Nutjobs Ranting About Politics.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Disclaimer - I am ignorant in this area. But what I object to is compusory aspect of this. I think landlords should be able to rent to whomever they like, period. I also do not like the idea of government planning in the market place, for what I believe are obvious reasons.

That said, I don't necessarily disagree with the effects you believe your plan would have, but I would be pissed off as hell if a landlord in my building or next door decided to acept vouchers. Tell me, would the government compensate me for any dimunition in my propery value?

Everybody would be diminished slightly, if at all. That's the whole point of breaking up the concentration. As for the landlord's action, if its in your building, how does the landlord rent to someone else and yet affect your property value. If its the building next door, is your property value diminshed when the lottery winner (ex section 8) moves in?

I believe that your post implicitly acknowledges an objection to the existing section 8 mandate (if I'm correct) that a landlord who accepts 1 must accept any others. What protectable interest does a landlord have in refusing to rent to someone based on section 8? If there is any legitimate reason (criminal background) etc., that's one thing. And if the recipients need to be evicted, the local laws should apply. But if you put out an ad in Lake Forest asking for $8000 to rent a mansion, and I show up with my 8 kids and a voucher statement (verifiable by one call to a federal agency), good for $8000 on a renewable annual lease, than what exactly is your protectable interest in refusing me?

And really, you take away the ability to refuse people based on section 8 status (the tradeoff being that you can only accept 1 in the 200 unit building), than pretty much what you are really facing is a whole bunch of people who just don't want to rent to poor minorities. Lord knows we see that often enough even outside the section 8 context to know it exists.

Who gets harmed again?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

MORAL CLARITY. So, here's the deal. We've got these terrorists -- we'll change their names, and the mentioned locations, for security reasons -- there's Abdul, Mohammed, Said, and Achmed.

• [Achmed] is an escapee from a prison in [Jordan], where he was incarcerated for blowing up an Air [Jordanian] passenger plane in 1976, killing 73. He also admitted plotting six hotel bombings in [Amman] that killed one tourist and injured 11 others in 1997.
  
  [...]
  
  [Mohammed] once fired a bazooka at the U.N. building; in February 1979, he was convicted and sentenced to 40 years for conspiracy in the 1976 assassination of former [Israeli Ambassador X] and his American colleague, [John Smith], in Washington. (His conviction was subsequently vacated on a legal technicality.) [Abdul] was convicted and imprisoned in [Egypt] in 1977 for murdering a [Saudi Arabian] consulate official; he was released by authorities in 1983. [Said] received a 10-year sentence in 1986 for conspiring to kill Kuwait's ambassador to the United Nations in 1980. These are violent men. [Israeli] prosecutors said they had planned to detonate 33 pounds of explosives while [Mubarak] was speaking at a university in [Kuwait]. Had they not been intercepted by the authorities, the blast not only would have killed the [Egyptian] president but quite possibly hundreds of others gathered to hear him speak during the [Middle East] summit.

Achmed is now in hiding in another country, having entered with a false U.S. passport. So when the other three terrorists attempted to fly into [major U.S. airport], they were quickly arrested, right?

No, they were welcomed by U.S. officials, at the direct instructions of the Bush Administration! They were met by a cheering crowd, whose votes President Bush seeks! This will help his election! They are freedom fighters! Moral clarity! Strength! Leadership! A firm line against terrorism!

Click on the link [above] to see how the changed names made the difference.

Amygdala

The moral of the story: Terror is bad, except when the terrorists may help Bush win Florida.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Everybody would be diminished slightly, if at all. That's the whole point of breaking up the concentration. As for the landlord's action, if its in your building, how does the landlord rent to someone else and yet affect your property value. If its the building next door, is your property value diminshed when the lottery winner (ex section 8) moves in?

It would be more than you think. If the person that owns the unit next door to me rented it out to anybody, I would be concerned. If it was rented out to voucher recipients, I would not have purchased my place in retrospect. This is just the nature of the beast. People by in the neighborhoods they do for many reasons, but one of which is how safe their investment is. The acceptance of vouchers next door or even in the building next door has an affect on that equation.

I believe that your post implicitly acknowledges an objection to the existing section 8 mandate (if I'm correct) that a landlord who accepts 1 must accept any others. What protectable interest does a landlord have in refusing to rent to someone based on section 8? If there is any legitimate reason (criminal background) etc., that's one thing. And if the recipients need to be evicted, the local laws should apply. But if you put out an ad in Lake Forest asking for $8000 to rent a mansion, and I show up with my 8 kids and a voucher statement (verifiable by one call to a federal agency), good for $8000 on a renewable annual lease, than what exactly is your protectable interest in refusing me?

For me its an environment thing. If I wanted to live in that type of environment, I would have paid a whole lot less than I actually did. But I leveraged myself and bought "up" to get protection on the value of my investment. And you seem to think that the effect neighbors have on the neighborhood only goes 1 way - i.e., that the minority (not in a racial sense) will acclimate to the culture of the majority (again, not racial). However this is not always the case.

