Privatised Affordable Housing Program Costs More, Houses Fewer

From The Idiot Factor:

Day after day I drive my wife to work and each day we pass a McDonald's. One thing I can always see are homeless people. I keep reading that our Kansas governor has cut back on welfare and most of those people are now working. But my suspicions are that these people represent the fruits of our conservative society—they are the people know one want to see, because they represent what does not work in our capitalist system.

And there are a lot of these people. They all looked leathered and weathered by the sun and the elements. I can tell they spend little time indoors. They often carry most of their possessions. They often change in the McDonald's bathroom. They dress poor. They are poor.

The system has failed many of our citizens. And another failure from the great ideas of conservatism are the ideas that a department such as government housing can  be turned over to private interests and they will do a better job than the government did. WRONG! And this article proves it. - SJ Otto

From NPR:

On the south side of Dallas, Nena Eldridge lives in a sparse but spotless bungalow on a dusty lot. At $550 each month, her rent is just about the cheapest she could find in the city.

"I'm tired, but I don't have nowhere to go and I don't have enough money to do it," she says, fighting back tears. But she adds, "I'm not living on the streets. I'm not homeless."

After an injury left her unable to work, the only income she receives is a $780 monthly disability check. So she has to make tough financial choices, like living without running water.

Every day, she fills bottles with water from a neighbor's house and takes them home. She washes her hands with water heated in an electric slow cooker. She uses a bucket to flush the toilet

Eldridge is among the 11 million people nationwide making these kinds of choices every day. The government calls them "severely rent burdened" — people paying more than half their income in rent.

Thirty years ago, Eldridge was the type of person Congress sought to help when it created the low-income housing tax credit program, which is now the government's primary program to build housing for the poor.

But the tax-credit building that's only a little more than 2 miles from Eldridge's house, where she might pay as little as $200 or $300 in rent based on her income, has a waiting list up to four years long. In Dallas and nationwide, many of these buildings don't have any vacancies.

In a joint investigation, NPR — together with the PBS series Frontline — found that with little federal oversight, LIHTC has produced fewer units than it did 20 years ago, even though it's costing taxpayers 66 percent more in tax credits.

In 1997, the program produced more than 70,000 housing units. But in 2014, fewer than 59,000 units were built, according to data provided by the National Council of State Housing Agencies.

For the rest click here.