June 26, 2011

From Blue State to Red State via Section Eight

The problem with being poor in 21st Century America is not that you can't buy enough food or even buy enough flat screen TVs, it's that you can't afford to not live around other poor people. But, the government has a plan to solve that problem. From the Washington Post:
Housing vouchers a golden ticket to pricey suburbs 
By Stephanie McCrummen, Published: June 26 
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It was clear that Liza Jackson’s luck had changed when she drove her pearl-white Dodge sedan, the one with the huge pink plastic eyelashes over the headlights, into Pinebrook, an eight-year-old subdivision where residents tend to notice cars with huge pink eyelashes. 
“There goes the neighborhood,” one homeowner said when she heard that her potential new neighbor had a federal housing voucher known as a Section 8. 
But Jackson could well be Pinebrook’s salvation, a means by which landlords can rent an empty, crime-magnet of a house to a tenant with a steady, government-backed check. 
From Jackson’s point of view, the dismal housing market appeared as a glorious reversal of fortune: Fresh swaths of suburbia were opening up to the very people it has so often excluded. 
She had seen one house, and now she rolled up to another, a tan three-bedroom with red shutters. She got out and looked around, a vaguely glamorous vision crossing the grass in a long, leopard-print dress. She peeked into the windows, making out what appeared to be vaulted ceilings. 
“Dang,” Jackson said approvingly. 
She put the house, a foreclosure turned rental, on her list of possibilities. ...
But as housing prices keep slipping and the economy remains shaky, there’s been another shift as more landlords view the approximately 2 million American families with a Section 8 voucher — which essentially subsidizes fair-market rent for people who can’t afford it — as among the best ways to fill an empty house. 
“It’s guaranteed money,” said David Benham, who owns several rental properties and is a founder of the Benham REO Group, which sells bank foreclosures to investors in 35 states. “It has a great accountability program with the renters. I love Section 8. I wish every one of my properties was Section 8.” 
So for a group of Americans previously blocked from certain neighborhoods by “not in my back yard” politics, high prices and a lack of rental options, this is a minor bonanza. Those with a Section 8 voucher, a key federal program for the poor, are a fraction of those who need it; waiting lists are full and years long. But they are a lucky fraction. In the recession-era economy, the voucher is becoming a golden ticket to almost anywhere, a point hardly lost on Liza Jackson, whose cellphone was now ringing Lil Wayne. 
“Yes?” she said, answering in the prim manner she described as her “white voice.” “I had called about the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath? Yes. Liza. Like Minnelli.” 
Jackson and her daughter Sheena, 24, were saying goodbye to a cramped two-bedroom townhouse in Honolulu, a city she described as “not all it’s cracked up to be, if you’re black,” and “all high maka maka,” which is Hawaiian slang for unduly expensive. 
Jackson had planned the move for months, perusing rentals on Section 8 Web sites that offer everything from chic new condominiums in Miami to four-bedrooms in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Atlanta. Jackson decided on Charlotte, where she could get more square footage for her family, which included Sheena, Sheena’s 5-year-old son, Shamahrie, and her two dogs, Coco Chanel and Mamacita. She saved up from her job as a baker, shipped the car and booked a room at a cheap hotel off the Billy Graham Parkway. 
Now it was early June, and she and Sheena were at a briefing at the Charlotte Housing Authority office, a normally dreary place that was bustling like a booming real estate firm. 
By 8 a.m., more than two dozen hopeful people were streaming in, having taken overnight buses from New York, Baltimore, New Jersey and elsewhere, where they lived in public housing, or run-down neighborhoods, or places they hoped to escape. 
“I want to be around all this fresh air,” said Evelyn Lifsey, who was moving from a Staten Island public housing project. “My moving truck is on standby.” 
A housing counselor ended the briefing by handing out a list of Zip codes. 
“These are areas with better amenities, more jobs, better schools,” she said, encouraging people to scout them. 
Jackson received a folder with her voucher, a prized possession that people spend years on waiting lists to acquire. Jackson’s was $1,032, possibly more if utilities were included or if she found a place in a pricier Zip code. Her contribution was about $200 a month.... 
“I don’t want to live in some ghetto,” Jackson said in the brawny tone of her native Boston, and it seemed she would not have to. Soon, she and Sheena were zipping down Interstate 85.
It was a sunny afternoon in Charlotte, an ambitious city of mirrored skyscrapers and green suburbs whose last big wave of house hunters was full of bank employees, high-tech workers and other professionals. 
Now there was Jackson, who receives unemployment, and Sheena, who gets child support for Shamahrie. Riding along, they fielded calls from agents, some of whom seemed quite eager. ... 
If she was cramped in Honolulu, here she had higher standards. At least three bedrooms. Hardwood floors, preferably. An open kitchen. 
They wound their way to the first address, which turned out to be the sort of Section 8 offering typical of the boom years: a small, 1970s-era brick number with dirt patches in the front yard. 
“I’ll put ‘[Heck] no’ next to this one,” Jackson said, making a note. 
She hit the gas, passing two young men in shorts and tank tops. 
“Uh-oh, street punks,” Jackson said, further disqualifying the area. 
... They pulled into Linda Vista, a winding maze of 2,000-plus-square-foot homes. 
“This is quiet livin’,” Jackson said, rolling along. “I’d hate to see something ghetto in here.”