And really, you take away the ability to refuse people based on section 8 status (the tradeoff being that you can only accept 1 in the 200 unit building), than pretty much what you are really facing is a whole bunch of people who just don't want to rent to poor minorities. Lord knows we see that often enough even outside the section 8 context to know it exists.

Who gets harmed again?

My objections are not in anyway based on race. They are based on class.

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Please let me know if either of you take concrete steps to put this into law. I will want to sell my property well before then.

The question I have for all of you is who is going to make the determination as to who is permitted and not permitted to live where?

It's interesting you mention this. Recently one of the local mixed-income high density developments in this area, which would have provided a significant number of housing units (mostly apartments) to lower income families was severely curbed due to massive lobbying efforts by residents in the general vicinity on the basis that it would unfairly harm the value of their homes. According to the main opponent of the development at the recent planning board hearing, his concern was that he had paid top dollar for a home on a five acre lot with the belief that everything else in the area would be on similar lots, and it wasn't fair that all these other people wanted to live nearby (nevermind that there was no zoning probihition on such density building, or any other legal or reasonable basis to believe that such incredibly lower densities would be kept in one of hte fastest growing counties in the country).

All the developers want to do is build a profitable, sustainable center. But instead the government is requiring that they lower density, due to intense pressure from the NIMBYs. Needless to say, it is the highest density, lowest profit low-income housing that is being axed.

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by sgtclub
It would be more than you think. If the person that owns the unit next door to me rented it out to anybody, I would be concerned. If it was rented out to voucher recipients, I would not have purchased my place in retrospect. This is just the nature of the beast. People by in the neighborhoods they do for many reasons, but one of which is how safe their investment is. The acceptance of vouchers next door or even in the building next door has an affect on that equation.

What if the Section 8 recipient was my grandmother, a retired elementary school teacher who, for various reasons, had a retirement income insufficient to support her living in even a one bedroom apartment without some Section 8 assistance?*

Now what if she were black?

My objections are not in anyway based on race. They are based on class.

I believe that you believe this is true.

Judge on criminal background of the renter, and perhaps the other residents. Judge on a credit check. But you know, and I know, refusing to accept section 8 vouchers is an inefficient proxy for forms of discrimination that are illegal.


* While this is in fact true, it doesn't really impact my perspective on section 8 vouchers. It was an unusual circumstance and short lived; she eventually came to live with us for health reasons.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by baltassoc
It's interesting you mention this. Recently one of the local mixed-income high density developments in this area, which would have provided a significant number of housing units (mostly apartments) to lower income families was severely curbed due to massive lobbying efforts by residents in the general vicinity on the basis that it would unfairly harm the value of their homes. According to the main opponent of the development at the recent planning board hearing, his concern was that he had paid top dollar for a home on a five acre lot with the belief that everything else in the area would be on similar lots, and it wasn't fair that all these other people wanted to live nearby (nevermind that there was no zoning probihition on such density building, or any other legal or reasonable basis to believe that such incredibly lower densities would be kept in one of hte fastest growing counties in the country).

All the developers want to do is build a profitable, sustainable center. But instead the government is requiring that they lower density, due to intense pressure from the NIMBYs. Needless to say, it is the highest density, lowest profit low-income housing that is being axed.

In their defense though, one of the only defenses a neighborhood has against the current section 8 disaster, is zoning restrictions to inhibit development of multi-unit buildings. Because once the building is there, the owner only has to okay a section 8 voucher once before disaster threatens to strike the neighborhood.

In some neighborhoods (outlying) of Chicago, residents are savvy enough to protest any plan for any new multi-unit. I'd bet a bazillion dollars that the people in your example would find less reason to protest if they were promised that the new building would not subsidize the rent of any portion of the population beyond the national average (or something close). But if I thought a 10 unit building even 2 blocks away was going section 8, my place might be one of the first up on the market.

And for every Club hiding from his new neighbors in his compound with guard dogs and machine guns, there's a Hello who will take one for the team and take the new neighbor's kids out for ice cream every once in awhile. Heck, someone or other here might even consider volunteering to be the immediate neighbor of the local section 8 recipient as charity. I'd take that chance, so long as I wasn't expected to have them as all my neighbors.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by baltassoc
All the developers want to do is build a profitable, sustainable center. But instead the government is requiring that they lower density, due to intense pressure from the NIMBYs. Needless to say, it is the highest density, lowest profit low-income housing that is being axed.

A lot of suburbanites zone their towns for low-density, single-family homes with large lots, ostensibly because this improves their homes' values. The result is cookie-cutter communities with bad traffic (a direct result of low density w/ no businesses, etc.) and no place for people like the elderly and students to live. You also have the same few stores everywhere, because there aren't enough people around to support more varied commercial uses. Oddly, when right-wingers start talking about takings and impairment of property rights, they almost never point the finger at suburban zoning laws that gives us miles of ranch homes.

eta: Indeed, David Brooks seems to think that Patio Man owes his natural habitat to this particular form of conservative-friendly government intervention in the market.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by baltassoc
What if the Section 8 recipient was my grandmother, a retired elementary school teacher who, for various reasons, had a retirement income insufficient to support her living in even a one bedroom apartment without some Section 8 assistance?*

Now what if she were black?

