I just saw an article saying the govt is going to possibly end the Section 8 programs.

Of course, some funds will be redirected to the states and the states will have to deal with their own problems. I;ll look more into it but this is interesting

Check Real Estate MIndset channel on You tube.for more info.

Section 8 is a part of LBJ great society policy. We had welfare before, handed off from State legislatures to Counties to administer…..people who had to stand for election. Quite a contrast to the Federal employees at the regional governance building that seemingly never answered to anyone.

I'm for ending all welfare programs and thusly "incentivizing" work. That's not going to happen so S8 needs a complete DOGEing and overhaul.

Wouldn't it be a better place if people had to work for their money instead of sucking the government teat?

I agree that it will never happen. There is more money in that scheme than anywhere else I can think of. All thanks to taxpayers.

An article? In, perhaps, the liberal press, about how DOGE is going to throw low income people out into the gutter?

I don't think Section 8 will end, but it sure needs some cleaning up. Every section 8 tenant who has ever applied to me, no exceptions, was committing some sort of serious welfare fraud.

It's hard to get a clear picture of what exactly is going on unless you take a look at multiple sources of news. And, from both sides of the isle. Best I can tell (and I admit up front that I may not have ALL the facts), Section 8 is not ending per se. Dude at the helm now wants to end it at the federal level however. He wants to send the money to the states and let them handle it at the state level and spend the money how they see fit. They can add or subtract requirements as they see fit.

Any time the government does anything, there's always unintended consequences. There will be no exception here, I have zero doubt of that. Overall, I think I may like to try it that way (letting states handle it). I think some states will get some folks off of the program and others will add a lot of folks to it. I just hope that the government won't reallocate the money distribution and let the states removing folks from the program spend that money elsewhere where it's needed. I don't have high hopes that will be the case however.

Every government funded program I have ever seen has always had the spend it or it doesn't come back next year thought process.

When I ran a cabinet shop we had maintenance from a decent sized school order stuff. At the end of the year they would just order blank countertops.

I asked why and the guy admitted that if they didn't spend that money it would come off the budget for next year and they might actually need it then.

zero - that's not just government. It's in the corporate life too. When I worked in finance for a big manufacturer, all the Senior VP's thought the same. We worked hard to break that mentality. It was near impossible! We made headway when one of the SVP's asked for a $150k machine that he didn't budget for. We used that as a very real teachable moment and pointed out to everyone that we were getting this machine and it wasn't a problem. So see, take your budgets where they truly need to be and quite the wasteful spending at the end of the year!

Doogie wrote: "He wants to send the money to the states and let them handle it at the state level and spend the money how they see fit."

Isn't that how Sec-8 works now? The funds go to the state and are handled, in most states, by localized housing commissions.

Roy wrote: "Section 8 is the last hope most poor people have before becoming homeless."

Exactly. I don't know what some of you think will happen if Sec8 goes away. You say things like "So people will have to be responsible for themselves?" as you think that that is what would happen if it went away.

Don't get me wrong -- I think that Sec8 is abused by many and likely needs an overhaul. But if it went away, those people wouldn't suddenly get "responsible for themselves." They'd get homeless and be likely a worse problem to deal with...

John wrote- “ Isn't that how Sec-8 works now? The funds go to the state and are handled, in most states, by localized housing commissions.”

No John, state legislature/ county commission are excluded from the process…..Federal government set up their own regional governance to oversee.

Lessons from the hood ....

The poor have been getting screwed since the begining of time. Yes by their decisions but ALSO by decisions MADE FOR THEM.

Had S8 peep who had 5 kids (perhaps by her decision)... the heat would get shut off for non payment. She would then put the heat ON in the name of a child .... run bill up .... heat shut off. Rinse repeat. NOW the kids are starting life "in the hole" (not their decision).

Another example, S8 peep daughter graduates HIGH HONORS from HS. Gets a FULL scholarship to college. First in her family!! GETS PREGNANT at senior prom (her decision?). Mom says "your having the baby, and going to college." She lasts one semester and drops out ... baby born with "complications". Blame the new mother? Baby daddy denies he's the father and fleas the country...ie no child support (not her decision).