Just wait ...

68 comments:

Harry Baldwin said...

Who says beggars can't be choosers?

“This is quiet livin’,” Jackson said, rolling along. “I’d hate to see something ghetto in here.”

As Groucho would have said: "I don't care to live in any neighborhood where I will have people like me as neighbors."

She got out and looked around, a vaguely glamorous vision crossing the grass in a long, leopard-print dress.

"Vaguely glamorous," AKA "ghetto fabulous."

Anonymous said...

This is why you must absolutely not own property in the United States. The government is engaged in a deliberate policy of destroying everything good. Just rent and have your bags packed. We are all Jews ~1930

Karen said...

My uneducated guess is that the high-foreclosure 'burbs are more likely to vote red than blue. In Texas, at least, places like Sugarland and Plano -- suburbs of Houston and Dallas respectively -- are dark, deep crimson but Dallas and Houston themselves are pretty sharply blue.

Also, FWIW, Ms. Jackson sounds like she's trying to do the right thing, other than the pink eyelashes on the car, however.

Anonymous said...

LOL.

In Blue State areas a $700 Section 8 voucher gets you a room in a crack house, but I guess they're transferrable across the country, and these days $700 will get you a three-bedroom with a big yard in Charlotte or Dallas.

Someone needs to make a reality show about inner city blacks moving out to the exurbs. They have to move somewhere, I guess, now that SWPLs are turning the inner cities into all-white havens.

Anonymous said...

I fully support this program.

In the end, section 8 will turn out to be the glue that held America together and prevented this country from following the path of Yugoslavia.

Section 8 is proof that we are one nation under god.

Anonymous said...

It be the right of Mexicans to 'undocumentedly' enter and live in the US. It is a right of blacks to live in a white community--at white taxpayer's expense.
Well, I want my right to live in a rich Jewish community, and Jews better pay for it.

Average Joe said...

Actually the problem with being poor in 21st Century America is that you can't afford to not live around black people. This is why most liberals are affluent. They can advocate for racially-integrated communities without actually having to live in one.

Whiskey said...

How is someone working as a baker getting Section 8 Housing money?

Oh ... Black. Sorry I forgot. Different rules for different races.

If you thought the 1970's battles over forced busing (get your White kid beat up by Black ones!) was fun, wait until people stuck in their house have all sorts of Ghetto/Barrio neighbors. Its like the elites are TRYING to create a low-level civil war.

Mr. Anon said...

Gosh, I'd like to be able to move to the city of my choice, and have someone else pick up the tab. Where do I sign up? Oh, you mean I can't?

David Davenport said...

Some iSteve raw material:

A General in the Drug War

VIDEO: Nora Volkow

An interview with the neuroscientist in charge of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who also happens to be the great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky.

...

Dr. Volkow generally forswears any interest in politics per se, but midway through a long day of meetings last month she sighed and acknowledged, “science and politics are intertwined.” We think we have free will, she continued, but we are foiled at every turn. First our biology conspires against us with brains that are hard-wired to increase pleasure and decrease pain. Meanwhile, we are so gregarious that social systems — whether you call them peer pressure or politics — reliably dwarf us as individuals. “There is no way you can escape.”

She said she was in the midst of reading “The Man who Loved Dogs,” by the Cuban novelist Leonardo Padura. The book is a novelized treatment of Trotsky’s assassination, not yet translated into English. Her father had validated its accuracy. Someday, she said, she wouldn’t mind writing a novel herself, “a biological novel.”

