diversity, but since the 1980s was a destination for African Americans, most represented in upper-incomes and middle-class families. The local aviation industry and high-paid careers in office jobs in Los Angles attracted many immigrants from Asia, like India, Korea and Taiwan into Lancaster.” (source)
In addition to this, Lancaster has recently elected its first Black mayor (Henry W. Hearns–mentioned in article) which out here usually is a strong indication that the population has become very diverse.
Back to the article…
Section 8 recipients and their attorneys say that civil rights are being violated as housing authority investigators team with law enforcement to conduct unannounced searches without warrants. People who see deputies massed at their door are effectively coerced into letting them in, the lawyers argue. Adding to the show of force, sometimes, are masked officers with guns drawn, looking for felons in violation of their parole. The various agencies work together.
Critics say the campaign is unfair because it is selective: The Antelope Valley is home to only about 15% of Section 8 recipients managed by the housing authority, but 60% of the agency’s subsidy terminations occur there, according to a Times analysis.
The crackdown has set off a sometimes dramatic social conflict, pitting neighbor against neighbor, tenant against homeowner, and, often, blacks against whites. Charges of lawlessness have been met with countercharges of racism and vigilantism.
Antonovich says race has nothing to do with it: It is aimed only at criminals and rule breakers and will make room for honest people who have waited years for a subsidy. His office, which has allocated $284,000 to match local government contributions, contends that officials are taking a judicious approach: Only half of the families investigated this year have actually lost their subsidies.
Other civic leaders acknowledge that innocent people might be harmed in the effort but see it as an unfortunate consequence of a crucial undertaking.
Here was my very quick take on this portion: While most of this article only zoomed in on the perceived “injustice” some of these folks within the section 8 housing suffered, THE RULES ARE THE RULES! If the rules say no drugs on the premises PERIOD, then obey the rules. Otherwise get out! Also based on the little that I know of the area plus demographic reports, there is also a very high probability that the persons who are diming out some of these folks are also people of color. But of course the article does not get give us the views of section 8 residents who are abiding by the rules.
Back to the article…
On a Monday in March, more than 3,000 people, many of them homeowners, filled Lancaster Baptist Church. They came to vent about the latest assaults on their suburban dreams.
Just weeks before, teenage boys — presumed to be from Section 8 families — had broken into the home of a pregnant woman, urinated on her maternity clothes and put her barking Chihuahua in the freezer.
On this night, the attendees vowed to redouble their efforts against such hooliganism, launching what they called the Antelope Valley War on Gangs and Crime. One key objective: limiting the number of Section 8 tenants in the Antelope Valley.
The meeting came as a conflict was raging at the city’s eastern edge, in a decade-old tract with the sedate name of Traditions. Up and down the tidy streets, neighbors could point to houses rented to Section 8 families that they felt were not being cared for properly, bringing down everyone’s property values.
They shook their heads at lawns turned brown for lack of water and at garbage cans abandoned on the street. Some said they were afraid to let their children play in the local park because of reports of a mugging. After a rash of burglaries, neighbors concluded that Section 8 tenants or their families were responsible.
I’ll just jump right to the last excerpt:
Lancaster Mayor Henry Hearns, who is the first black elected official in the valley, says the homeowners’ anger is not based in racism. It’s about a failure to maintain standards.
“If they don’t care how they live, we don’t want them,” Hearns said. “But if they want to be good citizens, keeping their yards up like everybody else, they are welcome here.”
Hearns said he had a run-in with neighbors that he suspected were on Section 8. Perturbed that they were not bringing in their trash cans, he went over to their house to offer assistance.
The 74-year-old pastor of a 3,000-member church said he was not warmly received. He wound up in an altercation with the teenage boy who lived there, then was ordered off the property by the boy’s father.
Within weeks, the mayor said, “I had him out.” (source)
Without going into much dialog on this one, I will leave with this final thought: What else can you/we do for folks (regardless of race) who refuse to abide by the rules? My problem isn’t with folks who are on section 8, it is with folks who are given a break with living expenses yet still have no respect for both the house and the surrounding community. While folks will be quick to defend the folks in this article who felt that they were being victimized, notice how these same people fail to mention how these abusers of the system make it bad for those who are abiding by the rules. The other problem that I have noticed is that if other Black people in a suburban setting were to call these folks out, they would be labeled as being too”uppity“. If White folks openly speak out against section 8 housing, in most cases it is deemed as “racism”. While I do believe that racism can sometimes be a factor, I also tend to believe that in most cases it boils down to folks who care vs. those who do not care about the upkeep of their neighborhood.
I could go many directions with this topic, but I am just gonna keep it simple for now.
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