BUSH'S NUMBERS ADD UP TO MORE
HOMELESSNESS
Mercury News Editorial
The San Jose Mercury News
March 23, 2004
Under the guise of slashing government waste and inefficiency, the Bush administration plans to gut an important safety-net program.
The federal Section 8 housing program provides rent vouchers for nearly 2 million low-income families, seniors and disabled people. The administration has proposed cutting the program by 10 percent, or $1.6 billion, but claims that its plan to give local housing authorities more flexibility in running their programs will mean more people, not fewer, will get the vouchers.
Really? Let's do the numbers.
The Housing Authority of Santa Clara County gets about $240 million a year in Section 8 money, which it uses to provide housing help to about 16,000 families. Executive Director Alex Sanchez welcomes the Bush reforms, which would cut paperwork and give him more flexibility to negotiate with landlords in this volatile rental market. But if he eliminated his entire $14 million administrative budget, he wouldn't come close to making up for the 10 percent cut -- $24 million -- that Bush is proposing. Even with more flexibility and less red tape, he'd still have to cut close to 2,000 families from the program. In this out-of-sight rental market, that means they'd likely become homeless.
Congress must not be taken in by the administration's spin on this one.
Slashing waste and inefficiency may be a noble cause, but creating more homeless families isn't.