Just as historical fiction can illuminate a era, she said — its heroism and its bloody lunacy alike — so her book would use its characters to clarify exactly the same remarkable contradictions in the brain and its tangled circuit

Anonymous said...

Better than my town. We just import illegal alien gang members to rent our shitty trailers.

Anonymous said...

I am impressed that Shamahrie''s father is paying child support.

Kylie said...

"Also, FWIW, Ms. Jackson sounds like she's trying to do the right thing..."

Since when is improving your lot in life on somebody else's dime "trying to do the right thing"?

Also, FWIW, Ms. Jackson will be taking the ghetto with her wherever she goes--yes, even if she could be persuaded to jettison the car's eyelashes.

Anonymous said...

This is just the most fucking stupid thing I have ever read.

agnostic said...

"Sheena’s 5-year-old son, Shamahrie, and her two dogs, Coco Chanel and Mamacita."

Shamahrie? Blacks give more normal names to their dogs than their own children.

agnostic said...

If those slimy slumlords want to keep their failed properties propped up in price, the taxpayers should just cut them a check.

By using Section 8 vouchers to get their "guaranteed money" -- how's that for entrepreneurial spirit? -- they fleece the public but contribute to ruining a middle-class neighborhood.

Too bad everyone in those neighborhoods are passive whiners and pussies, or they might be able to stand up for themselves.

Anonymous said...

Hey, where are all those guys who were arguing in previous threads that we need to tax people more, to give more of your hard earned money to the government for wondrous programs like Section 8?

Working hard and earning more money is racist!

Anonymous said...

Sorry, Karen, but there are ultra blue states like mine, Massachusetts, where silly young wannabe robber barons with an MBA and not a lick of financial sense bought income properties during the boom that they now can't afford to keep without the Section 8 blood money.

Google Hanna Rosin's "American Murder Mystery" in the July 2008 Atlantic and see the implications.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

Someone needs to make a reality show about inner city blacks moving out to the exurbs. They have to move somewhere, I guess, now that SWPLs are turning the inner cities into all-white havens."

Sort of like "The Beverly Hillbillies", but with more bling, blunts, and beat-downs.

Deckin said...

Here's how it's done in Northern CA's wealthy suburbs. First, fight like hell against any section 8. Second, if the Bolsheviks at HUD make it impossible to resist any further, make sure it's Senior Housing. After all, it's called Low Income Housing not Low Wealth Housing.

Xmas Comes Early said...

There are some interesting Section 8 opportunities:

http://www.lowincomeapartmentfinder.com/apartments/

Nantucket, Mass
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Bennington, Vermont
Orinda, California
Berkeley, California
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Barbara, California
Chapel Hill, NC
Monterey, California
Bellevue, Washington
East Hampton, NY
Hampton Bays, NY

I encourage all Section 8 voucher holders to hop the Greyhound and check out these opportunities. Ho ho ho.

JSM said...

"Its like the elites are TRYING to create a low-level civil war.'

Wait, let me guess.

And the "elites" doing it are White, beta-hate-hate-hating college-educated women, and this whole Section-8-into-the-suburbs is about WBHHHCEWs looking for dark-skinned Alphas to boff, right?

AmericanGoy said...

Hold on.

I... I have trouble catching on.

Does this mean that the government pays for someone to live in one of the nicer suburbs?

As in 100% paid?

I... I am dense. I have trouble accepting this, AND I am a predominantly socialist in my view points...

Anonymous said...

This stuff is an insult to every working person in this country. "$1,032, possibly more if utilities were included or if she found a place in a pricier Zip code" per month handout for housing? WTF??? Most working stiffs pay less in total for housing and they pay it out of their pockets!

And yes, the problem with being poor is not so much that you have to live among among poor folks - it's that you can't avoid living where blacks live. My first house was inexpensive and small, in a white working class neighborhood. No major problems and everyone took care of their trash. It's only when blacks started to move in that the problems started. Trash on the streets, uncivilized behavior of all kinds. Took two years to get to the point of gun shots in the night and constant burglaries. Had to move out buying a house way too large and twice more expensive than the first one - just as an insurance against ghetto blacks moving in within time frame of my kids growing up.

Anonymous said...

Also, FWIW, Ms. Jackson sounds like she's trying to do the right thing, other than the pink eyelashes on the car, however.

