Eliminate hud housing subsidies. Asap

[LilOlLady]

ELIMINATE HUD HOUSING SUBSIDIES. ASAP

A friend of mine recently moved into a senior complex run under HUD and she just got her yearly re-certification and her part of the rent was raised, beginning in January, $6 because of the COLA.
HUD subsidized housing is a fraud. She have a studio apartment and very comfortable in it and it is a great complex. BUT the rent is $763 and it is not worth that and if not for HUD there is no way in hell they could rent them otherwise. $763 for a studio? Unbelievable ridiculous. Highway robbery of the Government. Of this $763 the Government pay them $533 and her share is $210. $533 for a studio in Reno is absurd. Government should eliminate HUD altogether and go with Section 8 which allows one so much for an apartment depending on the size of the family and size of the unit. A studio under Section 8 would not even be allowed near $500 and one would pay 33% of that and Government the balance. If one want to rent an apartment for, say and it was more then Section 8 allowed, one would have to pay the 33% and any over the amount allowed by HUD.
Why the hell is HUD doing that kind of business with taxpayers money? Pull all HUD recipients out and put them in Section 8 and stop this out of control Government spending.

 

[WatertheTree]

HUD housing and section 8 both most go. It is welfare to corporate power. More fingers trying to get at the treasury.

Investors buy property specificly to make it hud or section 8. They want that because then the rent is never late and it brings more money then market value.

This sort of market manipulation is exactly why the economy is failing, and why prices are to high for most people. Without government stimulation then the cost of renting homes would fall, as would the price to buy homes.

The solution to keeping people off the streets is not government intervention with tax dollars. The solution is to let the landlords and investors go hungry untill they lower the costs to a level that people can afford to pay. Thats how a free market works.

Same thing can be said about the commercial real estate market. I was going to open a shop once, nothing fancy in a average neighborhood. When I called the guy to try and negotiate the price down he told me 'go fuck yourself. You pay my price or I let it sit empty. Tax write off's justify my price'. were the government not giving him an incentive to hold to a artificially high price then a new business would have opened, and I would have hired two people. But instead like most business ventures I have looked at it is simply not worth it.

Infact the situation is so bad that I have come to the conclusion that unless your business is protected by the government, or recieves payment from the government either directly or indirectly, then it is simply not worth trying. That is the only way you will be successfull, you must go where the money is, and government has all the money.

(ofcourse my comments are relevant to people with less then 250k to start a business, if you have more money then that then you can do things to attract the uppermiddle class and up, which are the only public demographics with any purchasing power)

 

[mystic]

LiOlLady, you seem to be confused. Section 8 is a HUD program, one of many. HUD is the department of housing and oversees many programs. HUD would be who you would go to complain to if you experience housing discrimination as they are responsible for the fair housing act.
So your statement of, "Government should eliminate HUD altogether and go with Section 8," does not make sense. Section 8 is a HUD subsidized housing program. Section 8 wait list was closed last I heard because they had over 10,000 names and something like a 6 year wait. Because the only qualification for section 8 is income. There are other subsidized housing programs that have less of a wait as the criteria can include age or disability that your friend can look into. (I would guess it's a program like this that she's living in now).
I agree that $763 for a studio seems inflated. But there are areas of the country where studios go for more. I'm not familiar with the market in Reno, so who knows.
I think as far as wasteful government spending, subsidizing housing for low income is about as benign as it gets.

 

[editec]

I concur.

HUD housing defintiely appears to me to be a bit of a scam, too.

The so called "market value" that HUD often pays for substandard housing seems quite high compared to non HUD housing of equal quality.

So who REALLY benefits from that problem?

The people living in that substandard housing or the people who take in those inflated rents?

 

[mystic]

The solution to keeping people off the streets is not government intervention with tax dollars

You're absolutely right. It's paying them a living wage in the first place.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

The solution to keeping people off the streets is not government intervention with tax dollars

You're absolutely right. It's paying them a living wage in the first place.

Oh brother.. here we go with the living wage stuff.

 

[mystic]

HUD housing defintiely appears to me to be a bit of a scam, too.

The so called "market value" that HUD often pays for substandard housing seems quite high compared to non HUD housing of equal quality.

Mr. editec, I respectfully disagree. Certainly not a scam. If social security checks were enough to cover housing costs, there would not be a need for these programs.

Speaking from my own experience, the HUD subsidized housing complex I manage has a market rent of $530 for one bedrooms...that's actually below what you would actually pay for a one bedroom in the area. So it all depends.

But you might be right that in many cases the market rent is inflated. I'm not knowledgeable enough to have an informed opinion. It very well could be a problem.

 

[Inthemiddle]

HUD housing and section 8 both most go. It is welfare to corporate power. More fingers trying to get at the treasury.

So are you equally as interested in ending oil subidies?