Sisco: Got ya. I was thinking that the localized Housing Commissions were done through the state, but I see that they are federal. So this change would give the federal money to the states who would then dole it out to the housing commissions. I'm not sure if adding a middle-man there would be good or bad -- I'd have to see more research and data on it, I guess. But I get the change now, at least. Thanks.

As for "who cares if they become homeless?", that is clearly said by someone who doesn't have to walk pass homeless people on the sidewalks all day in any big city. LOTS of people care about that problem. And, again, so many of you seem to have this belief that they are all just lazy and will magically find all of these apparently available entry-level jobs that make enough to pay their rent if we just kick them off of Section-8. Yeah, that just isn't going to happen.

JOHN- so basically you prescribe to lets give them more and more of our money in hopes that dont riot and come after us? no i dont walk past them on the sidewalk because i have created a life where i dont live in a city and dont have to deal with that. i dont like the idea of lets pay them a portion of our money so they stay happy enough not to riot and attempt to hurt us.

Ken,

There are "success stories" too ....

One baby mama (dad in jail) only stayed on S8 for a year. Landed a full time job as an admin assistant in a major corporation ....moved closer to work.

Another young buck trained as a plumbing apprentice ... I gave him first dibs on my plumbing jobs .... left S8 family to move to the 'burbs with his GF.

Does it really matter what happens?

Then it all needs overhauled.

I had one S8 tenant who needed it. All the others were playing the system. Some multi-generational.

It is so bad in my area that I no longer accept S8. Same things have happened with every single agency that I have dealt with.

When people get in a bind it is great to be able to assist them. But it is so easy for them to see beyond the assistance and start working on ways to keep the free to them money coming in.

My old appliance guy had a good job. After 20 years he decided he didn't want it any more. Begged them to lay him off so he could get unemployment.

They finally did and he struggled immediately. So much so that he applied for food stamps, didn't pay his electric bill for three months because of a project that would pay it for him. He barely remembered to do the weekly sign ups for his unemployment.

Then his phone got shut off. Now nobody could contact him to give him work. He waited for months for a free phone for poor people. Lost a lot of potential work because of that.

Now he is used to not working and isn't worth anything. I tried to give him work but he is no longer dependable. I just fired him from mowing my places because he can't even do that right. His new phone is going straight to VM and texts are not being returned.

Maybe it's drugs. I know he has a drinking problem. Once he left the regular job he had nothing to keep him on the straight and narrow.

I was having one of those "Zen moments" thinking yesterday while walking my pooches around the neighborhood. You know... where you're doing some kind of mindless physically activity (like mowing the grass) and the neurons start firing. You solve half the universe's problems in these moments, but when you stop doing the activity those thoughts trail off....

Anyway, the point being is that I'm nowhere near smart enough to grasp the complexity of the "poverty" situation, nor the full solution. I just know there's a lot of people getting rich off people being poor. Govt housing contractors are one of those groups. Same types of groups in the Dept of Defense. If the wars stop, how will the weapons manufacturers justify billing Uncle Sugar (i.e. us) $400 billion per year? If poverty ended, where would all the Section 8 case workers go? All the Food stamp case workers? All the mental health counselors? All the drug/alcohol addict counselors?

I don't know where they'd go. No one does. Some might become the next generation of poverty: mass unemployed Govt workers.

Anyway, my thoughts wandered into the whole "system" we live in. Some of us definitely had it better growing up than others. Some of us made a decision that started us down a pathway to riches, which others made a decision that started them down a pathway to poverty and difficulty. Tryan's Sec 8 high school full-ride scholar comes to mind. Did she make a bad choice? Yeah, and while it was a doozy, we should recall that thousands of "kids" like her make that same choice daily. Most avoid the hardest outcomes, but some get the full consequences of their decisions, then those difficulties are compounded by how others react. So on and so forth. There's plenty of blame to pass around, and at least a dozen people get a heaping helping of blame for each sad case.