She probably is, but her daughter's boyfriend may not be. Ditto her nephews, who come over for dinner a time or two and start casting their eyes over all that lovely new turf.

Udolpho.com said...

It's all very deja vu. Dallas did lots of experimentation with zoning "low income" housing near upscale housing...to anyone but a liberal the results were predictable, and it hurt some very nice residential areas (Dallas doesn't have many--the suburbs like Plano are wastelands of strip malls and shitty developments).

Chicago said...

Don't stop working now; the many millions on welfare need your money.

Anonymous said...

“It’s guaranteed money,” said David Benham, who owns several rental properties and is a founder of the Benham REO Group

God bless free market capitalism!

Fred said...

Are there no wealthy reactionary provocateurs willing to hoist wealthy liberals on their own petards with programs like this? Instead of sending another $100 million to their alma mater's football team, why not spend a tenth as much to start a non-profit dedicated to helping poor residents of Detroit, Oakland, and Camden move into section 8 housing in wealthy liberal enclaves?

JeremiahJohnbalaya said...

[anon1]Someone needs to make a reality show about inner city blacks moving out to the exurbs. They have to move somewhere, I guess, now that SWPLs are turning the inner cities into all-white havens."

[anon2]Sort of like "The Beverly Hillbillies", but with more bling, blunts, and beat-downs.

The movie has been done: Next Friday

Whiskey said...

The elites certainly are feminized. Take a look at David Brooks. Does he look like say, Ike or Gerald Ford or JFK or Ronald Reagan? Or "Thrill Up My Leg" Chris Matthews?

Any section of society dominated by women will soon have in it very feminized men for the most part.

I seriously doubt most White women long for short, dark, cholo guys. But mass immigration and Section 8 DO separate out winners and losers handsomely.

A guy who lives in an exclusive gated community absent "diversity" is by definition, one of society's winners and a true Alpha. Women spend most of their time sussing out who is Alpha (and who is a pretender). Mass immigration and Section 8 work very nicely to create a short-cut.

Anonymous said...

"Actually the problem with being poor in 21st Century America is that you can't afford to not live around black people. This is why most liberals are affluent. They can advocate for racially-integrated communities without actually having to live in one."

This is a story I've related here before. It's about a Jewish kid with a card-carrying ACLU member for a father, in a southern city. The city has (or had) mandatory desegregation (aka busing). It also had a high school in the Jewish section of town with an honors program. The result of this honors program was that, though the student body was about 50% black, the Jewish kids in the high school didn't actually have to sit in classrooms with the black students, or have much of anything to do with them at all.

The net effect in this town was that while non-Jewish whites had to flee to the suburbs to avoid the consequences of desegregation, often at considerable expense, the Jewish quarter remained intact, meaning that the yeshiva, the Jewish community center, and a half-dozen or so synagogues and temples didn't have to be sold and rebuilt elsewhere.

Anyway, when this young student was ejected from the honors program, rather than enjoying the blessings of desegregation which his father supported in theory, he somehow managed to finagle his way into the lily-white schools in the neighboring district. Not sure how his ACLU-member dad managed to do that, since they weren't residents, but they did it.

No, the elite don't suffer from the consequences of integration. They enjoy making the middle class suffer, however. There's good money in it for them - new houses to build and sell, more cars for the longer commutes, etc., etc., etc.

Anonymous said...

And another Presidential election come around and no candidate has mentioned welfare or section 8 or paying single women to have babies.

We deserve our fate.

Anonymous said...

By the way, just remember with all this talk of Section 8s and welfare that whenever one tries to have a civil discussion with a liberal about the enabling of generations of Americans mooching off the sweat of others, the libs scream, "Well, what about the welfare of Social Security and Medicare that your folks collect?"

Yes, so Medicare is going broke, but it can't be called welfare when those folks have put into it for 50 years and when, because they have been responsible, they have saved on a working class income when others have spent and spent and spent, they pay for expensive supplemental health insurance while others have done no such things.

Bastard libs.

agnostic said...

And you may ask yourself,
"How'm I 'poseda work like this?"
And you may ask yourself,
"Where is dat eyelashed automobile?"
And you may tell yourself,
"Dis is hot, my beautiful house!"
And you may tell yourself,
"Dis is hot, my on-the-dole life!"