The solution to keeping people off the streets is not government intervention with tax dollars. The solution is to let the landlords and investors go hungry until they lower the costs to a level that people can afford to pay. Thats how a free market works.

I would generally agree with this. However, I've seen many different properties that use HUD (tax break subsidies) and section 8 tenants and there are some remarkable things about them. HUD subsidized properties tend to be pretty nice, and give the property flexibility to restrict themselves to quality tenants who might simply be unable to afford a decent place otherwise, but who still don't qualify for section 8. They are able to establish strict rules about a tenant's history and conduct while living in the property, which helps them to minimize riff-raff and to dispose of them if they squeeze through the cracks. I'm not really opposed to this as it lends a helping hand to people who live on the "straight and narrow" who simply don't have alot of income. There are many such places that operate as retirement communities, and others who are open to anyone regardless of age. I've never seen a time when HUD properties have inflated rent because they only have a certain number of their units they are allowed to use for subsidized housing. The rest of the units are rented without subsidies, and would not be able to be filled if the rents weren't at a fair market value.

Section 8 is where I find the real problem to be. These kinds of properties tend to be operated by slum lords who really do do alot of manipulation and fraud. I've seen single bedroom houses that are billed as three bedroom houses, with the landlord suggesting that the family could use this hallway upstairs as one bedroom and this dining room down stairs as another bedroom. And once the people move in, the landlord doesn't live up to his legal responsibilities as a landlord because there's nothing to require him to do so. The people can't move, they can't withhold rent to attend to repairs themselves, they can't even report the landlord alot of times because they run the risk of the city evicting them for living in an illegally overcrowded dwelling. And they don't have many options to go elsewhere even if they could afford it, because there are so few landlords who will accept section 8, and it's usually the same situation anyway so why bother?

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd gonna wait till dey's givin' `em away an' den he gonna get one an' move alla his fat g/f's in with him...

Why We Need the Housing Market to Hit Bottom
11/11/11 - A bottom in the housing market has been a long time coming, and new numbers may make the picture clearer.

With home values in decline, down about 29% since 2006 according to Zillow.com, you might think that affordability alone would make the housing market a good bet. But it isn't. And that is weird. When the price of most commodities goes down, such as gasoline or oranges, the tendency is that consumers buy up more of those commodities. But that hasn't happened in the U.S. housing sector. Even though housing prices, on average, have fallen almost by one-third in the past five years, housing purchases just haven't budged.

Pending home sales were down by 4.6% in September, according to Realtor.org, while existing homes sales fell by 3% (although sales for the year in both categories are up moderately). That's been the case for most years during the Great Recession, as sellers outnumber buyers. But as any homebuyer could tell you, it's not easy getting credit for a $500,000 home -- or even a $300,000 home. In addition, high unemployment has made buyers nervous. Few consumers want to take on a massive source of debt when they're uncertain about their job prospects. In addition, consumers don't want to buy a home that may not appreciate in value all that much during the next 10 years.

But affordability may finally help get some homes off the market, albeit at a slower pace than homeowners and real estate professionals might like. Numbers from Fiserv Case-Shiller show that lower home prices may finally be triggering "price stability" in the U.S. housing market. The Fiserv home price insights index shows three fairly major developments in the housing sector, one for the long haul and two happening right now:

*Home prices in the U.S. are expected to decline 3.6% into mid-2012, and then rebound 2.4% in the second half of 2012 through the first half of 2013.

*Price declines and low mortgage rates have resulted in dramatic improvements in housing affordability.

*Fiserv estimates that the ratio between mortgage payments and housing income has fallen 40% from its peak in 2006.

Source

 

[Vaard]

ELIMINATE HUD HOUSING SUBSIDIES. ASAP

A friend of mine recently moved into a senior complex run under HUD and she just got her yearly re-certification and her part of the rent was raised, beginning in January, $6 because of the COLA.
HUD subsidized housing is a fraud. She have a studio apartment and very comfortable in it and it is a great complex. BUT the rent is $763 and it is not worth that and if not for HUD there is no way in hell they could rent them otherwise. $763 for a studio? Unbelievable ridiculous. Highway robbery of the Government. Of this $763 the Government pay them $533 and her share is $210. $533 for a studio in Reno is absurd. Government should eliminate HUD altogether and go with Section 8 which allows one so much for an apartment depending on the size of the family and size of the unit. A studio under Section 8 would not even be allowed near $500 and one would pay 33% of that and Government the balance. If one want to rent an apartment for, say and it was more then Section 8 allowed, one would have to pay the 33% and any over the amount allowed by HUD.
Why the hell is HUD doing that kind of business with taxpayers money? Pull all HUD recipients out and put them in Section 8 and stop this out of control Government spending.

so wait......

you want to stop out of control govenrment spending buy taking the money from hud and having it spent thru section 8?

does that not meake sense to anyone elsE?