Coming Soon To A Neighborhood Near You

If you're like me and most of the people I know, you've worked hard all your life to get where you are. I'll even go one step farther, and assume that where you are is a nice middle-class setting. It may be an urban neighborhood, or somewhere in the suburbs, or even (if you're lucky) a nice place out in the country. Regardless, however, I'm willing to bet that most of you  - and your neighbors - spend time and money to keep your home in good shape. You and your neighbors are probably, for the most part, reasonable, law-abiding citizens.

Well, don't get too comfortable. All of that is about to change.

Hillary’s rumored running mate, Housing Secretary Julian Castro, is cooking up a scheme to reallocate funding for Section 8 housing to punish suburbs for being too white and too wealthy.

The scheme involves super-sizing vouchers to help urban poor afford higher rents in pricey areas ... while assigning them government real-estate agents called “mobility counselors” to secure housing in the exurbs.

Castro plans to launch the Section 8 reboot this fall, even though a similar program tested a few years ago in Dallas has been blamed for shifting violent crime to affluent neighborhoods.

It’s all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs.

Oh, great. Public housing has proved to be a colossal failure, so the democrats are going to expand that program to decent law-abiding neighborhoods.

Anticipating NIMBY resistance, Castro last month threatened to sue suburban landlords for discrimination if they refuse even Section 8 tenants with criminal records.

Let me see if I understand this. Not only can I get in trouble for deciding who I will or will not rent my private property to, but I will also get in trouble for objecting to a male using the same restroom/lockerroom as my daughter.

Give me a great big f**king break!

Castro is expected to finalize the new regulation, known as “Small-Area Fair Market Rents” (SAFMR), this October, in the last days of the Obama presidency.

... Castro’s plan — which requires no congressional approval — would more than double the standard subsidy, while also covering utilities. At the same time, he intends to reduce subsidies for those who choose to stay in housing in poor urban areas, such as Brooklyn. So Section 8 tenants won’t just be pulled to the suburbs, they’ll be pushed there.

Wait, what - "...requires no congressional approval"?!? WTF? How can he get away with that? At the very least the GOP-controlled House should be able to refuse funding for such an absurd idea.

Oh ... never mind...that would require a spine and a pair of cojones. If the repubs had either one or the other, let alone both, they would have put a halt to this crap years ago.

A draft of the new HUD rule anticipates more than 350,000 Section 8 voucher holders will initially be resettled under the SAFMR program. Under Obama, the total number of voucher households has grown to more than 2.2 million.

The document argues that larger vouchers will allow poor urban families to “move into areas that potentially have better access to jobs, transportation, services and educational opportunities.” In other words, offering them more money to move to more expensive neighborhoods will improve their situation.

There's only one problem with that. HUD's own studies show that it doesn't work.

A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare. In fact, more went on food stamps. And their children did not do better in their new schools.

Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents.

“Males…were arrested more often than those in the control group, primarily for property crimes,” the study found.

Dubuque, Iowa, for example, received an influx of voucher holders from projects in Chicago — and it’s had a problem with crime ever since. A recent study linked Dubuque’s crime wave directly to Section 8 housing.

That makes about as much sense as moving people with Ebola to areas uninfected by that virus in the hope that the healthy people will make the sick people well.

There's more evidence from a recent HUD initiative in Dallas.

Starting in 2012, the agency sweetened Section 8 voucher payments, and pointed inner-city recipients to the far-flung counties surrounding Dallas. As government-subsidized rentals spread in all areas of the Metroplex (163 ZIP codes vs. 129 ZIP codes), so did crime.

Now Dallas has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, and recently had to call in state troopers to help police control it. For the first time, violent crime has shifted to the tony bedroom communities north of the city. Three suburbs that have seen the most Section 8 transfers — Frisco, Plano and McKinney — have suffered unprecedented spikes in rapes, assaults and break-ins, including home invasions.

In a sweet twist of irony, "Hillary’s own hometown of Chappaqua is fighting Section 8 housing because of links to drugs and crime and other problems."

Crap like this helps explain the rise of Trump. Love him or hate him (and I'm still not sure where I fall on that spectrum) I just may have to don a hazmat suit and vote for him, if only to stop nonsense like this from spreading any farther than it already has.