Section Eight, oh my!
Don't let whitey hold me down
Section Eight, oh my!
Whitey skid-rowing his own town
Ruin the schools again
After dat money's gone
Fucked for a lifetime
Whitey skid-rowing his own town

Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was

Whitey dissolving, and whitey removing
There is whitey, and his melting-pot devotion
Bury the whitey and his melting-pot devotion
Remove the whitey and his melting-pot devotion!

JeremiahJohnbalaya said...

“There goes the neighborhood,” one homeowner said when she heard that her potential new neighbor had a federal housing voucher known as a Section 8.

Even if this isn't made up, it is a blatant attempt to control the reader's thought-process.

And the rest of the article reads like farce.

Reg Cæsar said...

“I don’t want to live in some ghetto,” Jackson said in the brawny tone of her native Boston

Since when do blacks speak with Boston accents?

The only case I've ever seen was a TV interview with a high-school hockey coach. (And "hockey coach" tells you how atypical he was in other ways.)

Native blacks have always resisted adopting local accents. And I've noticed that nonwhite immigrants-- except for some rich Asians-- resist as well, aiming for a bland "TV anchor" sound. (Or TV thug.)

You can always tell a white Chicagolander by the name of his town-- "Chi-caw-go." (Cf. Jack Benny, Bob Newhart, Bill Murray.)

Never heard a black or Mexican say it that way.

Whiskey said...

PC starts with women. See the Daily Mail article about the school in Sweden banning the words "him" and "her" and all gender pronouns and adjectives.

"Meanwhile, nearly all the children's books deal with homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children. There are no 'Snow White,' 'Cinderella' or other fairy tales.

Director Lotta Rajalin notes that Egalia places a special emphasis on fostering an environment tolerant of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. "

There's a huge waiting list. Who'd put their kid into one of these PC hell-holes. Oh yeah -- Swedish mothers. Gays are about 2-3% of the population, so they are only important because White women obsess over them in endless status wars. Granite counter-tops, genderless kindergartens. How's that going to work out with Section 8 Next door?

Anonymous said...

"Also, FWIW, Ms. Jackson sounds like she's trying to do the right thing, other than the pink eyelashes on the car, however."

The ones trying to escape the ghetto usually are.

Then their relatives start to show up and neighborhoods that once had one shooting every ten years suddenly get one a month.

Anonymous said...

"Section 8 is proof that we are one nation under god."

Section 8 is proof rich people and government employees (aka SWPLs)want the inner cities back for themselves.

By driving NAMs out they get to massively increase the value of their property by massively reducing the value of yours.

Yet another robbery of the middle by the rich.

Wes said...

Blacks and Mestizos need to move into the suburbs. I hate to say it, but the only way Whites will get their courage up is if they realize there is no place to run. Portland needs more NAMs now.

Anonymous said...

"Its like the elites are TRYING to create a low-level civil war."

It does look that way - which is fine - but what a waste. We could have been on Mars by now but instead the whole western world is going to be one giant Bosnia.

And when it all goes up in flames the people responsible will just slope off to SE Asia and start again.

Anonymous said...

"This is why you must absolutely not own property in the United States. The government is engaged in a deliberate policy of destroying everything good. Just rent and have your bags packed. We are all Jews ~1930"

Yep, my neighborhood is going down the drain. It went from 99.5% white several decades a go to now abut 50-60%% and sinking. The schools are even worse. I better get out now.

Anonymous said...

"And another Presidential election come around and no candidate has mentioned welfare or section 8 or paying single women to have babies. We deserve our fate."

At this point I'd settle for a Republican president who supports "compassionate conservatism" in the same way that Barack Obama supports straights-only marriage - i.e., only by lying through his teeth.

But really, focusing on the race of the Section 8 voucher recipients is taking the wrong tack.

We have a federal government spending a trillion more than it takes in every single year, that is paying people who don't work to live in homes they otherwise could not afford. The government is paying banks, investors, etc. to NOT sell or rent their homes at the market rate to people who WORK to pay the rent or mortgage. Instead, those who buy or pay rent without vouchers are paying even more than they should have to, since the market's being propped up by the government.

I really don't see why or how this program should survive the budget balancing talks under way. If we had Republicans who were real conservatives it certainly would not.

Wes said...

Apparently a young 18 yr old White boy was attacked by a black gang and almost killed in South Carolina. It's as if this needs to happen more in nice liberal White areas before we have any common sense again.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008252/Teenage-gang-charged-lynching-law-savage-attack-18-year-old-student.html

jody said...

