Last week I related the tale of a few
Pottstown residents who decided to fight back against the crime and drugs in
their community. They hounded the
Montgomery County Housing Authority (MCHA) to remove a Housing Choice Voucher
from a woman who was blatantly violating the rules. It took many months, but was eventually
successful; in fact, these citizens were rather more successful than the Pottstown Police
Department in dealing with this woman. I
commended this last week, and I shall continue to do so. But I have a question about the affair, one
that attempts to introduce some perspective into the issue, which I believe is
sorely needed. This is why I often refer
to myself as the “Wet Blanket of Reality,” and why I am never radical enough
for those who see the world through the lens of their ideology. I know better, but here goes.
It’s time to ask the question that has
been nagging at me as I read the continuing Facebook and blog posts about this
story. Section 8 is the featured topic,
but isn’t this story really more about crime than Section 8? Tracey Accor continued to have the MCHA (that
means you, the taxpayers) pay a portion of her rent for much too long a period
of time, but the abuse of Section 8 may have been the least of the offenses
committed by her and the various residents of 377 N. Charlotte Street during
their residence there.
Why the greater focus on one of her
targets—the Voucher Program—than on the perpetrator and her crimes? Aren’t we in a sense blaming a victim? Yes, the way the Housing Choice Voucher
Program was written and is administered virtually invites abuse, but that
excuse does not fly with people, so why apply it to government programs? Isn’t abuse abuse, regardless?
There is definitely a very relevant factor
here, not so much rational (read “financial”) as visceral, but no less real or
important for that fact. To see daily
evidence of criminal activity is certainly cause enough for anger, but to know
that your neighborhood criminal is living on
your dollar, partially subsidized by a program designed to help the needy
but otherwise law-abiding, really sticks in the craw. Facebook’s “Pottstown Homeowner at Large” put
this feeling quite succinctly: “Here we are, working, paying our taxes and
contributing to society, but by us doing the right thing we are enabling others
to do ‘nothing’.” The writer was being
kind; taxpayers are enabling such people to do positive harm to their
communities, and that is much worse than nothing.
The results of this quite legitimate
feeling, multiplied by the many who experience something like it somewhere
else, produce a tragedy no one intended, and visits it on those who don’t
deserve it. The voucher program’s
weaknesses and glacially slow procedures turn people not just against the
criminal who abuses them, but the program itself. The law-abiding neighbors of its abusers are
victims, and have collected a multitude of very personal—and thus quite
valid—reasons to hate the program. The
greater number of victims here, unfortunately, are those voucher holders who do
obey the law and the program regulations, because they don’t have to live
anywhere near the violator to be hurt.
It is this last group of people that scammers like Tracey Accor truly
victimize, because amid the almost daily evidence of a criminal mentality, the
thing people tend to remember is the Section 8 Voucher part.
We simply must establish a sense of
perspective, and see the problem for what it is, a criminal problem, not a Section
8 problem. Section 8 is most certainly
part of the problem, and in its present form cannot be the solution. But to conflate “Section 8” with crime is to
do a great disservice to the complexity of the reality that is the Housing
Choice Voucher Program.
So, keeping with my reality thing, what
does the future hold for the program, and thus for the innocent victims of its
shortcomings? There are—in theory—three
broad options regarding the future of Housing Choice Vouchers. In truth, however, two of those are not options,
because they require government action.
Only the third is possible, because it can be undertaken by private citizens.
First, the government could simply eliminate
the program. To those who recommend
this, I ask only, “as opposed to what?” If you think your neighborhood and your
community’s streets are unsafe now, just try to image them after a substantial
source of income for many malefactors is cut off. Calls to simply eliminate the program are
many things, beginning with un-Christian.
They are also pure posturing, designed to score visceral points without
having to actually be serious about the issue.
Simply eliminating welfare programs solves nothing, and will only make
things worse. It won’t happen.
Second, Congress could undertake a
wholesale, thoughtful rewrite of the program, addressing the flaws that
everyone knows about by now. If anyone thinks that the Republican-led
Congress will undertake such an effort any time in the near future, please contact
me. I have a bridge to sell you. And please, don’t write me about how a
Democratic Congress wouldn’t do this either; that’s not relevant to reality, and
therefore another example of pure posturing.
When either political party comes up with an improvement, then my
attitude will change. I'm not holding my breath, and neither should you.
What this means is that we all must
continue to live with (and perhaps next to) the results of a horribly flawed
program, because our government is not going to do anything. In the face of this unfortunate truth, that
leaves only the third option: people, within each of our communities, not just
attacking the Voucher Program, but focusing
on those who violate it. That’s the only real option, if your goal is
to make things better, and not just bitch.
Let’s not just give thanks for those citizens willing to undertake such
a thankless, repetitious task as prodding a Federal Agency, but emulate their
example. Citizens must get involved,
report Housing Choice Voucher violations to the Authority and then keep on
hounding it relentlessly. That’s what
the citizens in Pottstown that I wrote about last week did. The story demonstrates what can be done, but
fully acknowledges the time and effort required. To call something time consuming, difficult
and productive of—at best—only a “small victory” is pretty much the definition
of a “wet blanket,” but that is the reality.
If you ask the people who hounded the MCHA
for a long time just to remove one voucher from its holder, I’m not sure they would
say things are really any better. N.
Charlotte Street in Pottstown has much greater problems than abuse of a Housing
Choice Voucher, witness a recent headline about drug and weapons seizures a few
blocks up from our subject building. But
it also still has those citizens I wrote about, and others who keep the public’s
focus on the problem, so there is hope.
We must remember that for them, the problem is not only real, it’s real
close. That makes what they do not only
a thankless task, but also a downright risky one. Perspective must tell us that also.
Perspective also says that the people I wrote
about last week only lit one candle in the struggle against urban crime, so the
view is not much improved. But what if
many others, in other communities, undertook such actions? Even a wet blanket couldn’t put out the fires
they would kindle.
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