It is not so much the actual identity of the voucher recipient. It is the idea that the person living next door does not own their unit and does not have the same interests as me. So you're grandmonther likely would not be objectionable, but there is no guarantee that she would be the only renter for as long as I own my unit.

I believe that you believe this is true.

It is not my belief, it is an objective fact. If you knew me IRL you would know why.

Judge on criminal background of the renter, and perhaps the other residents. Judge on a credit check. But you know, and I know, refusing to accept section 8 vouchers is an inefficient proxy for forms of discrimination that are illegal.

True. But I'm not convinced they should be illegal. I would never discriminate on those grounds, but I think it should be permitted.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by sgtclub
True. But I'm not convinced they should be illegal. I would never discriminate on those grounds, but I think it should be permitted.

By whole communities and governments, or just by individuals?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
By whole communities and governments, or just by individuals?

Individuals absolutely. Governments, absolutely not. I have to think through communities, but my gut reaction is no (if you are thinking on deed restrictions, for example).

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by sgtclub
It is not so much the actual identity of the voucher recipient. It is the idea that the person living next door does not own their unit and does not have the same interests as me. So you're grandmonther likely would not be objectionable, but there is no guarantee that she would be the only renter for as long as I own my unit.

There's no guarantee there would be a renter at all. Or that the owner next door isn't a complete asshole. That's the breaks of property ownership. I'd be sympathetic to the idea of a "no rental" clause in a deed restriction (but I have no idea if that would be enforable) to prevent renter problems, but once you're going to rent, I don't see how one's status as the recipient of a government subsidy tells one anything about a person that isn't better answered some other way. Rental history, credit report, criminal record, length of time in current job, length of time at prior residence, personal references.

Your better answer is that the Feds are too horrible at doing their jobs to require anyone to accept money from them. In many areas, Section 8 paperwork is complicated to fill out for the landlord, there is a substantial delay before the government starts paying, and the government is habitually late with the monthly portion (all these are true for Baltimore; I can't imagine Chicago being much better). These impose a legitimate hardship on a landlord.

On the otherhand, I just caught a summary of a case in New York that ruled that a New York section 8 equivilent tenant can not withhold his portion of the rent in response to an unihabitable apartment, unless the government also agrees to withhold rent. Given that the government bureucracy that is so hard to start up payments is also equally hard to stop them, New York landlords are now free to completely disregard their tenants' health if the tenants receive assistance.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The result is cookie-cutter communities with bad traffic (a direct result of low density w/ no businesses, etc.) and no place for people like the elderly and students to live. You also have the same few stores everywhere, because there aren't enough people around to support more varied commercial uses.

Tell us when you've finished explaining why your particular taste in community aesthetics should trump our rights to, democratically, determine how we want our home communities to be structured.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by baltassoc
I don't see how one's status as the recipient of a government subsidy tells one anything about a person that isn't better answered some other way.

It is perhaps the most accurate predictor of tenant problems.

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by bilmore
It is perhaps the most accurate predictor of tenant problems.

Cite, please.

Not that I have a counter cite, but I find it hard to believe it's a better predictor than prior rental history or even a credit check, although there may be a significant degree of correlation between Section 8 eligibility and bad rental history and/or credit.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Tell us when you've finished explaining why your particular taste in community aesthetics should trump our rights to, democratically, determine how we want our home communities to be structured.

You're kidding me, right? I mean, weren't you just on the side of those invoking the Takings Clause?

I never said we all didn't have the right to zone our communities in particular ways, such as the one I described. What I'm not certain about is whether the zoning in towns like the one I described results from

(a) a sort of collective action problem, where the whole town ends of zoned in ways that excludes things (e.g., elderly housing) that we all think is necessary but don't want next to us;

(b) people failing to predict the detriments of low-density zoning (e.g., traffic) as accurately as they predict the benefits (which to say, the advantage of having a large lot is obvious, but the effects on traffic and shopping are less so);

(c) poor planning (and the influence of money on local politics) as rural areas are developed;

(d) different preferences on the part of the people who live in such areas.

I suspect it's a combination of all of the above, but from the towns I'm most familiar with, I see the combination of (b) and (c) as being particularly strong. When the first subdivisions go up, there's very little traffic, and still something of a small-town character, and people take all that for granted. By the time the last subdivisions go in, traffic is much worse, and the small-town feeling is gone, but the die is cast and it's too late. A few people warned about all this along the way, but who's going to tell the families who are striking it rich selling to the developers that they can't have such a big jackpot? Those families have been influential in the area for years, and the town has never had the sort of zoning that tells you what you can do with your land . . . .