LOL, jesus. that can't be a real article.

departments of energy and education rightfully make the conservatives' chopping block dreams, but somehow HUD never does.

Anonymous said...

As one who grew up in blue Hawaii, it's a shame they left there. Such a reliably liberal state should have its share of Section 8 lowlifes. In a just world, it would also have about 25% of the population Hispanic immigrants and their descendants. I can guarantee you the locals wouldn't go for that. Would become red real quick.

Anonymous said...

wes, MSM ignoring, white liberals will keep ignoring up until the day it collapses, just like the elite w/ the mortgage debacle.

Anonymous said...

@wes, do a news search, south carolina, lynching.. only the daily mail reports. You KNOW it came up on the wires, etc, but MSM is ignoring, as usual.

Difference Maker said...

Whiskey:
A guy who lives in an exclusive gated community absent "diversity" is by definition, one of society's winners and a true Alpha. Women spend most of their time sussing out who is Alpha (and who is a pretender). Mass immigration and Section 8 work very nicely to create a short-cut.

Don't you worry Whiskey, beautiful women still won't choose the nerdy so called alphas in the gated communities. Unless I move in there

Kylie said...

"But really, focusing on the race of the Section 8 voucher recipients is taking the wrong tack."

Yes and no. I take your point about federally subsidized housing being a disastrous economic policy regardless of the race of its beneficiaries. But the fact is that race is one of the main motivations behind it (now, anyway). You don't really think Section 8, et al are intended for the benefit of deserving whites, do you?

I worked for two different landlords who accepted Section 8. The article glosses over the problems such landlords face and makes it seem as though Section 8 is a win/win for everyone except the racist NIMBY whites, who deserve a good slapdown. That's simply not true.

Kylie said...

"Does this mean that the government pays for someone to live in one of the nicer suburbs?

As in 100% paid?"


No. The government pays most but not all the rent. Of course, such renters usually also qualify for help with utilities, food stamps, Medicaid, vouchers for clothing and school supplies, college grants, etc.

But since the government pays its share reliably, it's extremely hard to evict the renter should she (it's usually a she) fail to abide by the terms of the lease. Basically, she can withhold her share of the rent, trash the property, invite others to live with her, etc. with impunity.

I know this first-hand. I've done my time serving eviction notices, cleaning up renters' filth and testifying in civil court for my employers.

Anonymous said...

I just quit my job teaching middle school in a coastal Florida city. I worked the job two years; it was eye-opening. Section 8 vouchers are brutal because they are a stealth measure. Few, if any, good people know of their existence so they send their daughters to school where said daughters accept as normal, thug behavior. The implications are disgusting. The boys of good parents, unable to compete with the raw physicality that is a typical Section-8 voucher child, grow up with a Beta attitude. For them it's heads-down time all the time. Of course, all of this is made possible by schools which normalize the bad behavior so as not to be called racist.

Anonymous said...

Jewish neighborhoods were one of the first to succumb to ghettoization. Here is a picure of an old synagogue in Brooklyn converted into a Black church. There a whole lot more of this toward the end of this page.

roots of Obama's rage said...

I see that Honolulu is “not all it’s cracked up to be, if you’re black”

Hilarious link.

Anonymous said...

I was doing work on a foreclosed home in Alexandria VA in a nice new development of brick townhomes.

I was approached by an older Korean woman who engaged me in some small talk. She was hoping I was her new neighbor as the house I was working on had been empty for over a year. When I told her I was there to work and wasn't moving in she pointed across the street to an apartment complex and said "section 8".

When her development was built and she bought her home the complex across the street was not section 8, it had flipped after she moved in. You didn't need a sign to tell you that the complex was low income.

Gangs of black men were roaming around in the middle of the day, shirtless of course, and Wise Latinas were carting around their broods of illegitimate children (atleast 3 each all under 5 years old).

No one in their right mind would pay for a house there, especially for the 300,000 dollar asking price. Any person of means will be robbed and will have to send their child to private school to avoid the section 8 feral children.

In summation, that lady is fucked. But so are all of us suburbanites.

Currahee said...

Soon...in your neighorhood:

"a vaguely glamorous vision crossing the grass in a long, leopard-print dress."

Currahee said...

oh, and her male admirers soon to follow.

Anonymous said...

