MrD
Can you point me to some statistics that show people whose homes we taxpayers have bought or subsidized for 15 year started paying for them on their own at the end of the 15 years( or even sooner)?
That these people all of a sudden were making enough money to cover the mortgage, insurances taxes and utilities?
If anyone qualified for section 8 they would also qualify for Medicaid, food stamps TANF ,school lunches and /or WIC where applicable obamaphones and in many states cars. How much money would someone have to make in the real world to pay for all that? Do you in all sincerity think many people who have lived pretty well off the taxpayer for 15 years will now go out and get a job to replace all those bennies? Doing what? Where after 15 years of making below the minimum to qualify for all those bennies could one go to work to replace the bennies?
We do nothing to incentivize people to work hard and become responsible. We do just the opposite. Buying houses for them is nuts.
Keep in mind I am not suggesting we evict people who truly sincerely need this help.
I don't have statistics one way or the other, and my guess is that you don't either. However, you're arguing a false choice. The issue isn't whether or not there will be a housing assistance program but of what form that program will take. You want to see people crammed into apartments full of reprobates. I don't. I think that's bad for the children whose parents are on public housing assistance. Furthermore, the taxpayer is on the hook either way. They lose regardless, but if one person ends up ultimately buying his home after 15 years, the taxpayer wins. If literally nobody does, the taxpayer loses but no worse than he would have lost if the ownership program had never existed.
As for the argument that we're disincentivizing work with too much welfare, I think you need to learn more about the
program. Unless you are elderly or disabled, (1) it has a
minimum income requirement; (2) welfare benefits do not count toward that income requirement; and (3) one or more people who would own the house have to work full time and have been working full time for a full year prior to commencement of benefits.
There are other requirements as well, but these pertain directly to the incentive issue. What this should tell you is that this is not a program for bums and strongly incentivizes work, because you can't get it without working. Furthermore, it's a program for the working poor, which means it's corporate welfare for Walmart and McDonald's as much as it is anything else. That's also true for the rental assistance, but this one gives the recipient something to be proud of and a chance for their kids to leave the ghetto. I think that's a good thing.