But at the end of the day, the system is the system. We can and should try to improve it, but like all things man-made it will never be perfect. So the only thing we as individuals can do is recognize it and control what we can control and not sweat the stuff we can't too much.

It's the "Serenity Prayer", if you're familiar with it.

"God grant me the courage to change the things I can,

the humility and patience to accept the things I can't,

and the wisdom to know the difference."

Something like that. It's been a minute since I've seen it written out.

Ken, no, that isn't what I said. What I tried to convey is that people just going "who cares where they would go?" are basically burying their heads in the sand and have little idea how things really work.

Yes, you clearly don't live in an area with a large homeless population. I actually don't either. But just because the problems don't exist right where we live doesn't mean that they don't exist.

Not understanding that is a real problem that some people have in life. Basically, if they don't see it, they can pretend it doesn't exist. That simply isn't reality for most people.

Ignoring a problem does not make it go away.

It seems interesting to me that the two largest apartment complexes in my county are both up for sale. I think both are around $4,500,000.

Do you expect schools to go away? Just because they are taking funds from the incompetent federal Department of Education. And giving it to the states to manage?

We were spending more per student than any anyother country. And we had poor results.

Can we afford to have IQs continue dropping every year?

Do you really think the states would take the money and stop Section 8? They will just call it another name.

We dont need to waste housing money paying for two levels of managing the funds. Federal and State.

So the end result will be more funds available for actual housing and not management.

Dan,

Do you realize that a household only has to make 35K a year? To be in the top 5% of the world.

Why do so many countries have schools rated better than the US? And the people make far less.

And actually, school success and children with higher incomes are directly connected to how many come from a two-parent home. And not from a broken home.

In order of parents that stay together.

Asians

East Indians

Whites

And when the children become adults. This is the same order of the highest income earners.

In our country people expect to do things different but demand the same results.

I member seeing a special about how and why section 8 was originally created. Before section 8 folks would live in government housing and look for a job that in many cases was within walking distance of those government housing developments. This really didn't provide much opportunity for these folks that didn't have transportation to get away from these places for employment.

So they allowed some folks to slowly integrate into the rest of the community via the voucher program that we know today. On face value, this seems awesome. The implementation and administration of this program today doesn't make me want to run out and find me a S-8 resident.

I am not sure who on this site said it, but I loved what I read. There is no problem that the government can't make worse by throwing money at. If you have to pay 30% of your income for housing, many folks are not incentivized to get that above the table job - not after the government takes 28% of that amount beforehand.

RR78: Why are you comparing income here to the world? That clearly makes the $35k number useless when you factor in the number of people in a place like Indonesia, for example, where the median yearly income is $2,928. It makes the $35k number pointless in the USA because lots of people in Indonesia are living on $3k/year (or less). You have to consider cost of living differences between the USA and other countries.

To make it to the top 5% of income earners in the USA, you need to make almost $300k. The median here is $80k.

Making $35k gets you in the bottom 22%. You make it sound like $35k is some easily livable "top 5%" wage. People could live on it in the middle of nowhere, sure, but not in most of our higher population areas.

I think most problems could be cured by removing the federal government out of it and giving the power to the states. Maybe have federal funds, but if all social welfare programs at the federal level were eliminated and congress allocated funds to the states to cover those programs, or even better, reduced fed taxes and let states tax to fund their own, we'd be better off. The more hands money passes through, the less comes out at the end to solve the purpose the funds were originally intended. I often think what if all welfare programs were eliminated and replaced by a monthly replenished debit card that could be used for food, rent, etc. The only issue is that the poor had to budget and take some form of responsibility. But they will always be poor if they don't learn to budget and save.

John,

And they have a much lower quality of life than our low income.

Do we really even have people going hungry like other countries?

35K a year would amount to $16.82 per hour. This would not put a roof over your head in many areas. Sure, if you are buying homes for 50K that is possible. we are now getting renters who make 100-150k a year as housing is costly. 35K would not be a pathway for any renter for a basement apartment or studio in our area. 35k yearly income is below the poverty level in the 2025 Poverty Guidelines: 48 Contiguous States. Our standards should be higher.