Blacks are pouring out of Detroit and into the suburbs. It is amazing how much it is changing in Wixom, Walled Lake, West Bloomfield, they all used to be nice towns. They still are for the most part, but I suspect a tipping point is underway.

Maya said...

"Blacks are pouring out of Detroit and into the suburbs. It is amazing how much it is changing in Wixom, Walled Lake, West Bloomfield, they all used to be nice towns. They still are for the most part, but I suspect a tipping point is underway."

Does that mean that soon we can reclaim the cities? I spend a summer fixing up a couple of old, shabby houses with a few friends, under qualified supervision. I really think I could do it; go into city ruins and help rebuild. It would be great to live in a historic district, in a walkable neighborhood, and noise, smaller spaces and slightly dirtier environment wouldn't feel like a bother. I just need my fellow citizens to share an idea of common human decency and basic values with me.

Anonymous said...

Maya Detroit is far from empty and something like 80% black. It is a wasteland with taxes, crime and poor services. You would need to be insane to live their. I know the usual artsy types are giving it a go right now but I don't think they are being realistic.

Anonymous said...

Let me see if I get this right Kylie: I'm supposed to feel bad for the landlord that makes the decision to accept Section 8 scum because, being who they are, they tend not to take care of the property as well as he'd imagined?

I have a friend who owns property in my town. He started taking the Section 8 blood money a couple years ago, and now he has the audacity to complain about having to replace damaged fixtures in his apartments, which he never had to do before. I asked him if he was a naive moron before or after he graduated from Bowdoin...

Kylie said...

"Let me see if I get this right Kylie: I'm supposed to feel bad for the landlord that makes the decision to accept Section 8 scum because, being who they are, they tend not to take care of the property as well as he'd imagined?"

Where did I say that? Nope, I have no sympathy or empathy for Section 8 renters or those who rent to them. Both groups are scum.

I'm pleased to report the Section 8 renters I knew quickly came to loathe me once they realized I couldn't be intimidated the way my male predecessors had been. I evicted several problem renters (both Section 8 and full paying) who'd made the quality of life for their neighbors well-nigh unbearable. I'm especially proud of putting one larcenous single mother and her infant son out on the street on Christmas Eve.

I should add that when I took those jobs, I didn't realize my bosses rented to Section 8. To me, "campus rentals" meant you rented only to people who attended class on campus. How naive I was in those days. But that didn't stop me from becoming well-known both for my hard-line policy re cheaters and my refusal to take bribes.

Kylie said...

"I just need my fellow citizens to share an idea of common human decency and basic values with me."

Racist.

Anonymous said...

>"I just need my fellow citizens to share an idea of common human decency and basic values with me."<

Danger! Potential nationalist! Call the ADL!

Unless he's Jewish. Then never mind.

Anonymous said...

I have a friend who is a section 8 renter. She is severely handicapped. Despite the handicap, she sold cosmetics as an independent consultant to support herself and even managed to do charity work by making phone calls etc.

If section 8 were limited to truly needy folks like her, neighborhoods would not be ruined and the section 8 housing program would be tiny compared to what it is now. Unfortunately it is a scam to choose winners (landlords and renters) and losers (the home owning neighbors).

Sword said...

Regarding Whiskey´s post on the Egalia preschool in Stockholm, here is the webpage describing that preschool on the Stockholm county web:
http://www.stockholm.se/-/Serviceenhetsdetaljer/?kontakt=&enhet=f90dc7c3daa948da9190e3789c768ac4

Note that the picture shows a rainbow.

The text in that website corraborates the Daily Mail article, and then some. I looked around on the Swedish web for articles on the "Egalia" preschool, and found even more. Would not be surprised if the whole gang is a bunch of political lesbians. I also found a mention that there is a waiting list for parents who want to put their children into this specific preschool.

This might seem crazy, but there is an explanation. The "Egalia" preschool is situated in the "Södermalm" district in Stockholm, a hotbed for media types, PC lovers, and people who who could be described as "left-of-liberal-by-Swedish-standards". However, there are not many non-Swedes there, the poor immigrants live in the high-rise suburbs further south.

We do not have anything similar to section 8 in Sweden. Poor (and non-rich) people get rent assistance, but no help to live in rich places. Despite that we have much higher white population% than USA, there are schools which are 99% immigrant, where over 50% of the parents are unemployed and on public assistance.

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